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Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

swissinfo.ch

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

#181

Post by kzrdude »

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…

What about the danish NemId, how is it governed and owned, does anyone know?

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

#182

Post by nickez »

null_object wrote: post #179
nickez wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I only shop with stores that use Kivra. BankID doesn't store any information, and I have no problem that the stores I'm a member in store my shipping history. I think you are overstating the scale of the surveillance. I don't think the different entities share data with each other. Edit: try live in a country like Switzerland once you have gotten use to all interaction being online. It's horrible. Edit2: actu…

> BankID doesn't store any information I work with systems that use BankID identification, and know for a fact that you are wrong, because many (though not all) of the data-points collected by the banks can be retrieved for payment. For instance, if you just logged-in with the service I work with, I can retrieve your full-name, birthdate, your marital status, name of your spouse, their birthdate, any children and the…

That is all public data. You can get that through open channels like birthday.se as well. I've been at BankID and I know for a fact exactly what information they store. They store only what is necessary from a regulatory standpoint.

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

#183

Post by nokya »

chrisseaton wrote: post #119
DetroitThrow wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't answer my question, and those aren't opinion polls, the difference between them being whether they are binding. You don't think those constitutional referendums which ban those historically Muslim traditions could be interpreted as xenophobic? You don't seem intent on actually answering my question or even directly addressing it, so I assume you are just gaslighting in bad faith. Good luck.

> those aren't opinion polls What do you think a referendum is, if not a poll of the population's opinion on something? My answer to your question is to look at their actual positive impact all around the world, including for Islamic countries, not their opinions on architecture or dress. I literally don't think there's a more peaceful, welcoming, open-to-others' cultures anywhere in the world than the Swiss. If you…

As a Swiss citizen (my age range is 40-50), I can only provide my own witness account about what you just wrote: I think you're completely wrong.

The fact that some Swiss were able to contribute immensely to a "positive impact all around the world" doesn't magically turn us into a nice and warm population, open to other people's cultures. A large part of the population hates foreigners, considers them as opportunists and job stealers, if not criminals. This is not a "Swiss", it's the same everywhere in the world.

The difference is that Swiss are educated and law abiding xenophobes: a foreigner will rarely feel insecure in Switzerland and discrimination will mostly be silent. As opposed to a country like the USA where racists are empowered with a low likelihood of criminal charges.

But that doesn't mean in any way that a foreigner is more welcome in Switzerland than elsewhere. If you sincerely believe this, it could only indicate you don't share a significant part of your life with foreigners who actually visually look like foreigners.

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

#184

Post by tpush »

nec4b wrote: post #158
DetroitThrow wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And so what if they dislike certain foreign cultures? It's their country, and they can accept who they want, or not. Sure, but they are what we define as unambiguously xenophobic policies, even if it is a broad term which can include much more than that and were democratically enacted. Whether xenophobia is bad is another story - I'm not really sure anyone would find much insight from a discussion about it.

I'm very much against genital mutilation as is practiced in some muslim countries and support bans against such practices in the west. Does that make me a xenophobe?

No, it doesn't. One can oppose (religiously motivated or not) genital mutilation on purely humanistic grounds, completely divorced from any religious concerns.

Banning building minarets has no such justification; just blatant xenophobia.

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

#185

Post by dagw »

null_object wrote: post #179
nickez wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I only shop with stores that use Kivra. BankID doesn't store any information, and I have no problem that the stores I'm a member in store my shipping history. I think you are overstating the scale of the surveillance. I don't think the different entities share data with each other. Edit: try live in a country like Switzerland once you have gotten use to all interaction being online. It's horrible. Edit2: actu…

> BankID doesn't store any information I work with systems that use BankID identification, and know for a fact that you are wrong, because many (though not all) of the data-points collected by the banks can be retrieved for payment. For instance, if you just logged-in with the service I work with, I can retrieve your full-name, birthdate, your marital status, name of your spouse, their birthdate, any children and the…

But surely if someone has your person number then they can retrieve all that information from companies like Ratsit and the like. Is there specific information you can get via BankID that isn't generally available from other 'open' databases?

