Comment by nephihaha
Comment by nephihaha 2 days ago
Mate, this isn't even remotely "nationalist". This stuff is being pushed across the world. Digital ID? The only people really desperate for it are our rulers.
Comment by nephihaha 2 days ago
Mate, this isn't even remotely "nationalist". This stuff is being pushed across the world. Digital ID? The only people really desperate for it are our rulers.
It's not really that a digital ID can be used to spy on people (governments can already do this to a pretty large degree without needing spyware). It's that it's a permission system that can be instantly updated and centrally managed by people that have legal authority to spy on you.
If your digital ID is controlled centrally by the government (the guys that are watching most things you do already), and you need your digital ID to do most commercial interactions (banking, buying things, travel, etc), it means the government can revoke your ability to do any of those commercial interactions (or even other things that aren't strictly commercial, think "travel papers" for driving out of state).
And it doesn't even have to be in response to criminal actions. You too too many trips this year? Well, you've used up your CO2 budget as a citizen, have fun not buying CO2-intensive food (meat). Said something racist online? Well we certainly can't let a person like you buy a car now, can we?
And yes, things like credit cards and credit scores are centrally managed to a degree, and Visa/Mastercard can deny transactions for somewhat-arbitrary reasons (they're actually fairly legally limited in how they can do this, it's not totally arbitrary). But these things are not tied into every aspect of your life (your bank doesn't necessarily know how many miles you've driven this year), whereas states can (or can invent the legal authority to) tie a digital ID into everything.
> If your digital ID is controlled centrally by the government (the guys that are watching most things you do already), and you need your digital ID to do most commercial interactions (banking, buying things, travel, etc), it means the government can revoke your ability to do any of those commercial interactions (or even other things that aren't strictly commercial, think "travel papers" for driving out of state).
The government can already do this today in the US, they can put your ID on a fly denylist, your passport on a "always go to secondary screening list" (ask anyone who's ever been to Iran on vacation and then decided to travel to the US) and your license plate on a wanted list.
I completely agree with your main point, but the state supervised CO2 budget strikes me as a bad example; I see no real way to prevent companies and citizens from "externalizing costs" in the form of environmental damage except by regulation that restricts (historically, we did not get rid of leaded gas by gentle admonishment either).
But my digital ID is in addition of my physical one, it's not a replacement.
It provides convenience, and the only thing I'd lose of it was hypothetically revoked(the government has no such powers, and are unlikely to gain them, more on that later) is that convenience.
The reason the government is unlikely to gain those powers is that it would require a change in the grundlag, and such changed has to be approved twice, and there has to be an election between the two approvals.
> It's that it's a permission system that can be instantly updated and centrally managed by people that have legal authority to spy on you.
How is it a permission system? It's a way to prove your identity safely, online. No proposal/implementation that I'm aware of (maybe outside of China, but I'm not familiar enough) that actually conditionally does so based on preconditions and blocks you from actions. It would probably be actively illegal to do so in multiple countries.
> But these things are not tied into every aspect of your life (your bank doesn't necessarily know how many miles you've driven this year)
I mean, that's not true. LexisNexis is the company many car vendors send your driving data to, to be bought by insurance companies to do adaptive pricing. Banks don't necessarily need that data, but if they did, they could buy it too.
Which is why it's better if it's the government - there can be laws, regulations, pressure, judicial reviews to ensure that only legitimate uses are fine, and no such discrimination is legal. Take a look at credit scores in the US - they're run by private for profit companies, sold to whoever wants them, so credit scores have become a genuine barrier to employment, housing, etc. If this were managed by a state entity (like in France, Banque de France stores all loan data, and when someone wants to give you a loan, they check with them what your current debts are, and if you have defaulted on any recently; that's the only data they can get and use), there could be strong controls on who accesses the data and uses it for what.
> How is it a permission system? It's a way to prove your identity safely, online.
Can someone revoke your ability to prove your identity? To pick an example, say, the far right wins an election and decides that trans people need to go back to their birth genders, and revokes the validity for the identifiers of anyone that has transitioned.
I was with you until your 3rd paragraph. Why are you carrying water for climate change accelerationists and racists?
The examples don't even make sense historically. Haven't you noticed that most governments are failing to decarbonize, and government force against citizens is usually against the left?
Because in a free country you have the right to be a climate skeptic and a racist?
