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Our system in Estonia works well. I don't get the resistance to a digital/national id in other countries. To us it is quite bizarre. Some have explained it wi

Our system in Estonia works well. I don't get the resistance to a digital/national id in other countries. To us it is quite bizarre. Some have explained it with a lack of trust between citizens and the country. But without such digital id it is impossible to have such digital government services as we have here. The government services need to verify and autheticate the citizen, so they only access their own data and not someone who has the same name and birth date by accident. I don't see how such a system gives the government more powers. It already has all the data on its citizens, but it is spread out, fragmented, stored with multiple conflicting versions, maybe some of it is stored in databases where no one cares about security, etc.

dijit 1y ago
Just like Britons can’t imagine Estonia, I know you can’t imagine Britain. In the UK there’s a bunch of government and company databases, and coalescing them isn’t just hard, in some cases it’s not even possible. You can ask a company for specific details on a person, and they can make a “reasonable effort” to get the data. But if they mishandle the request (maybe your name has accents?) then the government gets no information. The easier it gets, the easier it can be for them to excercise power over you, and right now there’s sufficient reason to be worried about that. The current government is liberally using the fascistic powers that the previous government created.
Fade_Dance 1y ago
In the US we use a short number written on a paper card - social security numbers. It's a huge source of compromised security on every level from government services to corporate to personal data security.
- mulmen 1y ago
  The US does not have a national ID. SSN was overloaded to fill the gap because “everyone has one”.
reorder9695 1y ago
The UK government has justified this with reducing the amount of illegal workers. To work legally currently you need an NI number, this is not an improvement on that system other than requiring everyone to have a phone (probably with safetynet checks to ensure it can't be running a custom rom). I personally do not trust the government one little bit and am sure they'll find some way to abuse this, as they have just about everything else they do at this point. This possibly sounds far fetched, but why couldn't they ask for GPS permissions on the app then use it to quickly find out who was at a pro Palestine protest for example given their recent penchant for arresting protesters? They have given us no reason to believe things will improve with it's introduction, and have given us plenty of reasons to believe it will be abused. It's almost perfect for that, "install our software on the device you have most places you go, or you can't earn a living anymore".
- pbhjpbhj 1y ago
  >given their recent penchant for arresting protesters? A protest group attacked a military base causing £millions of damage. They got censured, as a terrorist organisation. "Protestors" decided they wanted to support that specific organisation, taking focus away from their message and chasing after something the government simply can't countenance: allowing protestors to ruin our defensive capabilities, at immense expense to the taxpayer, just to make some headlines. If these people cared about Palestinians then they should have given up supporting the proscribed 'terrorists' and protested in a way that didn't require the government to crack down hard. Plenty of other non-proscribed protest groups are perfectly allowed. Private corporation's already know everywhere you go, if you have a mobile phone, or use a debit/credit card, or drive a car. The government already know where you work and when, if you pay your taxes. What Reform/Tories/right-wingers didn't want was any solution that would ease the problems they're using to try and rile the people into full culture wars. Labour are giving them what they [say they] want: making it harder for illegal immigrants, making it harder to claim benefits. But Farage isn't really there to solve a problem, here's there to create one as a means to weadle into power (presumably so he can refuse to do any useful work with that power, as he did in the EU) so he can fuck up the UK trying to be Trump 2 Fascist Boogaloo.
  - 1y ago
gslepak 1y ago
> I don't get the resistance to a digital/national id in other countries. To us it is quite bizarre. It depends on the country and its relationship with the people. If the people trust that their government represents the people's interests, there is little push-back. In countries where citizens have reason to believe their government is hijacked by interests that do not have their best interests at heart, then every move is viewed with suspicion. In this case people are tying Digital ID to CBDCs and social credit systems, which is a reasonable thing to do, given this is exactly how China uses them to enforce 15-minute cities with checkpoints between them. All citizens conversations are tracked, their movements are restricted as well [1], and their ability to purchase goods & services are tightly regulated based on their behavior via the social credit system. This is the world that people who are pushing back against this are trying to avoid. [1] https://x.com/songpinganq/status/1972382547427590401 https://x.com/songpinganq/status/1972382547427590401
