[gslepak]

> I don't get the resistance to a digital/national id in other countries. To us it is quite bizarre.

It depends on the country and its relationship with the people. If the people trust that their government represents the people's interests, there is little push-back. In countries where citizens have reason to believe their government is hijacked by interests that do not have their best interests at heart, then every move is viewed with suspicion.

In this case people are tying Digital ID to CBDCs and social credit systems, which is a reasonable thing to do, given this is exactly how China uses them to enforce 15-minute cities with checkpoints between them. All citizens conversations are tracked, their movements are restricted as well [1], and their ability to purchase goods & services are tightly regulated based on their behavior via the social credit system. This is the world that people who are pushing back against this are trying to avoid.

[1] https://x.com/songpinganq/status/1972382547427590401

[enlightens]

that Twitter account famously posts nonsense

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/jordan-petersons-chine...

[gslepak]

Think you'd be hard pressed to find a single Twitter account that hasn't at some point posted some nonsense.

[ffsm8]

So all Twitter users are terminally online?

[stephen_g]

Wow, crazy seeing the "15 minute city" conspiracy theory on HN! For those who haven't seen it, the idea of 15 minute cities is that a lot of people think it would be great to structure development of cities with the ideal of a person being able to access most of the services they want to (workplaces, schools, supermarkets, doctors) within 15 minutes (whether walking, cycling, using public transit etc.) of where they live. It's basically a target for how easily you should be able to access services without needing to travel far, and a push-back of massive suburbs zoned solely as single-family housing that force you to drive a long way to get to anything.

The more conspiratorial among us have baselessly decided the idea of "hey it would be great to build schools and things near where people live" must actually be a globalist plot to restrict people's movement to within 15 minutes of their home. It's wild!

[agedclock]

If you are going to mock conspiracy theorists can you at least articulate the conspiracy theory correctly.

People are worried that it would be made difficult for you to travel outside 15 minute city via a combination of mandated digital payment system for all transactions that are tied to you identity and removal of personal vehicles (e.g. cars).

e.g. Person A is allowed by authorities to buy a train ticket, while Person B is not due to <arbitrary criteria>.

I've been told this has been done in China to stop people travelling to protests, but I don't actually know if that is true.

Do I think this is the intention behind 15 minute cities? No. I do however think that what they are describing is possible since I've had problems making transactions electronically for legal purchases because my transaction was flagged by the bank for being fraudulent.

Also in the UK the bank can refuse to give you your money.

[xp84]

I have also had a problem before with a transaction being inaccurately flagged as fraudulent. This could either be because an anti-fraud algorithm isn’t perfect 100% of the time, or it could be the result of a vast government conspiracy to limit my travel.

I have my doubts that China, which has many of the densest cities in the world, would get much mileage (pun intended) out of restricting travel to try to quell protests. They have tons of cities that each have millions of residents. If the CPC manages to piss off a significant fraction of the populace to the point where they’re interested in marching down the street demanding regime change, there will be enough of them in those cities that no amount of travel restrictions is going to matter.

Arguably much more important would be that I don’t think most people in China own any significant weapons, and we’ve seen decades ago how shy that government isn’t about just running people over with tanks until protests dissipate.

[agedclock]

> I have also had a problem before with a transaction being inaccurately flagged as fraudulent. This could either be because an anti-fraud algorithm isn’t perfect 100% of the time, or it could be the result of a vast government conspiracy to limit my travel.

I never said it was part of a government conspiracy. What I am saying is that your ability to transact freely is infringed by opaque mechanisms.

If that is added with digital only payments which is tied to your gov id, it isn't difficult to imagine a scenario where your ability to transact freely be taken away to stop you from travelling for political reasons.

[xp84]

Sorry, I didn't interpret your comment correctly.

I admit you have a fair point here. I'm a political independent but started out left-wing. It's hard for me to accept the reality that a government that starts out well-meaning definitely can tilt toward totalitarianism, and that the lack of good chokepoints on the citizens (such as this hypothetical ability to control payments) may well be a key prevention mechanism. I think the left wing in the US likes to frame suspicion of those kinds of things as silly preparations for a future that won't happen, and the right frames roadblocks to government power as being in place to make that bad future harder to bring about.

[agedclock]

> It's hard for me to accept the reality that a government that starts out well-meaning definitely can tilt toward totalitarianism, and that the lack of good chokepoints on the citizens (such as this hypothetical ability to control payments) may well be a key prevention mechanism

You are making the assumption that any politician or government is "well meaning" or started out as such. I am in the UK and I look at the politicians and the state apparatus with absolute contempt.

I suggest you listen to some of Dominic Cummings interviews about his experience with Whitehall (UK) during COVID. There was one situation that he described which really stood out to me. There was particular situation early in the pandemic where the NHS was going to run out of a key medical supplies in about 2 weeks and as a result thousands could die. These supplies were shipped from China and it took about 3/4 weeks (I forget the exact time frame).

