WHy do they not have a normal citizen identity like developed countries all over the world? It's not like they don't want or need it, but now they are taking an unreliable and costly route which ultimately gets a similar (but substandard) result.
The US constitution restricts acts of the federal government to enumerated powers. A lot of stuff gets justified under an expansive interpretation of regulating interstate commerce, but I'm not sure how a register of citizens qualifies. Certainly, you could find legal scholars who would tell you it's allowed and those who would tell you it's not.
There's a fair amount of resistance to government information gathering, especially by the federal government. There's a bigger question of records quality. There are a lot of citizens who have no records of their birth --- either it wasn't recorded, or the records were lost, or the details you would need to find the records aren't available. Anyone contemplating reconciling all those edge cases is going to simply give up.
Citizenship and the rights and duties of citizens are all over the constitution. It would be quite the surprise to find out the Federal Government can't keep a list of who is a citizen. I mean we already have social security numbers for a small, universal pension. We have the selective service which gets half the people. We have passports for citizens and visas for non-citizens. We have the REAL ID Act.
The country really needs a government that has the balls to enforce the laws as they are written or change them to what they want to enforce. The idea that the effective law is predicated upon the whims of prosecutorial discretion is bullshit.
Article I, Section 2 of the constitution requires the government to conduct a decennial census, and empowers congress to make such law as it may direct to implement it.
One could easily see a national identity system to be justified as part of the census. I'm sure there are other articles that could also be used to justify one.
The reluctance around a national identifier and system is purely policy, not lack of constitutional authority.
Opposition to a national ID is one of the rare subjects on which the left and right tend to agree, but for different reasons. Here's the ACLU's thoughts on the matter:
which is actually quite hilarious because the Feds have everything already SSN, taxes, census, FICA, real id and on and on. I never understood the logic behind people doing that stuff quite willingly and then freaking out over a national ID, which we pretty already much have given there is a federal program to get your state ID hooked up into the federal system.
I can't login to the social security website to get my statements, so, not very well in some cases. I locked myself out trying to prove my identity which basically amounts to providing information from your credit report.
To unlock the account, I'll have to visit a social security office and they'll apparently give me a one-time code. I haven't cared enough to go through the pain of doing this yet.
There's a lot of resistance to creating an explicit National ID card.
There's also the Real ID act passed by Bush in 2005 (and whatever implementation and changes have been made in the 15 years since) that did create a national ID card (standards for driver's license and identification) that all states but Oregon and Oklahoma are compliant with.
I am one of the people that resist National ID, but at this point it would be better than the screwed up sysytem of using SSN and a hodgepodge and inaccurate Drivers Lic system for ID
Neither of which was ever really suppose to be for ID
SSN is for me to get my old age money, and Drivers Lic is for me to prove I can safely operate a car...
Extending them from their original purpose has lead to all kinds of problems
> but at this point it would be better than the screwed up sysytem of using SSN and a hodgepodge and inaccurate Drivers Lic system for ID
> Neither of which was ever really suppose to be for ID
State IDs (including Drivers Licenses, which are State IDs conjoined with permission to drive certain classes of vehicles on public roads) absolutely are intended as ID, and the function of drivers licenses as drivers licenses presupposes them functioning first as ID, since it can’t establish that you have permission to drive if it can't establish that you are the person it refers to.
The history of both has the ID functions of them added on after the fact.
Granted the ID functions of the state Drivers licenses were done a little better than the ID functions of the SSN being used for Tax ID purposes then for other ID Purposes largely because the adding the ID functions to Drivers Licenses was done by the same entity issuing the drivers licenses unlike SSA which resisted efforts to have SSN be an ID number
That said original drivers licensees simply had a Name and the fact you passed the test, there was zero ID component to them, this was added on later.
> The history of both has the ID functions of them added on after the fact.
Sure, the problem with your description is you are using “were never intended” for “were not originally intended”, which in the case of Driver’s Licenses is radically wrong; drivers licenses have been reengineered entirely around the need for a principal state-issued ID, expressly for the purpose of serving that purpose, which is why they are also the bases for non-driver IDs.
It also wasn’t that long ago the photo-less driver licenses were phased out in some states. My father had one with no photo on it up until 2004. Anyone could renew by mail, in which case there would not be a photo.
National ID is less common than you'd think in developed countries.
The USA, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand all lack national or citizen ID like what's common in Europe.
Australia is quite similar to the USA in the practical application of this. As far as I'm aware, all the different IDs the government gives you (TFN for tax, medicare for healthcare, etc.) are theoretically optional. In practise, you'd get taxed at the maximum withholding rate (but refunded the excess at the end of the financial year), miss out on cheap healthcare and other benefits, and wouldn't be allowed to drive. You are required to register to vote though, and voting is compulsory, but the information they keep is fairly minimal.
Generally the opposition is on the basis that the government should be trusted with as little information on its subjects as possible. Think of the worst thing that the government, or a third party that gains access, could do with the information they have on you, and then expect it to happen.
Obviously its a spectrum, most people would be opposed to a national database of everyone's DNA, and most people would agree that a government needs some amount of information in order to function effectively. So most people have an opinion somewhere in the centre.
The Several States have a degree of sovereignty that is incompatible with centralized national ID. One solution is to standardize the format, so that cooperation like this is more seamless without being imposed from on high; that's a strategy that has worked well for other things.
Also here in Canada, we too have separate ID for each province and territory, and separate health insurance ID too.
I think given the current political climate, where the far left is generally critical of the concept of citizenship altogether (see current proposals to allow non-citizen voting in federal elections, decriminalize illegal border crossings, etc.), the opposition of just that one political subculture would be enough to scuttle any attempt. Add on to that the concerns of lawful gun owners, ordinary people who do not want to be identified to the Federal government except for the purposes of taxes and social security, and the huge number of people who are basically okay with the status quo (myself included), and national ID looks like a non-starter.
