[sershe]

People in Soviet Union (and in Russia, still) have to carry an internal passport (distinct from the regular passport, that is called smth like "foreign-travel passport" in Russian). The cops can legally stop you on the street and ask for ID. If you don't present your internal passport (or similar), they may take you to the police station "to determine your identity" at their discretion. Happened to me personally with an expired internal passport on my literal birthday that it expired on, I was about to go to a police station cause I didn't have much cash on me for a bribe, but they decided to let me go because hey, it's my birthday.

Vaccine cards (I am vaccinated and boosted and would have done it based on my own decision making) feel significantly similar to me. As in Russia, when dealing with totalitarian aspects of government, I find it easier to just comply, but if I had more free time on my hands I would refuse to show the card on principle. Needless to say politicians advocating for these would never get my vote...

[sedan_baklazhan]

In reality, I was asked for a passport once in 8 years in Russia.

[sershe]

That really depends on what you look like. I used to have long hair and wear leather jackets and band t-shirts and I was stopped about once every 2-3 months... then I got a job, cut my hair, etc. and I was stopped a couple times in 4 years. But, I had a girlfriend who lived in student dorms, and Central Asian guys living there claimed they get ID checked pretty much every day.

That's what's beautiful about giving government arbitrary power that is so broad it is not always used "in reality" - it gives individual actors discretion to discriminate. Like with literacy tests to vote, war on drugs, etc.

[aakresearch]

Moscow cops have a sixth sense for non-natives. Even I was not looking like one, I was stopped, like, 8 times during my 3-months gig there. Carrying a few bank notes in the passport was an ordinary practice.

[sedan_baklazhan]

I never had any reason to bribe them. Are you talking about 1990's?

[sershe]

Personally I obviously have never ever done this, but this friend of mine and his friends, throughout the aughts, have had to give trivial bribes to cops a few times. It's like real-life microtransactions. Usually with something like smoking in a non-smoking area as a pretext, the key is that cops would immediately go for the bribe schtik - they would tell him how they now need to bring him to the station to write up the protocol, and probably nobody would bother with such a small thing and they'd just let him go eventually but the mayor or whatever is not there right now, he's out on some assignment, so he'd have to wait for him to return for a couple hours for the protocol to be written up properly, and hey he is from the neighborhood and so he knows the station is actually a 20-minute walk too, completely out of the way, so maybe he can, like, go buy a pack of cigarettes, and as he opens it, absent-mindedly stuff the "change", let's say X, into the pack?.. and then they'd ask him for a smoke as he returns from the store and he gives them the pack and he can go?..

This is just poor student level; I bet others paid much more, Moscow road police were legendary, although I didn't drive so cannot confirm.

That said I think it's a separate issue from unprompted ID checks, although one could facilitate the other.

[sedan_baklazhan]

I never paid anything to any cop; nor that I needed or wanted to. Neither did you, it seems. As to friends or friends of friends, etc. - this is not really serious talk.

[aakresearch]

Early 2000's.

[sedan_baklazhan]

Yes, this was definitely happening back then.

[bastardoperator]

Police ask for ID in Russia too? This might sound crazy, but police do this in the United States too. Failure to ID in certain situations (arrest) can lead to additional charges. Expired identification in the US is also invalid too.

Again, I'm not seeing the connection you're trying to make and if you want to see similar tactics employed by police in the USA, I recommend YouTube. The interesting part is I have a vaccine card and I've never been asked to present it. Then again, I was immunized to serve anywhere in the world when I joined the military and saw it as a perk when I travelled abroad.

[sershe]

That is in context of an arrest. In Russia, legally it's like a country-wide stop and frisk (stop and ID) with no requirement of suspicion or anything. Usually people who look like immigrants or some sort of "less-desirable" demographics get checked more, but sometimes they do just stop completely random people.

[bastardoperator]

I totally get it, but there is big difference between a police officer demanding photo ID unlawfully which happens often in the US to similar demographics and a business saying in order to keep my workforce safe I need proof of vaccine.

[sershe]

The mandates are not that though. The mandates are government forcing the business to demand the card, and shutting them down (with police) if they don't feel inclined to enforce it.