Sweden has more respect for civil liberties than the UK. In discussions of the UK scheme the govt has been trying to sell it as an ‘entitlement’ card. When a voluntary card is needed to access the mundane things of life it is compulsory.
But if you can live your life without needed medical care, a bank account, a mortgage, passport or any social service or benefit etc you’re golden. Unless the police with their unlimited ability to ‘stop and search’ anyone for anything want you to produce it.
It’ll be included as part of a passport application, and that immediately includes 90% of the population within a decade.
So yours wasn’t a blanket statement but referred specifically to the UK?
As it was a reply to a poster discussing the UK, quoting the UK - yes - obviously.
Well, I apologize, but “‘Voluntary’ cards quickly become compulsory, to all intents and purposes” does sound like a blanket statement to me, especially in a thread on this topic, which tends to cause blanket statements to be liberally slung about while I confoundedly look around in a country that is generally considered very Big Brothery and where we’ve had ID cards since forever, and yet not a one of the nightmare scenarios has come to fruition.
As tagos was talking about the UK scheme, I fully side with the argument that they’ve voluntary in name only. The system is far more complex and covers far more aspects of identity and of everyday life than any other country’s ID cards.
What benefits does one receive from an ID card (in Sweden)? That is, if it is totally voluntary, why would someone opt in? Also, what information is kept?
I’m all for it – so long as the card is issued for free.
And the offices to acquire one are all in a reasonable travel time.
The cards cannot possibly be free. They may not take money from you specifically to get the card but they will be using money that they already took from you that could be used to provide useful services.
I hope I wasn’t lied to when I was in third grade and the teacher told us kids, in no uncertain terms, that if she was walking down the street minding her own business and a policeman demanded to know who she was and what she was doing there, he had no real right to know. In the United States, she said, freedom means being free to do whatever you want to as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else, and no one has any right to prevent you from doing that or even know who you are.
My father, who was a policeman throughout my childhood and teen years, actually agreed with her. He did admit that there were practical and public safety reasons for occasionally getting a closer look at this person or that person, just to make sure that there was, in fact, no real reason to confront them. Being a cop, however, he did urge me to always carry some form of identification, “In case you should need it.” It took me years to realize that he meant in case the authorities needed it to identify my lifeless body.
I figure if a third grade teacher and a career policeman agreed that a national ID card was not just unnecessary but undesirable in the U.S.A., that was good enough for me.
But requiring the individual cardholder to pay a fee would have a differential effect WRT who does or does not get one; paying for it out of general revenue would not.
Not good enough for me. Sorry. And I think the circumstances of today may make both your teacher and dad rethink their stance were they asked.
After all, your dad and teacher could not have known that some of the hijackers of 9/11 exploited various loopholes to obtain valid Virginia drivers licenses at a DMV Express in Springfield and at the DMV in Arlington. The last one was right across the street from an apartment building I had lived in until a few months earlier.
Of course, they used these IDs to board commercial aircraft, and the rest is sad familiar history.
Nobody says that when this act goes into effect, you should carry your ID even when jogging, or in the tub. But I think it stands to reason that if we have an ID scheme for the legitimate reasons one needs ID, that system ought to be as secure as possible.
Yeah but when they issued social security numbers they told everybody that it would only be used for social security. Now it is a number you must provide to get a variety of essential services is the US.
Right. That actually makes things less secure, as anyone with half a brain should understand. And I am painfully aware that requiring this credential will make this credential desirable to obtain and counterfeit.
No argument there, all the way around.
However, the drivers license or the equivalent state issued ID already is the de facto national ID card, and since it is, we ought to secure it as much as we can - and that means paying attention to the databases and punishing kids who forge them to buy beer at age 18 with a much stiffer penalty than they used to get. That part is unfortunate, but a fake ID can be used to blow up an airliner as well as buy Everclear for the dorm, so I don’t see any way around that.
Invoking September 11 does not automatically win the argument. The attacks could have been easily avoided had the airlines done then what they do now, namely lock and reinforce the cockpit doors.
The stupidity of current polices around social security numbers appalls me.
The idea that your social security number should be secret information is simply nonsense. But it is treated by all sorts of entities as secret information, as if knowing your social security number proves that you are you. This is absolutely wrong. Your social security number cannot be used as a password, since it is a number that follows you around for your entire life, and normally cannot be changed. Your social security number is simply a username, the exact logical equivalent of our user names here on the dope. Imagine if I could log in and post as BobLibDem simply by being able to provide the ultra-secret string of characters: BobLibDem.
The first statement you’re responding to comes right after this:
You go on to say:
So I take it you actually agree with Sunrazor’s third grade teacher and dad? That in the United States you should have the right to walk down the street, minding your own business, without a license from the government to do so.
I went for about 4 years without one relatively recently. I didn’t find it difficult most of the time. I lost my driver’s license* and I didn’t have a car so I didn’t bother to get it reinstated or get a state ID card. I did have a work ID card with my photo on it, but I almost never used it for non-work purposes (I figured that most likely it wouldn’t be accepted anyway in situations where you’re asked for photo ID). Now, I already had a job and a bank account, and I didn’t change either, so I didn’t need one for those circumstances, and it rarely came up otherwise. Finally, about a year and a half ago, I decided I wanted to get a car so I finally had to get my license back.
I agree that the way SSNs are handled is absolutely stupid. If we think of it as public-key, private-key technology, the SSN should be your public key. It doesn’t matter if everyone knows it because it’s like knowing your name. What there needs to be is a very strong private-key that you have to use in order to actually do anything, in conjunction with your public-key.