- majormajor 1y ago
  Seems like a red-herring. Does a government need a digital ID to do that? Many do that with the "free market" of publicly-tradable information + pre-existing government IDs already used for certain things. I don't know for sure how much the UK government is purchasing all that, but there's a lot of cameras and tech tracking in the country already, like those of us across the pond also are watched with. It won't reverse surveillance states but fraud is also a huge problem that deserves addressing.
  - exe34 1y ago
    if they want private information, they should buy it on the open market like every other company!
  - iamnothere 1y ago
    Yes, governments do need a centralized common identity if they intend to build something like a social credit system. Those without adequate experience dealing with the US system, for instance, may assume that the government already has your info and thus such a system is redundant. However, this is simply not the case. US government systems are a hodgepodge of different systems built by different vendors, over different computing eras, many of which lack a primary key relationship with something like your social security number (the current “default” identifier). Many are plagued with duplicate records, data problems, and other issues that prevent easy correlation of records without human verification. Talk to some people in the IRS or Social Security and you’ll quickly get a sense of how many problems this can create! Maybe it’s improved since I last talked to people about it, but I doubt it. A central ID enforced on all systems by statute would significantly reduce the barrier to creating “airtight” oppressive systems. While the inefficiencies in the US system have a cost, certainly preventing the implementation of more efficient social benefit programs, they also provide a barrier against more efficient social repression. Given the political animosity present in the country right now, it’s probably good that we don’t have the ability to create a turnkey totalitarian system. Things are bad enough as is! More generally, in nations where the population feels suspicion towards their politicians and bureaucrats, the people may prefer to leave inefficiencies baked into the system in order to hamper potential oppression. Those social tensions and trust deficits should be resolved before proceeding with any ambitious central ID schemes.
KoolKat23 1y ago
The UK doesn't have a codified constitution and changes can generally be made with a simple majority. It's a bit more high stakes.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
mulmen 1y ago
> I don't get the resistance to a digital/national id in other countries. To us it is quite bizarre. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that this is a language barrier issue but this comes across as astonishingly narrow minded.
- pepa65 1y ago
  It's obviously a cultural difference issue that might create the impression of narrowmindedness.
  - mulmen 1y ago
    Yeah I get the cultural difference. Being unaware of other cultures differences is the part that comes across narrow minded. I can imagine why a person wouldn’t be afraid of their government but I’m having a much harder time with their inability to reciprocate.
antihipocrat 1y ago
Governments change. Any group in society has the potential to become marginalized, and if all services are funneled through a single system it becomes very easy to selectively switch off access.
madeofpalk 1y ago
I'm somewhat indifferent to the concept of a Digital ID. The problem is that the UK government's reason for introducing it doesn't make sense - to 'solve' illegal workers, when the UK already has a (digital) system for proving right to work https://www.gov.uk/prove-right-to-work/get-a-share-code-online https://www.gov.uk/prove-right-to-work/get-a-share-code-onli...
- reaperducer 1y ago
  I'm somewhat indifferent to the concept of a Digital ID. The problem is that the UK government's reason for introducing it doesn't make sense - to 'solve' illegal workers, when the UK already has a (digital) system for proving right to work I saw some British politicians discussing this on Sky last week, and I really don't see the point of the British digital ID. They say having yet another new ID number will make things "easier." But didn't really say how. Brits already have ID numbers for lots of things. It wasn't spelled out how having yet another number will make things better. My tech mind tells me that it's just going to save some DB admins from having to JOIN some columns. But a number is a number. Why yet another number? And the whole thing about having a number will somehow stop people from working illegally seems like a red herring. I believe Brits already have to have a national insurance number in order to work. That hasn't stopped people from working illegally. They talking heads didn't explain what's so magical about this new number that will suddenly do things that the old number or numbers didn't. /Not a Brit. Just bewildered by what appears to be a solution in search of a problem.