Being a racist is mostly useless and self-serving, but if you make any particular scientific position illegal, it's identical to having state defined science. That's how we got people passing bills to define pi and Lysenkoism. It's how we institutionalized chattel slavery and sometimes teaching black people to read punishable by death.
The goal of government isn't to promote your "correct" opinions. The goal of government should be summarize the beliefs of a fully-informed public in order to act on their behalf.
> Like sure you could in theory see every document I've ever signed if you have a warrant for BankID servers, but you could probably glean most of that if you had a warrant for the banks servers anyway, so it's not really a new capability.
It's a single point of failure. Digital ID servers on creation because as valuable to compromise as value_of_bank_hack*bank_count plus whatever other services are rolled in.
Furthermore now only one warrant is needed, or one illegal executive order. Take the USA as a live example - legal protections aren't actually real, a government official with enough political power can just do whatever they want while the courts struggle to keep up, and then just ignore court orders.
If your identity is spread out in many different ways, at least then there's more friction to compromise. Just because one bank capitulates doesn't mean the actor immediately has health information on you, for example. Just because the unemployment office capitulates doesn't mean the actor has your financial records.
I think a lot of people in the US are clinging to the hope that this type of friction, along with judicial decisions, will cause the process of removing our legal protections to stall out. I'm not optimistic that this is the case, because the party currently driving the federal incursion on private and state-held data is the one that until recently was opposed to things like national ID. Anything can be done in the name of protecting people from N, if you can get a majority to be afraid of N.
I don’t really get why people seem convinced that the government is removing protections for all citizens under a smokescreen of illegal immigration handling, as opposed to taking limited and temporary measures to deal with an unusual situation.
My current interpretation is that they are fear mongering about violence because they are actually way more racist than they admit publicly, and might want to remove more people than they were letting on initially.
So okay you can definitely disagree with that, and how you feel about it can definitely be influenced by how much you feel threatened (personally or network) and that’s valid.
But why do we think that they are using this as a ruse to like become despotically authoritarian in general? Do we think that the borders were opened intentionally to fabricate this “crisis”? If not, it would be such a huge coincidence, because there are a zillion reasons to be concerned about the demographic situation without needing to use it as a smokescreen, what are the odds that this problem organically appeared and then they happen to be able to take advantage of it?
Note that I’m not asserting that the borders weren’t opened intentionally to fabricate this problem to which they can react with a “solution”, that sounds exactly like something a government would do. I just don’t hear anyone saying that out loud, at least, and having personal network or moral values or whatever threatened and reacting to that just seems a lot more likely to me as a reason why people feel like the world is ending.
There are schemes, where e.g. KYC would require centralized storage of identifying information, which is equivalent or stronger than Digital ID. I'm not sure why Digital ID servers would store your health records.
The best implementation I know of digital ID is the one in Estonia. It comes with a data tracker, such that each citizen can see who exactly has been looking at their data [1].
[1]: https://e-estonia.com/digital-id-protecting-against-surveill...
Have been using this service in Belgium and it really helps you gain trust. Ofcourse no one knows if there is still a back door
US credit reports also show you who is looking at them. Does visibility really matter when mandatory participation is normalized as a part of functioning in society?
Your digital id is great until your leadership decides you need to be conscripted and sent to their meat grinder and the penalty for failing to appear for your death sentence is being cut off from food and water because everything is linked.
The idea of all these digital documents is never a problem until you go through the exercise of figuring out what it will all be used for (controlling you).
Digital ID makes no difference to this whatsoever. If a government wanted to cut you off from utilities they could make it happen within hours already.
Same with conscription, which needless to say was invented and effectively implemented prior to the invention of digital anything.
You should maybe read some articles about modern situations where people dodged conscription before assuming what is practical today. The average person who hasn't thought about it for a week is certainly in trouble but..
1. This is a wild exaggeration: There are lots of men walking in Ukrainian streets.
2. Why single out Ukraine here? Isn't this what any country does with people who don't appear for the draft? (Unless they can pay a doctor to diagnose them with bone spurs or something?)
Have you even been to Ukraine lately? you can walk on the streets of Kyiv and there is so many men walking on the streets without getting picked up. I've been walking the street as a man and and from the looks of it you can't tell if I'm a foreigner or a Ukrainian and I never been stopped and they never tried to conscript me. Do some people get conscripted in Ukraine and Russia? Sure.