For some reason it was written into law that they had to be shipped. He had the Prime Minister sign a legal waiver so they could be air-lifted, explained this to key officials in Whitehall. Everyone agreed what needed to be done and then nothing happened for 3 days. These people had to be threatened with losing their jobs and their pensions otherwise they wouldn't do their job, they fully understood the consequences of not doing the job (thousands of people might die) and still did nothing. It is an apathy of evil.

This behaviour is commonplace in ossified organisations unfortunately and I wasn't surprised one iota when I heard this.

As for mechanisms that reduce state power as prevent totalitarianism. No one thing will prevent it. It would be a combination of things.

It is similar to how running Linux (or any alternative OS) won't by itself stop the strangle hold of large tech players over most of the tech/online space. It will at least help you reduce your dependence on these large companies. Combine that with self hosting and/or using alternatives at least you can be somewhat free from the worst of it.

> I think the left wing in the US likes to frame suspicion of those kinds of things as silly preparations for a future that won't happen, and the right frames roadblocks to government power as being in place to make that bad future harder to bring about.

Silly partisan politics is going to have both sides pretending that the other side doesn't have any merit in their positions. I would just ignore the noise and actually read the facts about things and draw your own conclusions.

I believe that most of the politics you see is really theatre. It keeps people squabbling over things that are ultimately unimportant.

[71bw]

No conspiracy is needed to observe the current world, the state of political affairs and to notice where all of it is headed.

[tombot]

UK already has a social credit system with our credit score, we even need to pay to see it.

[pipes]

That's a financial score based on previous financial transactions and contracts. It's a bit of a stretch to call it social.

[lmm]

I like to call it one's capitalist credit score. It's different but very much analogous.

[asdff]

Well, in the U.S. at least it literally determines where you are allowed to live. I don't know how you couldn't call it a social credit system.

[animal_spirits]

It’s not a social credit system because it doesn’t weight your social involvement in the society (political party, school credentials, race) but rather payment history, amount of debt, types of credit

[asdff]

Simply things that correlate to social involvement I suppose. Quacks like a duck and all.

[agedclock]

Not at all. It is simply a score based on your ability to manage credit, it is scored differently based on the company making the assessment.

In reality that means "have you paid off what you owe in the manner that was agreed" and does the person have any red flags e.g. County Court Judgements against their name or residence.

There are people I know that manage it properly and those that don't. It has nothing to do with wealth or class.

[pkaodev]

What are you on about? It's financial providers deciding whether you are or aren't risky for them to work with, based on your financial decisions.

Not repaying loans and using credit cards to get cash -> you're probably bad with money -> lenders are unlikely to get their money back from you.

[AlecSchueler]

Your involvement in capitalist society, it tells you everything.

[SXX]

UK credit score system don't even have "nationality" in it so not discriminating non-citizens that much. Neither it hold any ID card or passport numbers.

Yeah there is electoral roll, but you can still access credit without being on it and afaik all residents of scotland are on it since even non citizens can vote in local election.

And unlike US there not even a "score" number since lenders only get records but not some magical number. Whatever credit agencies sell you as credit score is just random number they come up with and it's not being used by lenders btw.

[majormajor]

Seems like a red-herring. Does a government need a digital ID to do that? Many do that with the "free market" of publicly-tradable information + pre-existing government IDs already used for certain things. I don't know for sure how much the UK government is purchasing all that, but there's a lot of cameras and tech tracking in the country already, like those of us across the pond also are watched with.

It won't reverse surveillance states but fraud is also a huge problem that deserves addressing.

[iamnothere]

Yes, governments do need a centralized common identity if they intend to build something like a social credit system. Those without adequate experience dealing with the US system, for instance, may assume that the government already has your info and thus such a system is redundant. However, this is simply not the case. US government systems are a hodgepodge of different systems built by different vendors, over different computing eras, many of which lack a primary key relationship with something like your social security number (the current “default” identifier). Many are plagued with duplicate records, data problems, and other issues that prevent easy correlation of records without human verification. Talk to some people in the IRS or Social Security and you’ll quickly get a sense of how many problems this can create! Maybe it’s improved since I last talked to people about it, but I doubt it.

A central ID enforced on all systems by statute would significantly reduce the barrier to creating “airtight” oppressive systems. While the inefficiencies in the US system have a cost, certainly preventing the implementation of more efficient social benefit programs, they also provide a barrier against more efficient social repression. Given the political animosity present in the country right now, it’s probably good that we don’t have the ability to create a turnkey totalitarian system. Things are bad enough as is!

More generally, in nations where the population feels suspicion towards their politicians and bureaucrats, the people may prefer to leave inefficiencies baked into the system in order to hamper potential oppression. Those social tensions and trust deficits should be resolved before proceeding with any ambitious central ID schemes.

[reaperducer]

US government systems are a hodgepodge of different systems built by different vendors, over different computing eras, many of which lack a primary key relationship with something like your social security number (the current “default” identifier).

This is a feature, not a bug.

Even though we're only at the very beginning of the various U.S. systems being merged, we're already seeing it being abused.

(One example: States using license plate reader data to prosecute women for getting abortions in other jurisdictions.)

