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Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

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71–80 of 215 posts

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#71

The bouncer saying I need to see your ID always rubbed me up the wrong way, not because I objected to being challenged but because they don’t need to know who I am, they just need to see proof of age . Not even that! Proof that my age is greater than or equal to X! In a world where we would might actually see societal benefits in having people prove things about themselves*, could we not leverage technology to emit v…

Well, to be fair, many many clubs nowadays operate a sharing policy so that if you're banned from a one venue in a city others won't let you in either. It's part of the terms of going in, if you don't agree to it, you don't have to have access.

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#72
post #30
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in Denmark. It acts as a SSO for Banks, library, 2fa for debit card, hospital websites, all kinds of government services. Makes it easy, because you don't need a new or different account.

Which means the provider can track you across all those. What you spend, what you read, what medical treatment you have. All just to save carrying a wallet?

No, it does not mean that. In Germany the card holds the information, which is signed. So trust is established via certificate. The government has no idea when or where I use the card.

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#73
post #64
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the UK and listening to people who don't have things like passports, it sounds like it'll make proving your right to work much easier for people, too. I've spoken to friends who have foreign relatives and they've also pointed out the problem the UK has which is: 1. To open a bank account you need an address 2. To rent somewhere (get an address), you need a bank account 3. See above The same happens for children…

> I've spoken to friends who have foreign relatives and they've also pointed out the problem the UK has which is Lots of countries have this circularity, including Continental ones with ID systems, and I think it's an intentional anti-immigrant measure.

Absolutely, it’s a major problem. I would think this system needs to hand out ID cards to everyone who needs one (student, work visa, alongside NI number, etc.) to break that loop.

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#74
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can explain the logic behind it. The first step you need to take is view a government as a hostile entity. It's not your government, it's occupational government. It's unjust by default and you don't agree with the rules it makes, including immigration and taxes. Now imagine there are three arms of the government -- the one that collects taxes, the one that administers unemployment benefits and the other, which giv…

But the government can already do all that without Digital ID. That's my question with the fear mongering. A hostile government can already link your data from all sorts of places. Digital ID at least helps us for more security. Without Digital ID + Hostile Government you have the worst of both worlds.

If you start with the premise that the government is hostile by default, it logically follows they will get some capability they didn't have before or increase the one they had. You will have less chance to fall through the cracks and the friction you get from not having the convenient thing is a proof that the beast is at least partially crippled.

It's very often that government has a capability to retroactively assemble a very detailed information about a specific person, but doesn't have a capability to proactively screen the whole population and implement policy.

Illegal immigration is a good example of it -- when somebody is already sitting in a van it's possible to figure out whether they are a citizen or not and maybe even find pictures of watermelons on their phone. It's however impossible to selectively block phone numbers and bank accounts of all the people who are present in the country without government authorization.

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#75

The bouncer saying I need to see your ID always rubbed me up the wrong way, not because I objected to being challenged but because they don’t need to know who I am, they just need to see proof of age . Not even that! Proof that my age is greater than or equal to X! In a world where we would might actually see societal benefits in having people prove things about themselves*, could we not leverage technology to emit v…

That is what digital IDs usually do: the website requests the smallest amount of information they need, you decide to grant it, and only that gets sent. And at least in my country you also have a physical card, so if you really don't want to grant anything via the internet (or find their request is too broad) you can just do whatever process it is in person.

What if sites start to request more information than they need because why not? If you don't give it, you don't get access, and you want access. What incentive do they have for requesting less information?

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#76
post #63
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not against digital ID, but I am very much against perfect law enforcement. Society evolves, and things that used to be unthinkable (eg gay marriage) slowly become acceptable. To become acceptable, however, they need to be allowed to be done, even if illegally. If you arrested every homosexual the moment they kissed someone, then homosexuality would never have become legal. Perfect enforcement leads to an ossifie…

> Every dystopian film or movie starts with some tyrannical society and a resistance movement. Now imagine you made resistance impossible, which is what perfect law enforcement will do. I dunno, the Nazis did a fucking good job without Digital ID. They weren't overthrown by a resistance movement, they were crushed by the combined might of the Allied and Soviet armies.

Therefore resistance is always useless?

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can it be used without a smartphone aka "portable telescreen"? Do they explicitly guarantee this'll remain the case? If not, you're just being hoodwinked via cheap convenience.

The Austrian version (which I use an appreciate a lot) allows some hardware FIDO2 tokens instead of a smartphone. Guarantee? Not by law but it will be hard for them to take that away.

It won't be hard at all to take it away if only few people are using it. And I assume the vast majority is using smartphones and won't understand the need for anything else.

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#78
post #64
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the UK and listening to people who don't have things like passports, it sounds like it'll make proving your right to work much easier for people, too. I've spoken to friends who have foreign relatives and they've also pointed out the problem the UK has which is: 1. To open a bank account you need an address 2. To rent somewhere (get an address), you need a bank account 3. See above The same happens for children…

> I've spoken to friends who have foreign relatives and they've also pointed out the problem the UK has which is Lots of countries have this circularity, including Continental ones with ID systems, and I think it's an intentional anti-immigrant measure.

For Spain at least, most banks have foreigner accounts you can open with a passport, and convert into a normal account once you have local id later. It's a mildly unusual setup (and a bit confusing when you're new) but it's pretty widely available and it's not a significant blocker. There's plenty of other challenges and structural disadvantages as an immigrant, but this one at least isn't too bad.

If anything, there's really a big advantage to it for the banks - most locals already have banking, immigrants are the one market where you can get new customers without having to push them past the effort/laziness of switching from their existing setup.

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#79
post #63
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not against digital ID, but I am very much against perfect law enforcement. Society evolves, and things that used to be unthinkable (eg gay marriage) slowly become acceptable. To become acceptable, however, they need to be allowed to be done, even if illegally. If you arrested every homosexual the moment they kissed someone, then homosexuality would never have become legal. Perfect enforcement leads to an ossifie…

> Every dystopian film or movie starts with some tyrannical society and a resistance movement. Now imagine you made resistance impossible, which is what perfect law enforcement will do. I dunno, the Nazis did a fucking good job without Digital ID. They weren't overthrown by a resistance movement, they were crushed by the combined might of the Allied and Soviet armies.

You kinda prove the point with it. Nazis killed more Jews in places with more complete and accurate population registers too. If the municipality already has a list of all the people in one table and records their faith or ethnic origin you just need to get it.

Re: Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

#80
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not against digital ID, but I am very much against perfect law enforcement. Society evolves, and things that used to be unthinkable (eg gay marriage) slowly become acceptable. To become acceptable, however, they need to be allowed to be done, even if illegally. If you arrested every homosexual the moment they kissed someone, then homosexuality would never have become legal. Perfect enforcement leads to an ossifie…

Case in point is actually the Netherlands, which is the country the GP is from. When the Nazis took over the Netherlands, they relied on the state's exceptional record keeping of individuals to hunt down the undesirables. Many people died that didn't have to die because the bad guys were enabled by the data systems built by the good guys. > It will be a perfect dictatorship that can never be toppled, it can only get…

You don't even have to go back to Nazis. Just mention Toeslagenaffair of 2004-2019.
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