Comment by greenavocado a day ago
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).
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..
Why is the solution to avoiding conscription being able to hide rather than making the conscription not happen in the first place?
Governments in a position to conscript their citizens usually aren’t taking a lot of feedback on the issue.
Yes, fight in advance to prevent such a situation, but don’t assume you will win. It’s good to have a backup plan.
You need to convince, what, 300 people in a country to vote in their voting system the right way, and then it affects millions of people.
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?)
> 1. There are lots of men walking in Ukrainian streets.
With the right papers clearing them of draft obligations, sure.
>2. Why single out Ukraine here?
Because this is the best example right now that everyone knows and can somewhat relate to. Unless you happen to know any other western country currently doing this.
Can I offer you a similar, and probably more palatable, example:
https://united24media.com/latest-news/russia-starts-issuing-...
>>> Just grab any man you see on the street, throw him in the van and ship him to the conscription office for processing.
>> 1. This is a wild exaggeration:[1] There are lots of men walking in Ukrainian streets.
> With the right papers clearing them of draft obligations, sure.
So basically you agree with me that it was a wild exaggeration?
[1] Also your computer seem to have a bug where its clipboard selectively remove words (see the part in italics) from the text you quote without inserting ellipsis or any kind of marker to indicate it. The alternative would be that you very deliberately misrepresent what I wrote and that wouldn't be a nice thing to accuse you of.
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.
>Do some people get conscripted in Ukraine and Russia? Sure.
It's not that they get conscripted that's the problem, it's that people are being chased and violently thrown into vans of the street without any kind of warning or check of conscription status beforehand, Which I argued is proof the government doesn't need any kind of digital ID to oppress you..
There's video evidence of such events online, check X and Telegram. Just because it doesn't happen in the capital and places where tourists like you go to, doesn't mean it's somehow OK or that it's not happening in other regions like villages where it's less likely important people with influence live unlike the capital or large cities.
you are russian right so I doubt you been in Ukraine lately and you just get your knowledge from Russian propaganda. I bet you can't name a single person that been kidnapped of the streets.
Video evidence is not a good standard anymore. This isn't the Iraq war where you can see the people who dress different and have a different skin color are the "enemy"
Russia has faked videos in the past even prior to the whole video Gen AI slop.
I will believe it when someone reputable runs a good investigation and does some real journalism rather than just sourcing Russian propaganda and suggesting reality is some lovecraftian nightmare
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.
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.