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

#186

Post by PoignardAzur »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #21
wirrbel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It amazes me how people buy into the right-wing narrative about politicians having invited refugees to Europe, when in fact, the EU is trying hard to keep them from entering in the first place. What might have prevented the refugee crisis might have been if the middle-east region had not been destabilised in the previous decades. And part of that destabilisation is due to the US Republican party pushing for an invasi…

Drives me up the fucking wall. Spend years bombing the shit out of countries and selling arms to despots, then having the gall to complain when refugees from the situation you encouraged turn up on your doorstep. You solve the “refugee crisis” by fostering peace and prosperity in countries that don’t have it, not by spreading lies about it.

> You solve the “refugee crisis” by fostering peace and prosperity in countries that don’t have it, not by spreading lies about it.

That's really not an actionable goal.

Fostering war and misery is really easy, you just have to bomb some places. Fostering peace and prosperity isn't something you can actively do.

Even if you refrain from participating in abroad wars, they still happen. People still rise up against governments they don't like, the governments still violently crush uprisings, etc. The only difference if you get to say it's not your fault.

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

#187

Post by dijit »

edoceo wrote: post #114
RedShift1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Belgium has been doing digital identities for years now, we had our first identity cards with chip and digital signature I think 15 years ago? I frequently use it to sign documents and login to some government stuff. So if Belgium, which didn't have a government 3 out of the last 10 years, can do it, surely Switzerland can do it too.

And Estonia too!

and Sweden. But these are largely outsourced to private companies iirc. There was a scandal in Estonia where they had to recall all the ID's because the main private key which signed them all got leaked (and that key was held by a private company)

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

#188

Post by hocuspocus »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #98
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…

This. In Europe you'll find the likes of Capgemini, Accenture, Cognizant, etc. hovering like flies around government IT projects.

IT services companies that work on government contracts in Switzerland are much smaller.

And they're usually pretty competent, especially the few ones that work for the federal government.

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

#189

Post by Threeve303 »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #178
KorematsuFred wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This only gives more power to government to harass people whom they don't like and who are poor minorities. > having a central ID for each citizen at birth, and then a way to prove that you match that ID This seems a trivial and no-brainer and yet you will be surprised how many Americans will be simply denied this sort of service after birth. Racist law makers would put severe restrictions on people they dont like. I…

> This seems a trivial and no-brainer and yet you will be surprised how many Americans will be simply denied this sort of service after birth The whole "centralized ID means your government will oppress minorities" narrative seems like a mostly american concept. I imagine part of it is due with the US's particularly bad history with minorities, and part of it is a general defiance against any kind of centralization t…

It's odd how we talk about something like centralized identification without the other areas of privacy limiting changes we are experiencing. Online we are tracked, logged and categorized like no other time in history. Even the basic means of conducting a business transaction leaves a digital trail whether it's a wire transfer, credit card transaction or bitcoin payment.

Authoritarian countries have combined a cashless society with 24/7 surveillance of all kinds to create a black mirror style social credit system.

None of this would be possible without first having a form of centralized identity. This will likely be coming soon to a democracy near you due to the level of state control it invites. Someone needs to get working on an ad blocker we can use in real life. I suspect it will be built around aluminum foil.

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

#190

Post by jimmygrapes »

DetroitThrow wrote: post #142
Shacklz wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I only stop by to add that "xenophobia" is not inherently a bad or evil thing. Every culture should have the right to exist, in the land its ancestors built up or conquered - we can argue all day about the correctness of how a given culture and people got to a point where they were able to settle, but the point is that today they are settled and stable. Why attempt to force unsettlement and destabilization through unnecessary "diversity" processes? If you do not fit in to a culture as an individual, but you do fit in to a different culture, why force the one you do not fit to accommodate you when you can be part of one that already accepts you?

Current day exceptions like Donbas, Hong Kong, and Gaza (to name just a few) certainly exist, and there is room for discussion there. There is also an argument that can be held regarding the human and economic cost of getting to a place where the culture fits you.

But to call all attempts to maintain a culture "xenophobic" and therefore associated with a negative... I don't think this is the right way to be.

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