  - bamboozled 1y ago
    Sky is a really right wing partisan channel though, ofc they are going to say negative things about the incumbent government or basically anything it does. Not to say the idea is good or bad, but how people watch hyper-partisan media and draw any conclusions from it is beyond me.
    - reaperducer 1y ago
      Sky didn't say anything. The two talking heads from two different political parties said things. As an outsider, I have no idea if Sky News is "right wing" or not. I watch Sky and BBC because those are the two British services I can get where I am. (And occasionally ITV, but it seems to be all potatoes, and no meat.) I note that instead of addressing the topic of discussion, you deflect into another topic. Why is that?
idkfasayer 1y ago
You don't get the resistance? Imagine a Russia-friendly party getting elected. Doesn't have to be overtly pro-russian. Can be someone very nationalist like Marine Le Pen in France. Or socialist like Sarah Wagenknecht in Germany. Just someone with financially dependent on Russia, or simply owing them favour. Now imagine them accidentally leaving some loophole in the system, such that Russians get read or maybe even write access to data.
- Avamander 1y ago
  If they get elected they can fuck everyone over the exact same way. The fact that there's something akin to a unique identifier or that it has a corresponding certificate or some means for authentication will and does not stop any malicious government. Never has, has it?
reaperducer 1y ago
without such digital id it is impossible to have such digital government services And now we know what Estonia's single point of failure is. An adversary only has to hack one system to bring an entire country down. That sounds a bit scary to me.
- SXX 1y ago
  This. It will certainly be used by Russia in case of invasion.
- Avamander 1y ago
  Having an ID issued by a central authority does not mean it can only be used by the central authority in a way that it becomes a SPoF. Attacking the DMV doesn't make licenses vanish into thin air either for example.
  - reaperducer 1y ago
    Attacking the DMV doesn't make licenses vanish into thin air Nevada's DMV was part of a hack a couple of months ago, and it caused chaos beyond just drivers licenses. https://www.2news.com/news/local/nevada-restores-fingerprint-background-checks-and-most-state-websites-amid-ongoing-recovery-efforts/article_f69c5ee8-70a4-46aa-a5bc-e97503c97850.html https://www.2news.com/news/local/nevada-restores-fingerprint... This is an excellent real-world example of why having all your data eggs in one basket is a terrible idea.
    - Avamander 1y ago
      Nevada's DMV is a great example what happens without eID. Agencies that have a better idea about people's identity have been forced to do things like background checks and fingerprinting. Your data eggs in one basket, or a few. If you attack the DMV in a country that has working eID it will only affect the DMV. Maybe you can't sign up for a driving exam or order new plates. That's it. It won't affect the police in cases that don't concern the DMV (like insurance) and vice versa. Sure if you attack everything at once everything will be affected, that's always an option, eID or not. Fundamentally a digital ID does not mean a single "basket", just that wherever those "eggs" are that you know it's one single "chicken". That "chicken" can also have multiple ways of identifying themselves (including offline methods). That's how it is in countries that have a working eID implemented.
AnthonyMouse 1y ago
> I don't see how such a system gives the government more powers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State When the state is more likely to cause you problems than help you out, you want them to be bad at it. The corrupt cop going on a fishing expedition to try to bust you for something because you're dating his ex, who can't find anything because it's "spread out, fragmented, stored with multiple conflicting versions" -- that's what you want to happen. It's also not just about the government. If you give everyone a government ID which is easy to use over the internet, private companies will then demand that you use it over the internet and use it as a tracking ID. Which is the evil to be inhibited.
candu 1y ago
As a Canadian-American living in Denmark, I've seen both sides of this. In short: trust and mistrust are _both_ self-reinforcing concepts. To take an example - would I want the current US government to be better at compiling information across all its agencies / departments? Absolutely not. What it does with its current level of consolidation is authoritarian enough that I'm not moving back there any time soon. I hear similar sentiments from my Hungarian colleagues, who are quite familiar with competitive authoritarianism in their own country. Of course, this mistrust becomes self-reinforcing. I don't trust the US government, so I want it to be bad at its job - but then it's bad at its job, so I see it as ineffective and bloated and continue to mistrust it. IMHO the only way out of this spiral is the hard way: a system must do the hard work to show itself trustworthy, and it must do so _before_ people will entrust it with the information that would make the job of being trustworthy easier. As with human relationships, it takes a _lot_ more work to repair trust than it does to break it. Unlike with human relationships, you also have systemic factors: the system needs an unbroken series of good, principled leaders; it needs to visibly and credibly punish corruption, not turn a blind eye; it needs to de-escalate divisions, not inflame them; it needs various institutional safeguards to work properly, not chop away at them; it needs to allow meaningful dissent and criticism, not crack down on it; it needs to learn from expertise, not undermine it. Most importantly: the system needs to learn from its failures, and adjust the rules and incentives of the system itself to prevent those failures from recurring. This is generational work.