But it's just an exaggeration claiming that anybody walking the streets are just grabbed and thrown into a van and shipped to a conscription office. That is not what is happening.
Useless doomerism. There are many cracks to hide in, most investigations are closed without a conviction, etc. You don’t need to have spy-level tradecraft to be a dissident.
I wish this kind of nonsense “you are helpless” posting were forbidden by HN rules. It serves no useful purpose.
Perfect HN comment: complains about useless doomerism in first sentence, then next sentence wishes for censorship of opposing options.
You missed the people that took what they could in cash and ran for the border
I didn't miss anything. Lone deserters spread out, are more tricky and resource intensive to catch in the wilderness of mountainous border areas with rough terrain, than in flat densely populated areas like city or village streets that can be easily patrolled by vans.
the singaporean "singpass" has been an amazing convenience. at this point its like why is any company still asking you to fill in personal particulars on forms? they should ask for access to singpass and you just authorize them.
you apply to or for anything.. and they just give you the option of authorizing via singpass.. and you use your passkey-like singpass app to authorize it... and its done!
you go to hospital and they need your medical records? singpass
you go to university and they need your academic history? singpass
you apply for bank loan? insurance? license? food handling permit? singpass
Doesn't this mean that it's not only your hospital that sees your medical records, but... everyone who would otherwise only need your name and telephone number?
Or is there some way to restrict which party gets which data?
I don't think any of the national id services I've heard of stores all your data in a centralized place. Usually the national id service only provides identification to the service providers that request it. Each service provider (like, your bank, hospital, pension provider) will store their own data as they've always done, they just use the service to identify you.
There’s data scoping per request:
https://docs.developer.singpass.gov.sg/docs/getting-started/...
https://docs.developer.singpass.gov.sg/docs/data-catalog-myi...
As part of the flow you’ll be shown the list of data that’s being requested.
In Finland there is centralized database of all medical records. Which makes information transfer simpler. There is ofc risk of untheorized access. But for that reason legal system exists. You get audit trail and then can prosecute or fire those who accessed information unnecessarily.
It is trade-off, but probably lot more accountable than paper records in big hospitals.
In the absence of a government solution like Singpass, the US and others will end up with an Apple/Alphabet solution.
Sweden's population is only around 11 million people, and you're geographically concentrated in the southern mainland provinces or near Stockholm. Both of those make thing a lot more practical to manage and make it a lot harder to abuse because you don't have the scale to make profit as attractive, or the distance to make oversight more difficult. You're also relatively culturally similar.
It doesn't seem like those should matter so much, but it really does make everything about democracy easier.
Things get much weirder when the population isn't so low or isn't relatively concentrated.
I mean, I can do all my voting, tax filings, etc. etc. All the way from Mexico, with no issues. You're right that most of that must of the Swedish population resides in the south, but, as someone who grew up in Northern Sweden, it's not like we're marginalised or anything, not really.
But Sweden has not so far required that you install state owned spy ware on your devices.
BankID is very convenient, I use it all the time here in Norway but, at least theoretically, it is a private initiative of the banks and not the state. It is not compulsory to have BankID.
Yes, it is the single most popular vector for scammers to fleece old people. Great! Add to that, that your identity is controlled by banks, not the government, and that banks can terminate you without any due process, and complaining can take weeks if not months, and there is no guaranteed positive outcome.
No thank you, I'll take no ID over ID any day, and at worst, a physical plastic card over a bullsh*t digital solution that is used to lock you out off society.
Sweden is really the worst possible approach, is authoritarian, and hands over the power to the banks controlling the digital ID system.
Since you're talking about scams, let's look at some statistics: https://www.statista.com/chart/33872/estimated-average-losse...
I believe you'll find that no ID, which is the American approach, is, in actual fact, worse than digital ID.
Also, authoritarian? You're not forced to use BankID, what are you even on about?
Banks and fintechs turned really brazen with triggering invasive AML/KYC requests without any legal basis, even more invasive than tax offices. Nonchalantly freezing and locking funds and accounts. They oftentimes require the latest version of smartphone app working only on recent smartphones. I don't want my digital identity to depend on them.
For now you may need a warrant. However, after just a simple law change, it will all be available without a warrant. I'm not saying there will be a law change, only saying that it brings us one step closer to data.