[xp84]

Honestly with things like abortion, where there are sincerely held beliefs with good points on both sides of it, I think it would be less work for literally everyone to truly leave it to the states and everybody just moves to the nearest or most convenient state that aligns with their values. I’m so sick of this one issue being a perennial divisive force. Both sides have a point. Go live wherever you agree with the policies. And if the blue states want to operate abortion clinics for runaway teens from red states that’s fine, then they can also build dorms for them and pay for them to stay there. Red states can do the opposite and build state-sponsored birthing centers and pay for childcare for the runaway teens from blue states whose parents want to force them to terminate.

[Avamander]

> Yes, governments do need a centralized common identity if they intend to build something like a social credit system.

Which the US already has to a very large extent with the Social Security system.

[iamnothere]

Please read comments in full before replying to them:

> US government systems are a hodgepodge of different systems built by different vendors, over different computing eras, many of which lack a primary key relationship with something like your social security number (the current “default” identifier). Many are plagued with duplicate records, data problems, and other issues that prevent easy correlation of records without human verification.

[Avamander]

Please understand that supposedly poor data quality is not a defence against an authoritarian country wanting to implement a social credit system.

Some national ID system won't make such ambitions significantly easier, but lack of such a system causes exactly the issues you quoted.

So is this hypothetical social credit system in the hands of an incompetent government worth it all? Over identity theft and the multi-billion industry around it?

[iamnothere]

And yet authoritarian countries without such central ID have historically had to use other less targeted methods of oppression, which creates pushback and dissent within the population, leading to either the downfall of the government or intensive reforms. The threat of a “clean” system of oppression is that it will only catch actual dissidents, without sweeping in innocents. This could freeze out any chance of effective opposition.

The most effective 20th century totalitarian states, such as the East German DDR, issued ID numbers to its citizens, along with ID cards that citizens were required to carry at all times. This greatly helped the security services coordinate the oppression of suspected radicals, but without modern computer systems it relied too heavily on human efforts. It eventually faced its limits against rising dissent and it could not prevent the downfall of the government. A computerized Stasi would be much more terrifying.

One can look around the US today to see why this lack of ID may be a good thing. Immigration officials are facing serious roadblocks in rounding up and processing suspected undocumented immigrants, and mistakes in this process are creating widespread pushback. Protestors who take steps to mask their identity are not easily identified, apprehended, and prosecuted, which has led the administration to overreach in their reaction to dissent. And the lack of a unified system of oppression means that even targets of the state can often find ways to continue living in between the cracks, and they are not totally frozen out. In many ways it’s not a great system, certainly far from perfect, but the many flaws serve an important purpose in the face of systemic oppression. Inefficiency is an escape hatch.

If you live in a high trust society, you may not get it. The mutual animosity in the US is such that we have government officials talking about “national divorce” and otherwise average people joking about political murder. I know the UK is not quite as bad off, but I understand that it is quickly moving in that direction. That’s no time to introduce new potential mechanisms of oppression.

[majormajor]

> Yes, governments do need a centralized common identity if they intend to build something like a social credit system. Those without adequate experience dealing with the US system, for instance, may assume that the government already has your info and thus such a system is redundant. However, this is simply not the case. US government systems are a hodgepodge of different systems built by different vendors, over different computing eras, many of which lack a primary key relationship with something like your social security number (the current “default” identifier). Many are plagued with duplicate records, data problems, and other issues that prevent easy correlation of records without human verification. Talk to some people in the IRS or Social Security and you’ll quickly get a sense of how many problems this can create! Maybe it’s improved since I last talked to people about it, but I doubt it.

IMO this is another non-sequitor.

Let's say you had a digital ID in the form of a smart card for your SSN with a USB connection that was required to be plugged in when you auth'd to a government website to file your taxes. No new number would be required for a digital ID card in the US. Tax return fraud to get people's refund sent to someone else, though? Probably down! Does everyone have an SSN? Who cares, let's improve things for the vast-majority case where we have an extremely insecure little piece of paper.

That smart card doesn't magically reconcile and rationalize the sprawling hodgepodge of government systems.

Or, let's go the other way: not having a digital ID card does not prevent the government from rationalizing and tying all those systems together.

You might look back to the recent past when the executive branch sending employees to all those disparate agencies to grab that data and make changes to those systems! They didn't need a new digital ID to do that, and they wouldn't need a new digital ID to improve the use of SSN-as-PK-for-cross-system-joins.

Being more rigorous about tracking the existing numbers already assigned to you does not require smarter, cryptographically-sound, identification tokens. And those tokens do not require the government improve their processes for connecting things *after the "give us your SSN for identification" of their various separate web-based services (or the non-government entities that also use those SSNs) that people love to abuse for fraud.

Nor does any of this make it easier or harder for the government to take "absence of evidence of identity or citizenship" as "evidence of absence of identity or citizenship" - if you fit the non-citizen profile, the burden's already on you to prove it, and what makes you so sure that the courts wouldn't happily let this or a future administration expand the boundaries for "we picked you up because we were suspicious, now YOU have to prove who you are if you ever want to get out" regardless of if a digital ID card exists?

[exe34]

if they want private information, they should buy it on the open market like every other company!