goalieca 1y ago
> I don't get the resistance to a digital/national id in other countries. To us it is quite bizarre. Imagine if you were a large country, say 10x to 100x larger. Your government would be equally more resourced and probably have more hands controlling more parts of your business and lives. This is where digital id becomes a scarier prospect. This is where opportunity and ability finally collude.
SXX 1y ago
Russia also have very good digital services. Now in one go government can send you conscription notification and immediately block your from leaving country as well as revoke driver license, block your banks and even phone numbers. Also since all the data available about you in one place any malicious actor who can bribe someone with access can immediately get all your data: passport info and tax id, addresses, work history, all cars and all owned properties, everything. Having centralized system with information about everything can very easily be used for oppression.
- notarget137 1y ago
  Exceptionally good. Sometimes I even think it's worth it. Need a specific statement or a document - here you have it in PDF in 2 minutes in an android app with somewhat decent usability. The only saving grace for us is incompetence. Tyrannies breed incopmetence in goverments since competent people are able to ask troubluing questions. At least I hope so.
  - SXX 1y ago
    The only problem is that any scammer who can pay $100-200 bribe can reset your password without you there and immediately get all these PDFs, then mess up your whole life.
- yaro330 1y ago
  As if this wasn't possible before digital ID was introduced. The only difference was that you got a conscription notice after you tried to leave and realised that you can't.
  - SXX 1y ago
    Blocking all the banks and everything? Nope it wasn't possible. You need to build a lot of tech first to implement digital Gulag.
    - username332211 1y ago
TiredOfLife 1y ago
Majority of users here are american. Americans made trump president. Twice. Americans are not sane.
- Avamander 1y ago
  I suspect that lack of an electronic ID won't hinder insanity, but does hinder a lot of everyday actions and businesses.
raxxorraxor 1y ago
Problem with a digital ID is that I don't want to use it beyond government service. But now there is discussion that people need to identify themselves for any and all online services. If an ID is proliferated the legislative change to force ID checks is minimal. If it weren't just Estonia and government ID would be more widely spread, it would take less than 24h for the EU to enforce borders online.
- xp84 1y ago
  I’d point out that the privilege to break the law simply “because online” is a pretty new thing. People in 1980 couldn’t automatically conduct transactions that were illegal, and access materials, their government deemed illegal, etc. If a book was banned in your country, it was likely just not available for you. I really think people need to stop believing that the Internet solves all the problems of sovereign states doing anti-freedom things. That’s a part of life, and enabling people to evade laws, which may indeed be democratically voted upon, is not an automatic virtue. I don’t even think laws get changed because of this type of evasion, it just makes citizens more complacent about the laws that get passed because they know they can evade them anyway, but also it means most everyone is technically a criminal. Does anybody think people in those states that outlawed Internet porn stopped consuming it? But how many people are doing anything to change those laws? I don’t think very many. They’re just using a VPN. So the problem of oppressive laws isn’t being solved this way.
jve 1y ago
Baltic fellow here. Good thing no one asked us about the digital identity when they implemented it. It makes a difference as much as electronic money does. So instead of having to physically be able to pay someone we can transfer it, pay by debit card and lots of other ways now. With digital identity we get the same - we can do paperwork remotely and securely. Well people in Germany are also slow to get away with physical money and they are miles behind in digital services, so... some still enjoy the snail speed of everything (or not). Meh, instead of days of paperworks, we can sell a car remotely (paperwork-wise). I tick some checkbox in my phone, the buyer ticks and off he goes - he has X number of days to acquire new technical passport for car and that's it. Also can be mailed if he wishes so.
doonnaa 1y ago
[flagged]