There are downsides with it since you are at the mercy of the corporation that owns the Swedish Digital ID. ny services trying to use this Swedish digital ID who these banks don't like can be cut off at any point and you are not allowed to provide alternative logins so it's only allowed to use digital ID if you use it.
If course I'm allowed to use alternative logins. And besides, there are at least 2 generally accepted digital ID solutions in Sweden. BankID is older and more popular, but there's also Freja (I had to open the tax authorities login page to remember the name of this one) that's accepted in most places.
There have been 0 incidents of any of the hysterical hypotheticals y'all are on about actually happening, maybe it's time for a reality check?
> you are not allowed to provide alternative logins
I can't speak for Sweden but that is not true in Norway where we also use BankID (I'm not sur but I think it originated in Norway).
It's true for Sweden and Norway. BankID is owned by the banks in both countries. Both charge money from sites and orgs that use it.
The problem isn't where digital ID starts, it's where it ends. It will start by being benign enough, and end with the ability to cut off dissidents in an instant. I'm aware that some Swedes are already getting microchipped. If you want to be branded and tracked by the state, that is your choice... Don't force it on the rest of us.
This from Newsweek in 2022 about Sweden.
https://www.newsweek.com/people-get-microchips-implanted-tha...
"In 2017, a railway company in Sweden began allowing travelers to load their ticket information onto the microchips implanted in their bodies, according to BBC News. Railway conductors were then able to use smartphones to detect the chip and confirm the travelers' tickets."
In CZ, we have a so-far-somewhat-nonintrusive digital identity that is mostly used to access government services.
Yet we already had an interesting situation which shows just how complicated trust is. Sberbank, the Russian bank, was slated to issue digital identity certifications in March 2022. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and Sberbank got booted out of the country before actually gaining that capability.
What if it was March 2021 instead? How would we treat signatures on documents verified by Sberbank a day before the invasion etc.? What if the content of that document was really suspicious? Etc.
What is so fundamentally different about DID proposed in the UK or the US then? I read through some of the documents about it and the data scoping that will be available, which isn't with something like BankID seem to be the only difference. What am I missing here?
Yeah that’s a nightmare for privacy if someone decides to use it against you.
HOW would this hypothetical person use it against you?
It's a driver's licence infringing on my privacy too? Cause they're mostly the same, at least the way they're implemented in Sweden
In addition to the requesting party information about your activity can be sent to other parties for your safety.
"Hey now guys we just voted this law, now you need to use your BankID to login to your phone the first time. Because, think of the children! And well, if you have pictures we deem forbidden, you'll be reported."
Once the infrastructure for mass surveillance is available, States are tempted to use it.
Also even if it may be ok in Sweden for cultural reasons, the rest of the world unfortunately isn't (but can enjoy private washing machines in exchange).
How many ways can you slice a cake?
The point is that the more identifiable information that the monopoly on violence has the easier it is for something, anything really, to be used against you should your tribal affiliation conflict with the ruling party.
This is like politics 101
That’s sort of how all this type of policy is pushed through
Convenience - what you’re describing is convenience
It’s totally fine if you prioritize that over everything else, but my only thought here is that everyone should be crystal clear in what they are trading off for convenience
It’s convenient for the government too, tk have a single identifier to thread a persons entire life
We are, sadly, well beyond any expectation of privacy, but we should at least be aware of it and try to not make it worse
Again,I struggle to think of how it'd be used gather any data not already available.
Yes it's selling point is convenience. Convenience is good.
In this particular case I disagree that there's a price in privacy. At least currently, and the way the Swedish electronic ID is implemented, I don't see it.
With other variations there might be problems of course, though I'd worry more about someone messing up the security of it rather than privacy
I used to think like that. Now in my country we have a president who would use that to deport or target political opponents, track people who criticize Israel, etc.
You can never put the genie back in the bottle and you never know who will be in charge in 20 years
Probably the same amount ISI spends on anti-Modi propaganda peddlers.
"Legal" protections can disappear in one evening, and then you are left with a centralized system, very practical for population control.
In the US (approximately) everyone has a social security number and a driver's license. In practice, those are equivalent to universal ID, just more annoying to use in everyday life.
Services do not regularly query your SSN or DL to determine if it is actively “in service” or is blocked. In fact most types of businesses don’t touch SSNs at all (the potential liability for mishandling it is radioactive). And the few that request licenses typically are only using it as part of a one-time KYC flow, there is no ongoing link to a central provider.
