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FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

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Re: FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

#251

Post by thegrim33 »

autoexec wrote: post #233
packetlost wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is the butt of every government inefficiency complaint I always find DMV (or whatever your state's equivalent) inefficiency arguments to be hilarious. They're run extremely efficiently for the government . They suck use because of that (long wait times, most important stuff gets shipped by mail weeks later).

> I always find DMV (or whatever your state's equivalent) inefficiency arguments to be hilarious. They're run extremely efficiently for the government. It's real funny until they pass a law that says you need an ID to vote and then immediately close the only DMV anywhere near where you live specifically because they want to keep you and your neighbors from voting ( https://www.yahoo.com/news/feds-called-investigate-a…

Ah yes, the good 'ol "link to an article as proof of my claims, the article then contains multiple links to proof of the article's claims, and the multiple links, when followed, all end up leading to 404 pages with no content." Well, that convinces me.

Re: FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

#252

Post by LorenPechtel »

ethagnawl wrote: post #123

I know some modern, normal countries have done variations of this but the US missed a golden opportunity to give everyone an RSA keypair when they were coerced into signing up for an Enhanced/REAL ID. Instead of scanning, taking photos of or holding licences up to webcams (I was asked to do this recently) you provide your public key or, better, a signed message containing the name, website or other identifier which g…

And the government keeps the database truly secure? You're providing a single point of compromise that would be incredibly valuable. If nothing else, it would be cracked the XKCD way.

Re: FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

#253

Post by ericmay »

k33n wrote: post #246
ericmay wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks have provided great information. It's up to you to decide to accept the facts or continue to double down on your private worldview, but it won't serve you well to be ignorant of the facts here.

You and that other guy made good points from a constitutional law standpoint, don’t misunderstand my disagreement for dismissal of any kind. A legal term of art is often a bit different than the basic word itself. From a legal term of art perspective, I’m essentially referencing “absolute sovereignty”, which would more closely mirror the actual dictionary definition of sovereignty, as a basic, contextless word.

I would just say that we should be mindful that the legal definition is how things are implemented in practice as well - states exercise their sovereign rights on a daily basis because the exercise of those rights is the exercise of an interpretation of law.

Related to your point about absolute sovereignty I wouldn't disagree with you at all, but I would say that, and I'm not accusing you of doing this by any means, we should be mindful not to shift the goalposts and attempt to depress the meaning and significance of sovereignty just because an entity isn't also absolutely sovereign.

Re: FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

#254

Post by einsteinx2 »

gnz11 wrote: post #102
2legit2quit wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is there not a system that allows a business or other service to ask for government identification that is encrypted and only visible to government, but that allows a business to ask for certain details, required for the operation of the business (eg confirmation of driving license, or age)? Generally speaking, it's the narrative of a pushback on a "national id". Many countries already have this place. Estonia…

Yes, which is part of a wider narrative in the US that insists everything must be privatized because the government cannot be trusted or is otherwise incompetent.

The irony I’ve always found in that statement is that while it’s true that the government can’t be trusted and is generally incompetent, it’s also true of private companies. So even though it’s a true statement at face value, it’s still not a good argument for privatization which is just trading one set of incompetent and corrupt people for another set of the same but with even less oversight.

Re: FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

#255

Post by LorenPechtel »

thephyber wrote: post #186
swingboy wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would probably be considered “disenfranchising” because people would have a hard time keeping track of their public key and the process to recover it would involve having to take off work, transportation, etc.

Ah yes, a facetious jab at legitimate criticisms of Voter ID laws. It's worth pointing out that the point of contact for state IDs is the DMV, which is the butt of every government inefficiency complaint. If, instead, it was done at USPS offices or even by postal workers on their routes, no one would complain. It's entirely about whether the burden is placed on the citizen to maintain their Constitutionally guarantee…

Voter ID laws aren't about fraud. The amount of fraudulent voters required to sway an election would be a massive operation that could not be kept secret. But it's a distraction from the real issue: vote fraud by improperly denying people access to the ballot box.

Sure, you can get an ID cheap. Most of the time. But if all of your ID is lost (which can easily happen to the victim of a purse snatching) it's going to take time and money to fix the problem. And voter registrations are not supposed to be permitted to be challenged too close to the election. Not supposed to be doesn't mean it doesn't happen repeatedly, though. This scales much, much better than sending in fraudulent ballots. We find a handful of fraudulent ballots, often by Republicans trying to prove fraud is easy. 2016 and 2024 both had more people denied access by ID laws, challenges and the like than the margin of victory. And those missing votes would have skewed heavily Democrat.