dijit 1y ago

Just like Britons can’t imagine Estonia, I know you can’t imagine Britain. In the UK there’s a bunch of government and company databases, and coalescing them isn’t just hard, in some cases it’s not even possible. You can ask a company for specific details on a person, and they can make a “reasonable effort” to get the data. But if they mishandle the request (maybe your name has accents?) then the government gets no information. The easier it gets, the easier it can be for them to excercise power over you, and right now there’s sufficient reason to be worried about that. The current government is liberally using the fascistic powers that the previous government created.

Fade_Dance 1y ago

In the US we use a short number written on a paper card - social security numbers. It's a huge source of compromised security on every level from government services to corporate to personal data security.

mulmen 1y ago
The US does not have a national ID. SSN was overloaded to fill the gap because “everyone has one”.

reorder9695 1y ago

The UK government has justified this with reducing the amount of illegal workers. To work legally currently you need an NI number, this is not an improvement on that system other than requiring everyone to have a phone (probably with safetynet checks to ensure it can't be running a custom rom). I personally do not trust the government one little bit and am sure they'll find some way to abuse this, as they have just about everything else they do at this point. This possibly sounds far fetched, but why couldn't they ask for GPS permissions on the app then use it to quickly find out who was at a pro Palestine protest for example given their recent penchant for arresting protesters? They have given us no reason to believe things will improve with it's introduction, and have given us plenty of reasons to believe it will be abused. It's almost perfect for that, "install our software on the device you have most places you go, or you can't earn a living anymore".

pbhjpbhj 1y ago
>given their recent penchant for arresting protesters? A protest group attacked a military base causing £millions of damage. They got censured, as a terrorist organisation. "Protestors" decided they wanted to support that specific organisation, taking focus away from their message and chasing after something the government simply can't countenance: allowing protestors to ruin our defensive capabilities, at immense expense to the taxpayer, just to make some headlines. If these people cared about Palestinians then they should have given up supporting the proscribed 'terrorists' and protested in a way that didn't require the government to crack down hard. Plenty of other non-proscribed protest groups are perfectly allowed. Private corporation's already know everywhere you go, if you have a mobile phone, or use a debit/credit card, or drive a car. The government already know where you work and when, if you pay your taxes. What Reform/Tories/right-wingers didn't want was any solution that would ease the problems they're using to try and rile the people into full culture wars. Labour are giving them what they [say they] want: making it harder for illegal immigrants, making it harder to claim benefits. But Farage isn't really there to solve a problem, here's there to create one as a means to weadle into power (presumably so he can refuse to do any useful work with that power, as he did in the EU) so he can fuck up the UK trying to be Trump 2 Fascist Boogaloo.
- 1y ago

gslepak 1y ago

> I don't get the resistance to a digital/national id in other countries. To us it is quite bizarre. It depends on the country and its relationship with the people. If the people trust that their government represents the people's interests, there is little push-back. In countries where citizens have reason to believe their government is hijacked by interests that do not have their best interests at heart, then every move is viewed with suspicion. In this case people are tying Digital ID to CBDCs and social credit systems, which is a reasonable thing to do, given this is exactly how China uses them to enforce 15-minute cities with checkpoints between them. All citizens conversations are tracked, their movements are restricted as well [1], and their ability to purchase goods & services are tightly regulated based on their behavior via the social credit system. This is the world that people who are pushing back against this are trying to avoid. [1] https://x.com/songpinganq/status/1972382547427590401 https://x.com/songpinganq/status/1972382547427590401