Digital ID is also an identification system, social security number isn't. For instance you can't ID people on porn sites using it.
The lack of digital ID is a huge problem in many domains and enables a lot of scams and crime in the first place.
Requiring identification in situations that don't need it is where the problems start, but that's possible with analog IDs as well, and is often even worse there (since these provide neither security against digital copies, nor privacy, which digital ID can, e.g. via zero knowledge proofs).
Personally, I liked the low-tech solution of code cards + password (2FA), used by e.g. Denmark as digital ID, now discontinued. I am aware that it is imperfect, and if you are not careful with MITM attacks you can get in trouble, but it was a good compromise to avoid the temptation to track citizens. Something like a hardware TAN generator, but with protection against MITM, would be an ideal compromise. The current trend of moving towards mobile apps that require hardware attestation is worrying.
Definitely, requiring the entire smartphone to be "trusted" is way too much.
Small external signers with a display and confirmation button are a nice compromise (and also largely solve MITM!), since I don't mind an external device being under somebody else's administrative control as long as I can run what I want on my smartphone or computer.
But people don't want to carry two things... Hopefully we can at least have both as alternatives going forward.
>But people don't want to carry two things...
It can be moved into a security processor within the smartphone's SOC.
> Requiring identification in situations that don't need it is where the problems start
Which is exactly the argument against digital ID, because it reduces the friction to asking for ID in situations that don't need it, causing it to become epidemic.
Meanwhile nearly all the instances where ID actually should be required are also instances where showing up in person should be required, like taking out your first line of credit with a financial institution, or signing on to a new job. Because the entire point is to verify that that person is the person on the ID and not someone in Russia who managed to hack their phone.
The problem with digital ID is that it can be switched off in an instant. I was talking to some people in a strike picket line about this. They seemed unaware of it. Suddenly you would be unable to travel, pay your bills and access internet etc for doing the wrong thing.
A digital ID is not doing all of that. The way it's implemented in Sweden, just to take an example already mentioned, is simply to identify you, and only for certain parts of society (mostly governmental services, banks, insurance and the like, and a few more). It's not about authorizing you for travel. If you need an ID for picking up your valuable shipment from the post office then you simply show your driver's license or passport, you don't use a digital ID for that. At all. If someone took away your digital ID then that would mean zero for your internet access, and zero for your ability to travel. It's not used for that at all. What would be a problem is paying the bills, because the ID identifies you for using network banking. However, alternative ways for identifying you for the latter are far worse concerns.
But GP raise a valid point: If IDs are ubiquitous and commonly used for non-government business, the government does implicitly gain substantial "veto power" over non-government transactions (by revoking existing credentials or not issuing new ones).
Availability has to be ensured just as much as security and privacy in such a scenario, and that's not trivial. (I still personally think it's worth trying.)
It's like people want to hand over scans of their passport and/or driving license to random businesses again and again, every time the need to prove who they are; and have their ID documents littered in Outlook mailboxes or company file shares with zero permissions.
Or be forced to install yet another ID app from a private service that requires you have an iPhone or "compatible" Android.
The debate about this in the UK is just crazy. Notwithstanding the current "febrile" state of politics. It has always received weirdly vitriolic push back.
What really is the Government going to do with a digital ID service that they can't do already?
I just want to be able to give estate agents, solicitors, a bank, etc my ID number and a time-limited code that proves I am in control of that ID (or however that might work), and be done with it.
> What really is the Government going to do with a digital ID service that they can't do already?
In 20 years, the UK suffers a terrorist attack just before an election, and then elects a ultra right wing government on a platform of "remigrating foreigners." You're a British born citizen but your mom fled from Iran in the 80s and immigrated to the UK.
If you don't have digital ID, and the government decides to "remigrate all Iranians," they have to collect information from several different government groups, e.g. maybe your mom got a passport in which case one government agency may just know she's a non-native British citizen but nothing more. Maybe your immigration agency stands up to the government and engages in legal battles to prevent turning over immigration information.
However if there's a digital ID system that lets the government instantly know everything about a person, you lose the protection of friction.
I believe this is one of the fundamental premises of representative liberal democracy, and one of its most redeeming features: balance of power is spread not just between branches of government, but through ministries/departments/agencies, which makes it much harder for a despot to do despotism.
