| I should start by saying I'm not very keen on having government mandated IDs in order to be able to use a internet service. I'd also point out that increasingly companies are forcing such policies - using mobile phones - that in the end is the same result. That logging into many services require use of a mobile phone and/or a credit card. One might argue this is better than a government id/validation system, but in practice the government gets access to all the data anyway and now you have that friction and you've now distributed the data to multiple databases for whatever uses. I'd prefer to not have either. That there are significant problems in the world that might be improved upon with a lack of anonymity. Be that social media bullying, slander, the review 'industry' - or just the more dark aspects of human nature that anonymity allows - such as people getting the dopamine hit of attacking a person. There are other things that anonymity allowed that are good - whistleblowers, people under restrictive regimes being able to communicate. Sometimes it's freeing to be able to say what you really think anonymously. So what to do? There probably isn't any one single answer. That many services will require your identity to use. Having a government ID system if correctly engineered and administored - that arguably actually might be preferable for some services. There could be services services that allow anonymity. The distinction could be reach or some other mechanisms. 'Freedom' is an odd word as it is used in the US. I don't see people generally talking about it wrt companies requiring ID for example - and yes often there is no or little choice. If it's anything restrictive from the government then immediately it's a big deal. It's a weird kind of freedom - people are free to by cyber bullied, to be erroneously attacked and lose their jobs, to erode trust - from reviews, to news, to science and so forth. To erode democracy itself. That's apparently not a problem because we are 'free'. It doesn't make much sense to me. |