majormajor 1y ago
Seems like a red-herring. Does a government need a digital ID to do that? Many do that with the "free market" of publicly-tradable information + pre-existing government IDs already used for certain things. I don't know for sure how much the UK government is purchasing all that, but there's a lot of cameras and tech tracking in the country already, like those of us across the pond also are watched with. It won't reverse surveillance states but fraud is also a huge problem that deserves addressing.
- exe34 1y ago
  if they want private information, they should buy it on the open market like every other company!
- iamnothere 1y ago
  Yes, governments do need a centralized common identity if they intend to build something like a social credit system. Those without adequate experience dealing with the US system, for instance, may assume that the government already has your info and thus such a system is redundant. However, this is simply not the case. US government systems are a hodgepodge of different systems built by different vendors, over different computing eras, many of which lack a primary key relationship with something like your social security number (the current “default” identifier). Many are plagued with duplicate records, data problems, and other issues that prevent easy correlation of records without human verification. Talk to some people in the IRS or Social Security and you’ll quickly get a sense of how many problems this can create! Maybe it’s improved since I last talked to people about it, but I doubt it. A central ID enforced on all systems by statute would significantly reduce the barrier to creating “airtight” oppressive systems. While the inefficiencies in the US system have a cost, certainly preventing the implementation of more efficient social benefit programs, they also provide a barrier against more efficient social repression. Given the political animosity present in the country right now, it’s probably good that we don’t have the ability to create a turnkey totalitarian system. Things are bad enough as is! More generally, in nations where the population feels suspicion towards their politicians and bureaucrats, the people may prefer to leave inefficiencies baked into the system in order to hamper potential oppression. Those social tensions and trust deficits should be resolved before proceeding with any ambitious central ID schemes.

KoolKat23 1y ago

The UK doesn't have a codified constitution and changes can generally be made with a simple majority. It's a bit more high stakes.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

mulmen 1y ago

> I don't get the resistance to a digital/national id in other countries. To us it is quite bizarre. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that this is a language barrier issue but this comes across as astonishingly narrow minded.

pepa65 1y ago
It's obviously a cultural difference issue that might create the impression of narrowmindedness.
- mulmen 1y ago
  Yeah I get the cultural difference. Being unaware of other cultures differences is the part that comes across narrow minded. I can imagine why a person wouldn’t be afraid of their government but I’m having a much harder time with their inability to reciprocate.

antihipocrat 1y ago

Governments change. Any group in society has the potential to become marginalized, and if all services are funneled through a single system it becomes very easy to selectively switch off access.

madeofpalk 1y ago

I'm somewhat indifferent to the concept of a Digital ID. The problem is that the UK government's reason for introducing it doesn't make sense - to 'solve' illegal workers, when the UK already has a (digital) system for proving right to work https://www.gov.uk/prove-right-to-work/get-a-share-code-online https://www.gov.uk/prove-right-to-work/get-a-share-code-onli...

reaperducer 1y ago
I'm somewhat indifferent to the concept of a Digital ID. The problem is that the UK government's reason for introducing it doesn't make sense - to 'solve' illegal workers, when the UK already has a (digital) system for proving right to work I saw some British politicians discussing this on Sky last week, and I really don't see the point of the British digital ID. They say having yet another new ID number will make things "easier." But didn't really say how. Brits already have ID numbers for lots of things. It wasn't spelled out how having yet another number will make things better. My tech mind tells me that it's just going to save some DB admins from having to JOIN some columns. But a number is a number. Why yet another number? And the whole thing about having a number will somehow stop people from working illegally seems like a red herring. I believe Brits already have to have a national insurance number in order to work. That hasn't stopped people from working illegally. They talking heads didn't explain what's so magical about this new number that will suddenly do things that the old number or numbers didn't. /Not a Brit. Just bewildered by what appears to be a solution in search of a problem.
- bamboozled 1y ago
  Sky is a really right wing partisan channel though, ofc they are going to say negative things about the incumbent government or basically anything it does. Not to say the idea is good or bad, but how people watch hyper-partisan media and draw any conclusions from it is beyond me.
  - reaperducer 1y ago
    Sky didn't say anything. The two talking heads from two different political parties said things. As an outsider, I have no idea if Sky News is "right wing" or not. I watch Sky and BBC because those are the two British services I can get where I am. (And occasionally ITV, but it seems to be all potatoes, and no meat.) I note that instead of addressing the topic of discussion, you deflect into another topic. Why is that?