I broadly agree on the theory of administrative friction increasing the resiliency of societies against non-democratic government action, but I wonder if that ship hasn't sailed with the digitziation of most governments: All that data is already present in some database, public or private (with the government able to coerce access in many cases).
So I get the historical aversion to IDs as the stepping stone of governments to gaining access to potentially democracy-subverting informational hazmat, but these days, I feel like the downsides of not having a ubiquitous and privacy-preserving ID scheme vastly outweigh the little bit of extra friction of it will ever add.
> However if there's a digital ID system that lets the government instantly know everything about a person, you lose the protection of friction.
"Digital ID" doesn't necessitate that all data is collected into one gigantic store with centralised access. Just that you can use the same attestation of identity to access the various systems. And you can also grant others access to a limited subset of the data.
If the government wanted to they could already have set up some direct access from (say) the passport office to HMRC. It's all digital anyway, backwards as the UK government can be, they're not sending people to pore over paper ledgers in person like in The Jackal.
Some of the system already works like this anyway with the share codes for permission to work for foreigners and proving your driving licence.
Theoretically you would also be able to have an audit log of who asked for attestation for access to which system using that ID. Which you currently don't have when everyone is doing it by passport scans, NI numbers given over the phone and so on.
What it does allow is a creeping over-attestation especially of non-government services where you need to use the ID to do things that were previously anonymous or at least potentially anonymous. But since you currently need to use a driving license or selfie to look at boobies, that's already a thing.
It also, depending on cryptographic implementation, can leak information about attestations directly to the government. For example if I certify my identity at BumTickling.com, the website might only find out that I'm over 18, but the government may then know that BT.com's operator requested attestation of my ID's age field. Whereas currently, BT.com's (probably) shady identity service partner may have my selfie and know I tried to look at BT.com, but the government (probably, maybe they forward these things secretly) doesn't know about it unless they audit that partner.
It also has the possibility to gate access to government services behind app installations which, when done lazily, means not only smartphones are required which is bad enough, but specifically Google and Apple devices.
I don’t think there is much “protection of friction”. A despot may not bother checking citizenship. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_and_deportation_of_A... says:
“ICE was confirmed by independent review and U.S. judges to have violated laws including the Immigration Act of 1990 by interrogating and detaining people without warrants or review of their citizenship status”
Being able to break the law is never a good thing. Immigration agencies can still fight whatever after people have been kicked out as has been decided. Government inefficiency should never be celebrated.
Can anyone explain the history of "self ID" rules and laws in the UK? It seems like you do not have to prove your ID to the police. It is the reverse. As an outsider, I don't understand it.
Basically there is no universal ID system. You are not required to have a passport or driving licence, which are the usual IDs. There is an optional kind of ID you can use to prove your age if you don't or can't have those. Even if you do have one of these, you don't have to show it to the police if they stop you. The police can ask your name, but unless the police has "reasonable grounds" to search you, you can just walk away.
This is at odds to much of the EU where carrying ID is normal and you can be fined for not having it on you in public.
Proving your identity to a company usually involves a copy of passport and a recent utility bill. Sometimes you need to get a "professional" (doctor, lawyer) to write "I certify this is a valid copy" on it. Financial systems often use your NI number (think SSN) as the ID factor for things like KYC, the NHS uses a separate number. There are several fairly mysterious companies that provide this service to companies who need to know like solicitors (you upload the photos, they authenticte it "somehow", hopefully they look after it, presumably they can be audited I turn out to be a money launderer using a fake document). Getting a passport is a bit of a performance as you have to bootstrap the trust chain by getting someone you know to submit their documents and vouch for your photos.
It also means that, to use a hot-button subject recently, the police have limited practical ways to prove a right to work, unless they have strong intelligence that a particular place is using illegal labour and do a raid. The current tactic seems to be arresting people for illegal e-bikes, where they have reasonable grounds for an arrest and can then get the name and do the immigration checks at that point.
This is a great post. I learned a lot. Thank you.
I remember once seeing the UK passport application. It struck me as having utterly byzantine requirements. When I read your post and think about it again, the lack of a universal ID could make it very tricky to get a passport, which is ultimately a national/universal ID.
The fundamental proposition on which all of English culture flows from is that of innocence. For example, in court, you do not have to prove your innocence because you are presumed innocent.
