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When he first started using someone else's identity, the crimes might not have been "long in the past" yet, but once you start doing something like that and hav
by AnthonyMouse 2y ago
When he first started using someone else's identity, the crimes might not have been "long in the past" yet, but once you start doing something like that and have established a life under the assumed identity, it's not easy to go back.
The real problem here is the attempt to maintain permanent one-to-one mappings between ID numbers and humans. The legitimate purpose of a government ID is so you can e.g. go to the bank, open an account and then later establish to the bank that you're the same person who opened the account. If you want to get a new ID number and start over, you shouldn't have to steal someone else's in order to do that, you should just be able to go to the DMV or the social security administration and get a new ID under a new name that isn't already somebody else's.
The hypothesis that this would help criminals is pretty thin. They're already going to use an assumed name, which is why law enforcement uses photos/fingerprints/DNA to identify suspects rather than a government ID that people aren't actually required to carry regardless.
- tuna74 2y agoNo, you should have an actual ID number that can be used to uniquely identify people. Like Sweden for example.
- nemomarx 2y agoisn't that just social security id?
- Jaygles 2y agoIn the US, a person can get a new SSN if their current SSN is heavily used in identity fraud. I've heard its a high bar, but technically a person can be associated with more than one SSN. Getting an SSN for your child isn't compulsory, so the system also isn't expected to hold every person. For the majority of people, it's 1-to-1. But it's not guaranteed that an SSN identifies a person (if it's been replaced) or that a person has an SSN (if their parents were lazy or are sov-cits)
- ninalanyon 2y agoYes. But in Scandinavia, unlike the US, it is a unique identifier and there is a single national database. "UNIQUENESS. The SSN is not a unique label. More than 4.2 million people, by the Social Security Administration's own estimates, have two or more SSNs. More serious, although much less prevalent, are the instances in which more than one person has been issued or uses the same SSN." https://archive.epic.org/privacy/hew1973report/c7.htm https://archive.epic.org/privacy/hew1973report/c7.htm
- randerson 2y agoNo, an SSN - for those who have one - is considered both an identity number and a secret. A national ID number (which all residents would have) is just an identifier. A fraudster can't get a credit card in your name with just your ID number.
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoThis is not a counterargument, it's just "no". Forcing people to have a unique permanent barcode is primarily of use to authoritarians.
- Jolter 2y agoThe logic here is pretty thin: “criminals are already able to do it, so we should make it simpler”.
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoWhat you're doing is removing the incentive for criminals to cause damage to innocent people by assuming another real person's identity instead of just creating a new one.