[jbattle]

I can't tell if you are trolling. I'll assume good faith.

We show ID to enter bars. We show ID to buy certain products. I provide identifying information when I pick up tickets at will call. Some items (like houses, cars, guns) you have to register the purchase with a government authority

Asking about contraband was totalitarian because they were trying to control what information people had and made certain thoughts/books verboten. Customs/border patrol has asked for ... ever? what you are bringing into the country.

I'm not saying the government would get an automatic transcript of every purchase I've made. I'm saying individual restaurants could collect a list of unique but meaningless numbers on a piece of paper or wherever they want. If the restaurant gets tagged as a place where COVID is believed to be spread, then the government now has a way to contact everyone who had visited the store.

[thecitizen]

There is a difference between purchasing a house and buying a sandwich. Do you bring a notary to buy a sandwich?

The U.S. border agents can ask to hand over passwords to social media. They can search your computer in order to see if any intellectual contraband (their words) is imported.

Very similar to the East German restriction on printed contraband.

[ac2u]

>I'm not saying the government would get an automatic transcript of every purchase I've made

You make the assumption here that governments don't trend towards looking for ways for that information to be automatically supplied in future in the name of "efficiency".

Honestly, the history of the 20th century should be the closed book final assessment on why it's permanently a bad idea for governments to collect files on people.

[jbattle]

Given how long governments have kept records (domesday book, bablylon) and how few governments have slipped into totalitarian hellscapes, I'm not as worried about this as you are.

I'm more concerned about the patriot act & etc because a lot of those survelliance programs are actively centralized.

The system I outlined would work XX% as well if it were entirely optional and if it were managed by independent agents. You could sign up with "ID Corp", or a credit union, or whatever. And they could keep your records.

[ac2u]

>and how few governments have slipped into totalitarian hellscapes

Just because it's improbable doesn't mean we shouldn't protect against tail risks. Not taking meaningful tail risk protection is why we're in the covid-19 problem we are now.

>I'm not as worried about this as you are.

I wouldn't want to be presumptions of your background, but have you talked with many people from countries where they or their parents were victims of state bullying via secret police that kept files on them?

>I'm more concerned about the patriot act & etc because a lot of those survelliance programs are actively centralized.

I don't think what we're talking about is any different in the long run.

>The system I outlined would work XX% as well if it were entirely optional and if it were managed by independent agents.

I'm actually not opposed to a temporary system of tracking like this in order to stamp out coronavirus. However, it needs to have iron-clad provisions in law to make it time limited, along with laws that mandate that independent international observers witness data audits and subsequent destruction of said data. Unfortunately, when governments legislate provisions, they're usually in the form of "we promise to be very good" platitudes.