In the case of ID cards and the like, the state does not rule over the populace, it rules on behalf of the populace. I am innocent and they work for me. Hence, I do not have to prove to some random government agent who I am unless it is relevant to the task they perform, e.g.
- the police have a reasonable and justifiable suspicion that I am engaged in criminal activity - an immigration officer may only ask for my details when I am crossing a border or, again, have some reasonable and justifiable suspicion that I am in need of deportation etc. - Or perhaps I just need some documents from my local municipal office, and they rightly ask who I am and to prove it before giving out my private info.
Me going about my business is no business of the government's until I start abusing the rules.
The opposite view is that:
- I am ruled over - Any agent of the government can question me and prevent me from going about my business
Of course, in practice, the application of such liberal principles like not requiring ID to go about my day are often not done well, but to change the principle is to change the entire character of the most fundamental aspects of Englishness. You'll note, much of the continent lurches between different forms of collectivist oppressive government whereas, until of late, the UK has not. This is because of the lack of this fundamental principle there, I am sure of that, and those calling for these kind of ID laws, digital or otherwise, are not to be entertained.
The most interesting case will be the USA, where they still care about the principles of English liberty, far more than the English do.
> It has always received weirdly vitriolic push back.
Because, as the Home Secretary herself observed, it would fundamentally change the relationship between the individual and the state.
> What really is the Government going to do with a digital ID service that they can't do already?
This gives the impression of having done no research into a topic of which you now opine opposition to be "weirdly vitriolic". We live in an age of search engines and GPTs, free encyclopaedias and entire lecture series online, and even libraries are still open and free, but you've done nothing to get past the very first thoughts you've had on the subject.
Was that weirdly vitriolic, or someone pointing out that an argument to undermine everyone's rights should have some effort behind it?
I dunno man, your reply doesn't sound _kind_. Maybe you could try to explain the point you're defending rather than ad hominem and overextrapolate a perceived insult. I genuinely want to learn and it's frustrating that your comment does not do that.
Pretty much all passports in the world have been digital for years, and it seems ... fine?
There's a signed blob on the RFID chip in your passport that could be easily copied to any phone, hardly any on-device implementation work to be done.
It's funny how it's all rolling out right around the same time. Almost like they get together and plot this stuff at big meetings multiple times a year, where they get lavish meals and entertainment, get wined and dined by the rich and elite, and... well. Must be good to be kings.
It's really 4 horsemen of the infocalypse garbage being trotted out, and the general population is clueless and credulous. "They're in charge, surely they must know what they're doing! They wouldn't lie to us! They most assuredly have our collective best interests in mind, and they'll do the right thing!"
>"They're in charge, surely they must know what they're doing! They wouldn't lie to us!
Literally nobody thinks that.
Unfortunately most people don't have the time or energy to fight every emerging attack on freedom.
Everything is going to plan for the billionaire class.
Eventually everything will burn, only time will tell if it will be from global warming or food riots.
Most average people assume competence and good faith from people in charge. Most people don't question, aren't skeptical, and go through life in a fog. That's not most people here, but it's like Gell-Mann amnesia applied to politics. 99% of the time, when politicians put forth a plan to do things in a domain you're competent in, they look like morons. It's exceedingly rare for them to do things well.
People trust elected officials, they trust institutions, they trust "experts", the media, the academics. A vast majority of people don't realize the scale of ineptitude amongst the people who wield power. Most of the "elites" are not overqualified geniuses, but instead average bumbling idiots who stumbled their way into office, or sociopaths, or physically attractive. Most political systems do not reward competence and diligence.
You could swap out all 535 congress people in the US for randomly selected citizens and I guarantee you that outcomes would improve. Things are going so badly because they're intended to go badly, because unethical people wield power for self enrichment and cronyism. The purpose of a system is what it does.
Having lived in lower trust vs higher trust societies, you can see it in how people assume their leaders think. High trust places like Sweden, people have pretty high faith in their leaders to do the right thing. Personally, I much prefer quality of life in a higher trust society. It is exhausting needing to second guess everyone everywhere all the time!
Poll after poll in the US show a distrust in politicians and the governor. Our current president has a 37% approval rating.
Between the electoral college, gerrymandering and 2 Senators per state regardless of population, the minority control who gets elected.
Not to mention that anyone who trusts the police is naive.
>> "They're in charge, surely they must know what they're doing! They wouldn't lie to us!
> Literally nobody thinks that.