idkfasayer 1y ago

You don't get the resistance? Imagine a Russia-friendly party getting elected. Doesn't have to be overtly pro-russian. Can be someone very nationalist like Marine Le Pen in France. Or socialist like Sarah Wagenknecht in Germany. Just someone with financially dependent on Russia, or simply owing them favour. Now imagine them accidentally leaving some loophole in the system, such that Russians get read or maybe even write access to data.

Avamander 1y ago
If they get elected they can fuck everyone over the exact same way. The fact that there's something akin to a unique identifier or that it has a corresponding certificate or some means for authentication will and does not stop any malicious government. Never has, has it?

reaperducer 1y ago

without such digital id it is impossible to have such digital government services And now we know what Estonia's single point of failure is. An adversary only has to hack one system to bring an entire country down. That sounds a bit scary to me.

SXX 1y ago
This. It will certainly be used by Russia in case of invasion.
Avamander 1y ago
Having an ID issued by a central authority does not mean it can only be used by the central authority in a way that it becomes a SPoF. Attacking the DMV doesn't make licenses vanish into thin air either for example.
- reaperducer 1y ago
  Attacking the DMV doesn't make licenses vanish into thin air Nevada's DMV was part of a hack a couple of months ago, and it caused chaos beyond just drivers licenses. https://www.2news.com/news/local/nevada-restores-fingerprint-background-checks-and-most-state-websites-amid-ongoing-recovery-efforts/article_f69c5ee8-70a4-46aa-a5bc-e97503c97850.html https://www.2news.com/news/local/nevada-restores-fingerprint... This is an excellent real-world example of why having all your data eggs in one basket is a terrible idea.
  - Avamander 1y ago
    Nevada's DMV is a great example what happens without eID. Agencies that have a better idea about people's identity have been forced to do things like background checks and fingerprinting. Your data eggs in one basket, or a few. If you attack the DMV in a country that has working eID it will only affect the DMV. Maybe you can't sign up for a driving exam or order new plates. That's it. It won't affect the police in cases that don't concern the DMV (like insurance) and vice versa. Sure if you attack everything at once everything will be affected, that's always an option, eID or not. Fundamentally a digital ID does not mean a single "basket", just that wherever those "eggs" are that you know it's one single "chicken". That "chicken" can also have multiple ways of identifying themselves (including offline methods). That's how it is in countries that have a working eID implemented.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

> I don't see how such a system gives the government more powers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State When the state is more likely to cause you problems than help you out, you want them to be bad at it. The corrupt cop going on a fishing expedition to try to bust you for something because you're dating his ex, who can't find anything because it's "spread out, fragmented, stored with multiple conflicting versions" -- that's what you want to happen. It's also not just about the government. If you give everyone a government ID which is easy to use over the internet, private companies will then demand that you use it over the internet and use it as a tracking ID. Which is the evil to be inhibited.

candu 1y ago

As a Canadian-American living in Denmark, I've seen both sides of this. In short: trust and mistrust are _both_ self-reinforcing concepts. To take an example - would I want the current US government to be better at compiling information across all its agencies / departments? Absolutely not. What it does with its current level of consolidation is authoritarian enough that I'm not moving back there any time soon. I hear similar sentiments from my Hungarian colleagues, who are quite familiar with competitive authoritarianism in their own country. Of course, this mistrust becomes self-reinforcing. I don't trust the US government, so I want it to be bad at its job - but then it's bad at its job, so I see it as ineffective and bloated and continue to mistrust it. IMHO the only way out of this spiral is the hard way: a system must do the hard work to show itself trustworthy, and it must do so _before_ people will entrust it with the information that would make the job of being trustworthy easier. As with human relationships, it takes a _lot_ more work to repair trust than it does to break it. Unlike with human relationships, you also have systemic factors: the system needs an unbroken series of good, principled leaders; it needs to visibly and credibly punish corruption, not turn a blind eye; it needs to de-escalate divisions, not inflame them; it needs various institutional safeguards to work properly, not chop away at them; it needs to allow meaningful dissent and criticism, not crack down on it; it needs to learn from expertise, not undermine it. Most importantly: the system needs to learn from its failures, and adjust the rules and incentives of the system itself to prevent those failures from recurring. This is generational work.