I'm 37, and politically active, I'm generally slightly left of center too, I can't think of a single proposed program for a National ID, much less one scuttled by Republicans.
There isn't enough political will to include restrictions against abuse by private actors (eg what happened to social security numbers and license plates), so a system that was more technically competent would result in increased commercial surveillance and control.
We have this in Canada because health care is provincially funded, and registered, but people have multiple residences across the country. Online registration renewal services recently include geo-ip checks for whether you are renewing your ID/cards from an IP address in the province. (give your parents a heads up if this affects them, they should do their renewals when they are in town.)
There is also the tax question of whether your house is your primary residence, and when you sell it it's a question of whether you pay capital gains on the sale based on whether you in fact live there or not. This is one of those cases where technology meets policy.
I’m frankly astonished that “driving licenses” have so much info in them.
If I need to attest to my ability to drive (which is quite a reasonable thing to require of people while they drive), all that is needed is photograph or fingerprint, expiration date, class of qualification and any restriction (such as glasses). None of the other info has anything to do with driving.
Driver’s Licenses are effectively all-purpose state (or national, in the case of REAL ID-compliant ones) ID documents with driving-related endorsements.
This is independent of RealID and a consequence of the census department not asking citizenship questions during the most recent 2020 census.
New York state declined, and is having Global Entry signups from that state rejected by DHS [1].
Edit: @crooked-v: Agreed, the administration found a straightforward way to the data other than via the census dept (it boggles the mind that people thought the federal government wouldn’t or couldn’t aggregate this data, remember when they withheld federal highway dollars to extort states into raising the drinking age?). Throttled by HN, can’t reply directly to your comment.
> a consequence of the census department not asking citizenship questions
The purpose of the US Census has never been to determine citizenship. It's also fundamentally useless for that purpose, as not only is it entirely self-reported data, but it also cannot legally be accessed by other parts of the government until 72 years after that census is taken.
The parent post reads as an 'and' of two separate purposes. Shaping the electorate is partially achieved here by eliminating citizens who can't prove their citizenship to a bar set by the federal government and historically in the US politicians set the bar very high for their own purposes. Many people either don't have a birth certificate (records were lost in a government building fire, etc) or don't have access to their certificate (getting a copy requires driving 4 hours to city hall and paying money, that sort of thing). They may already have a state ID which is enough to drive and get to work and vote, but any new system requires them to go through all the expensive hassle the previous ID took, plus potentially more. If you dig around you can find many stories of people who are provably citizens but had to jump through dozens of hoops to get legal ID, or failed to get it entirely because the system is rigged against them.
We saw this impact with the rollout of voter ID laws and their uneven requirements, in some cases people simply could not acquire "acceptable" ID for voting purposes even though they were legally entitled to vote.
Those people who have trouble producing acceptable documentation to the state, but are citizens, generally aren't being deported though. And citizens who can't prove their identity to vote certainly aren't having their non-existent drivers license shared by states.
So what part of the events described in the article are about "shaping the electorate"?
I rarely carry any ID as it seems offensive to have to justify my existence. People who ask for ID usually find a way to do business with me without it.
I do have a driver’s license which I leave in my gf’s car in case I have to, you know, drive.
Not carrying ID can actually get you into trouble in California when performing some activities that don't even require a license. See for example this interesting discussion on someone who was pulled over by the police, while bicycling and not carrying ID:
The Court also concluded that while McKay had verbally identified himself, the officer has the discretion whether to accept the verbal identification, and noted “Here, of course, defendant was not arrested merely because he failed to produce a license. He was arrested because he violated the Vehicle Code. At that point, the need to obtain reliable evidence of identification and ensure compliance with a promise to appear is equally great for a bicyclist as for a driver of a motorized vehicle. Although only the latter is obligated to have a license in his or her possession at all times while driving on the road (§ 12951, subd. (a)), both are required to produce satisfactory evidence of identity for examination when stopped for a violation of the law.” McKay, 625.
People ask all the time: to enter certain buildings, when using a credit card (in almost every case that’s a violation of the card-merchant agreement). Entering bars and clubs or picking up liquor or some prescriptions (not even my prescriptions!). For many bars and clubs and at, say Walgreens for liquor they don’t merely look but swipe...and in the bars the info is collected by the company that makes the swipe system (learned of this from a HN post, though I could of guessed). What business is it of theirs where I go?
I never hassle anyone — they didn’t make the rule. I just say I don’t have one and invariably to date (except entering a federal court house) I’ve been fine.
This includes flying. It’ll be interesting to see if that “real ID” rubbish does finally get enforced. All the previous deadlines have been punted.
Not at all. I have to have the license when I drive, along with other documents so I just keep it with the insurance and registration in the pouch with the manual. Much safer than being stopped by the cops When driving and not being able to produce it.
Anyway, these days ID theft is done wholesale, not one person at a time. I have other defenses against that. And someone who wanted my DL info could simply find it online.
Who cares about car locks: people will just break the glass and grab anything that looks worth taking.
You need to think of the risk. My house has a Medeco key system (slightly modified outside the Medeco license). It’s not to keep people from breaking in (you could just throw a brick through a window there too) — it’s to prevent key copying.
Because I think this obsession with ID is dangerous and I want to show that it’s pretty easy and comfortable not deal with it.
Because I think the obsession with security gets in the way of living your life and I give an example. Pick your threats and defense against them; things you don’t think are threats aren’t worth trying to “defend” against.
Because I am no less safe using these cases as examples that I would be, say, telling you which cipher and key length I use for my ssh keys.