I'd have to disagree; I'd say this is the modal perspective.
Every time someone fearmongers "Digital ID" I always tap this sign
The issue is not about "Digital ID" it's about having a good ecosystem that is both open and secure. I don't want all my tax money being spent on a private company implementing a horrible software solution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
I trust my government more than mega software firms who have no accountability or recourse
You're getting down voted, but I think your point was to clarify that it's not simply nationalist, but particularly Hindu nationalist.
You are correct, of course: it is.
Of course; it is not.
As i pointed out in my other comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46120239 you are just a "troll" trying to misdirect in a totally irrelevant direction.
I always LOL when the midwit lefty Americans on this board trot out the whole "America's left wing is akshually center right by global standards" routine.
Meanwhile, here on planet earth, India (by far the worlds largest democracy) is run by out and out ethno-nationalists.
"Brahminical Hindus" is new concept I heard for the first time. From an academic perspective, I would more than likely challenge the word "hindu" being used as a religion name. Most religions are more defined/codified. At the end of the day its all a tool to manage power/people, boundaries or groups can be created with almost any data point. Your comment/observation just happens to define/declare one new type of boundary
"Brahminical Hindus" is typical of a phrase concocted by poorly informed western professors like Dr. Audrey Truschke, PhD, to sell books.
And what about their traditions makes their religion not Hindu but makes the “Brahmanical Hindu” traditions Hindu?
The claim that there aren’t other religions is not true because a lot of lower caste folks have explicitly converted to Christianity and or Dalit Buddhism as promoted by Ambedkar who was the driving force behind rights for lower castes in India.
> that is because the RSS was formed to counter attacks on Hindus by Muslims in the 1920s.
> Founded on 27 September 1925,[18] the initial impetus of the organisation was to provide character training and instil "Hindu discipline" in order to unite the Hindu community and establish a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu nation).
> ....After reading Vinayak Damodar Savarkar's ideological pamphlet, Essentials of Hindutva, published in Nagpur in 1923, and meeting Savarkar in the Ratnagiri prison in 1925, Hedgewar was extremely influenced by him, and he founded the RSS with the objective of "strengthening" Hindu society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashtriya_Swayamsevak_Sangh
Please stop spreading baseless opinions as fact when you yourself know no better. And for matters involving communal issues, I would much rather trust a crowd-sourced knowledge base rather than the opinions of a half-assed biography.
I do have a degree in History with a focus on India and British Empire from Berkeley. So no I don’t think I am being baseless. Hindutva is complex, the 20s were a difficult time in India as all the revolutionaries from the different factions were trying to imagine a future independent India. The Islam/Hindu divide was a creation of the British for divide and rule. And while Gandhi imagined a nonviolent basically traditional hierarchical Hindu society, Hedgewar wanted an organization that removed the bonds of caste and creed so that Hindus can function as a single unified front.
I do think Hedgewar won and Gandhi lost. Also please do understand all sources have biases including Wikipedia.
You will find many different interpretations of Hindutva - look at Hindu websites not political websites.
Modibhakting much?
I mean, it's one thing to parrot stuff like "inflammatory, biased, agenda driven and totally irrelevant", and another thing to state your point of contention.
After all, is it "inflammatory" to underscore discrimination and call it out?
And, yes, I am posting under an anonymous I'd - and so are you, as far as anyone is concerned. I came to the internet in the era of nicknames, not of full PII social networks, and I like it that way more.
Would it make the RSS and the BJP less far right if I posted under a real name?
Caught your BS and triggered you, have i ?
All that you have posted are totally irrelevant to the topic under discussion. The only possible reason for it is if you have a personal instigatory agenda so as to try and steer the discussion in another totally negative direction.
As Slashdot named it, you are just a "Anonymous Coward" (i.e. Someone too cowardly to post their real name next to what they write) and a troll.
Yep, Modi, the Indian PM, is a good friend of the WEF, and of many global power players.
Please don't post inflammatory rhetoric like this here, no matter the topic or the side. The guidelines ask:
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
How so? In Sweden we have digital ID and it's great! Super practical and I struggle to think of how it would be used to spy on citizens, given that it has the same legal protections as banks have regarding your account transactions etc.
Like sure you could in theory see every document I've ever signed if you have a warrant for BankID servers, but you could probably glean most of that if you had a warrant for the banks servers anyway, so it's not really a new capability.