goalieca 1y ago

> I don't get the resistance to a digital/national id in other countries. To us it is quite bizarre. Imagine if you were a large country, say 10x to 100x larger. Your government would be equally more resourced and probably have more hands controlling more parts of your business and lives. This is where digital id becomes a scarier prospect. This is where opportunity and ability finally collude.

SXX 1y ago

Russia also have very good digital services. Now in one go government can send you conscription notification and immediately block your from leaving country as well as revoke driver license, block your banks and even phone numbers. Also since all the data available about you in one place any malicious actor who can bribe someone with access can immediately get all your data: passport info and tax id, addresses, work history, all cars and all owned properties, everything. Having centralized system with information about everything can very easily be used for oppression.

notarget137 1y ago
Exceptionally good. Sometimes I even think it's worth it. Need a specific statement or a document - here you have it in PDF in 2 minutes in an android app with somewhat decent usability. The only saving grace for us is incompetence. Tyrannies breed incopmetence in goverments since competent people are able to ask troubluing questions. At least I hope so.
- SXX 1y ago
  The only problem is that any scammer who can pay $100-200 bribe can reset your password without you there and immediately get all these PDFs, then mess up your whole life.
yaro330 1y ago
As if this wasn't possible before digital ID was introduced. The only difference was that you got a conscription notice after you tried to leave and realised that you can't.
- SXX 1y ago
  Blocking all the banks and everything? Nope it wasn't possible. You need to build a lot of tech first to implement digital Gulag.
  - username332211 1y ago

TiredOfLife 1y ago

Majority of users here are american. Americans made trump president. Twice. Americans are not sane.

Avamander 1y ago
I suspect that lack of an electronic ID won't hinder insanity, but does hinder a lot of everyday actions and businesses.

raxxorraxor 1y ago

Problem with a digital ID is that I don't want to use it beyond government service. But now there is discussion that people need to identify themselves for any and all online services. If an ID is proliferated the legislative change to force ID checks is minimal. If it weren't just Estonia and government ID would be more widely spread, it would take less than 24h for the EU to enforce borders online.

xp84 1y ago
I’d point out that the privilege to break the law simply “because online” is a pretty new thing. People in 1980 couldn’t automatically conduct transactions that were illegal, and access materials, their government deemed illegal, etc. If a book was banned in your country, it was likely just not available for you. I really think people need to stop believing that the Internet solves all the problems of sovereign states doing anti-freedom things. That’s a part of life, and enabling people to evade laws, which may indeed be democratically voted upon, is not an automatic virtue. I don’t even think laws get changed because of this type of evasion, it just makes citizens more complacent about the laws that get passed because they know they can evade them anyway, but also it means most everyone is technically a criminal. Does anybody think people in those states that outlawed Internet porn stopped consuming it? But how many people are doing anything to change those laws? I don’t think very many. They’re just using a VPN. So the problem of oppressive laws isn’t being solved this way.

jve 1y ago

Baltic fellow here. Good thing no one asked us about the digital identity when they implemented it. It makes a difference as much as electronic money does. So instead of having to physically be able to pay someone we can transfer it, pay by debit card and lots of other ways now. With digital identity we get the same - we can do paperwork remotely and securely. Well people in Germany are also slow to get away with physical money and they are miles behind in digital services, so... some still enjoy the snail speed of everything (or not). Meh, instead of days of paperworks, we can sell a car remotely (paperwork-wise). I tick some checkbox in my phone, the buyer ticks and off he goes - he has X number of days to acquire new technical passport for car and that's it. Also can be mailed if he wishes so.

doonnaa 1y ago

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