Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies • Hacker News Board

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#141

Post by archsurface » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

DetroitThrow wrote: post #90

chrisseaton wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are also incredibly xenophobic The Swiss are xenophobic? Eh? They welcome people from all over the world to come together to work towards peace and humanitarianism in their country. They host the only truly international humanitarian organisation in the world. They helped build many of the institutions that try to reduce conflict. Calling them xenophobic is bizarre.

>Calling them xenophobic is bizarre. You don't think the referendums on banning minarets and burqas are... Xenophobic in any form?

I would no more like minarets in very country than i like starbucks and mcdonalds in every country. It seems to me the anti-xenphobia people are in fact killing off cultures as they create a single global mishmash culture. The excitement and adventure of travel is on its way to dead.

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#142

Post by DetroitThrow » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

Shacklz wrote: post #128

rdevsrex wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They is a over generalization. I’m American and black and my wife is Swiss and I have plenty of friends who are also Swiss and nothing but welcoming. Also xenophobic is unclear. Having a strict immigration policy is not xenophobic. You should be more precise.

He might be referring to a few laws/initiatives that passed in the last few years/decades - e.g., the initiative that forbids minarets (even though there were almost none to begin with; it was essentially a political stunt). Or the 'burka ban', which just got a slight majority today. Also, the biggest party (SVP) often uses very controversial advertisement, which I can easily imagine to be interpreted as xenophobic b…

There have been many kind Swiss I've come to meet with the kindness to include those very different than them; Geneva is one of my favorite places in the world.

To dismiss a whole people as xenophobic as OP did I think is very much an overgeneralization, but I think a large part of Swiss culture is certainly more xenophobic than even nearby European countries - accepting that is an ugly part of the situation does not mean the Swiss people should be any less proud of what they've built over the years.

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#143

Post by slg » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #115

DetroitThrow wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Calling them xenophobic is bizarre. You don't think the referendums on banning minarets and burqas are... Xenophobic in any form?

Xenophobia is a loaded term. There could be any number of reasons why they're voting against those things. And so what if they dislike certain foreign cultures? It's their country, and they can accept who they want, or not. Or is Democracy suddenly not okay if the will of the people is misaligned with the "greater" society's views? Which, I would also argue, isn't conclusively in the camp that "xenophobia = bad". If…

>Or is Democracy suddenly not okay if the will of the people is misaligned with the "greater" society's views?

Yes exactly this. One of Democracy's greatest flaws is that is is often misaligned with the greater good. Almost every example of expanded civil rights that have occurred in recent memory was wildly unpopular at one point and was delayed by democratic mob rule until persistent effort was able to eventually turn the tide of public opinion.

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#144

Post by ClumsyPilot » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 8:11 PM UTC

xxpor wrote: post #107

Bancakes wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean 'other Europeans'? There's a great variety of culture in Europe, it's a densely packed continent.

There really isn't. Europeans consistently wildly overestimate the difference in cultures between countries. The language barriers probably don't help there.

Compared to what? Are cultural difference between US, Canada and mexico any greater than those between Switzerland, Italy and Russia?

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#145

Post by null_object » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

nickez wrote: post #70

esja wrote: post #8

Quite a few people who voted against this did so purely because they didn’t want private companies controlling the system. If the proposal had been for the government to issue and control the identities, it may well have passed.

In Sweden we have a company running the ID system and that works fine. The company is coowned by all the large banks afaik. I was really surprised at how far behind Switzerland is compared to Scandinavia when it comes to digitalisation. Being able to handle my life hassle free online instead of going to physical places (like post office, banks, gov office) is liberating. I also get all my bills digitally and all my r…

I think pride and patriotism means you’re overstating your case here.

Indeed as you say, a subgroup of the largest Swedish private banks own the ID system in Sweden - for profit, and without any serious democratic oversight.

Edit: I forgot to add that the system allows these private banks to see into almost every aspect of a person’s life: where they shop, where they are, who shares their household and so on. Almost every aspect of a Swede’s life can and is tracked by this system.

Every time someone identifies themselves with this system, it costs the retail merchant or service a non-trivial amount of money. Because it’s effectively a private monopoly, that price is set by the banks, and often involves a lot of secret horse-trading behind closed doors (I’ve been involved with some aspects of this in the past).