Almost forgot: SAVE puts a very onerous paper trail on divorced women. They'll need copies of the paperwork changing back to their maiden name--something an awful lot of them don't have. I've already seen a variation on this with RealID. A mistake was made at my wife's naturalization, a hyphen crept into her name that didn't belong, went unnoticed for years. Even when it was discovered it was a so-what. Social security had an errant hyphen, everything else was as intended. No problem. Then RealID came along--and she had to do a legal name change in order to change her name to what her ID and passport said. Weeks and hundreds of dollars.

Denying legitimate voters is just as much fraud as permitting fraudulent ones. A system in which the the former happens at least 10,000x as often as the latter is not a good system.

Re: FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

#256

Post by wolvoleo »

herbst wrote: post #134
wolvoleo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the case already? Here in many European countries it already is. They're always warning about that when there's a big breach and people download it to see what's in it about them. Not that they're going to prosecute half the country of course but still.

There are also very very strict rules for companies that use or process this kinda of data and how they need to save and handle it. Hence why it's basically illegal to use US based services for anything with real data these days. I wish it would be more enforced and controlled tho.

Yeah it's not at all.

Everyone just gets away with everything.

Recently a bit dutch ISP was hacked and it turned out they kept millions of former customers' details way way beyond any normal lifecycle term. People were still in there that hadn't had anything to do with that company for a decade. This is illegal in the EU but even after this practice was exposed by the leak, the personal data authority just let it all slide.

They also sent out a press release pooh-poohing the consequences for affected (ex-)customers and all they did in compensation was to give a "free" antimalware subscription that was basically advertising just like the few months of mcafee crap you get with a new computer. But all we get from regulators and politicians alike is crickets.

Re: FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

#257

Post by autoexec »

thegrim33 wrote: post #251
autoexec wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always find DMV (or whatever your state's equivalent) inefficiency arguments to be hilarious. They're run extremely efficiently for the government. It's real funny until they pass a law that says you need an ID to vote and then immediately close the only DMV anywhere near where you live specifically because they want to keep you and your neighbors from voting ( https://www.yahoo.com/news/feds-called-investigate-a…

Ah yes, the good 'ol "link to an article as proof of my claims, the article then contains multiple links to proof of the article's claims, and the multiple links, when followed, all end up leading to 404 pages with no content." Well, that convinces me.

If you were looking for how the investigation ended here's the press release from the USDOT https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-department-t...

Re: FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

#258

Post by iamnothere »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #248
embedding-shape wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the U.S. I can lawfully use violence in many ways under many circumstances. I.E. if you’re in my house and I didn’t invite you there, I can slay you lawfully. Yes, and you can do so, because the government and state says it's OK to do so. If they didn't, it wouldn't. This is the core idea. > In the U.S. the federal government is not the only institution responsible for law making or law enforcement. It is not on…

All those entities are "allowed to use violence" because your government says it's OK. I don't know if you're in the US, but that's simply not how our Constitution works. "Monopoly on violence" is just something some people made up. It's meaningless, just some empty words on paper. (Which is also true for the Constitution itself, of course. But if you're talking about the theoretical and philosophical basis for lawma…

It’s funny because the whole notion of a monopoly on violence is very traditional and tightly coupled to the Westphalian notion of statehood, yet I often see that the first people to cite the monopoly on violence are also the ones undermining the Westphalian state model.

In any case all the old gods are dead or dying, including old ideas of statehood, so enjoy the ride, everyone.

Re: FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

#259

Post by mulmen »

alistairSH wrote: post #130
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Which is insane. The federal government already knows who we are, via SSN, tax returns, and whatever else. The state already knows via tax returns, driver's license, and whatever else. "They can already send a drone to watch you and track your cell location and, and, and, why does it matter if they also slap up a million AI powered cameras?" The comprehensiveness of the system matters.

Not sure how you jump from "ID with chip" to "AI-based drone and camera network". We can do one without the other.

Your failure of imagination doesn’t make national ID a good idea.

This is Chesterton’s Fence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...

Re: FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

#260

Post by wwweston »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #47

> vendors who collect this sensitive data need to be held to a higher standard. They already do that, in Europe. I assume that it works, as I don’t hear about this level of stuff, over there (though it could be because I am not plugged into European news). One thing about the US, is that companies that have the means, can afford regulatory capture, or even strait-up bribery. This is often magnified, at the local leve…

Worth noting this dynamic when people overgeneralize “local government good, federal government bad”, a tendency that has been present and growing for at least 50 years.

The theory that local government is more accountable and responsive seems to be pretty deeply broken, what actually seems to happen is that localities lack a critical mass of attention and focus for real responsiveness and accountability.

Or the American character in general does.

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