The secret negotiations also include terms that are not open to public scrutiny. One example, is that the merchant or service isn’t allowed to blame BankID for any problems such as downtime or any other technical problems.

btw I’m curious how you get all your receipts digitally. There are some services such as Kivra in Sweden, but they definitely don’t cover all stores.

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#146

Post by _v7gu » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 8:13 PM UTC

marcod wrote: post #79

wombatmobile wrote: post #55

Switzerland has an awesome electoral system [1]. Instead of being ruled by a president or a prime minister who can be polarising, divisive, or selective, Switzerland has an Executive Council. The 7 member Executive Council is composed of the top 7 candidates from each election. The chairperson of the executive council rotates each year, so that the top 4 vote winners each get a turn at being chairperson. This means t…

Well, that same system also voted on banning Muslim face coverings ("Experts estimate that at most a few dozen Muslim women wear full-face coverings in the country of 8.5 million people."), while a pandemic is going on and face coverings for protection are recommended. https://apnews.com/article/health-legislation-coronavirus-pa...

Burqua isn't islamic to begin with anyway.

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#147

Post by DetroitThrow » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 8:13 PM UTC

nec4b wrote: post #134

DetroitThrow wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Calling them xenophobic is bizarre. You don't think the referendums on banning minarets and burqas are... Xenophobic in any form?

Why, do you think it is a human right for men to force women to wear burqas? There are plenty of articles of lately how SF doesn't allow building high rises, which prevents migration and yet nobody calls them xenophobic.

I do think people regularly criticize zoning policy like that in SF as racist, though. A quick Google search seems to yield many criticisms, actually.

If you present a question as a falsifiable test to whether people are consistent in calling out discrimination, I would hope you would be open to changing your mind on the issue rather than simply convince yourself there is instead a conspiracy when new evidence is presented...

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#148

Post by noahtallen » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 8:14 PM UTC

isodev wrote: post #132

bondarchuk wrote: post #5

Almost every politician wants more power over citizens. That is why a binding popular referendum is necessary in cases like these. Congrats to the Swiss people, I am a little bit jealous.

I don’t think the eID gives the government control over its people... if anything I feel it’s the opposite - one gains the freedom to manage their identity service directly and save some time because it just works across all government/bank/insurance services.

Indeed. The current American system based on bits of paper you have to remember about, or insecure ID numbers used as identification (SSN) just causes a lot of pain, imo. Having a central ID for each citizen at birth, and then a way to prove that you match that ID would make so many services much more secure and convenient. (Obtaining DL, getting loans, bank accounts, name changes, tax, etc)

I agree there should be safeguards against a rogue or even non-rogue person modifying these records to hurt someone.

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#149

Post by halflings » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 8:14 PM UTC

yurielt wrote: post #125

tompagenet2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The banning of minarets is a data point against this liberty.

That banning is only a point against liberty if your definition of liberty is very American (religion above welfare of people) for most people maintaining the culture that gives that liberty is as important as liberty so changing that culture would obviously destroy the possibility of that liberty I really do not understand why people simply close this eyes when this bans go against Catholics and christians but freak…

That had nothing to do with "separation of church and state". It was banning private individuals to use a specific form of architecture. Pretty much any country in the world allows building mosques with minarets... did they threaten anyone's liberty / change their culture?

Going back to GP's point, the deeper issue is that people thought this was worth writing in the constitution. Other countries apply such laws in different ways, so I don't think the Swiss direct democracy is to blame here.

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#150

Post by jeffrallen » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 8:15 PM UTC

ncphil wrote: post #81

"... almost no government has the IT capacity and resources to single-handedly develop an eID quickly and to the appropriate standards." Bullshit. We're talking identity management here. Any government that can't handle that internally doesn't deserve to exist. What that's really about is feathering the nests of tech industry donors (and/or the non-tech middlemen or middlewomen who seem to grow like weeds around the…

I don't think you could do it in six months, but the good news is you wouldn't need to. Passports already have an x509 certificate in them saying, "we are the government, and this is Jeff". So the government already know how to do this, they just were trying to give a gift to their buddies in private industry and they got caught and got their hand slapped by the citizens.

There's actually nothing new here: digital IDs were already a thing, corruption has always been a thing, and the referendum process worked correctly to remind the politicians who is in charge.