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Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

swissinfo.ch

341–350 of 423 posts

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

#341
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with banning a backwards custom that limits women's rights?

Because the presumption is that the women in question are being forced to do this and don't want to. But your solution is to implement a law which punishes the victim, rather then doing anything about their presumed victimizer. If the women who didn't want to wear the covering didn't want to wear it, what is stopping them from simply not doing it to start with? The answer of course is husband's, brothers, family etc.…

I imagine the women are not physically forced (or maybe only some are) but instead are “educated” from childhood that this is the way. How would you solve it then?

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

#342
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes? You fill in the form in on your computer and can file it digitally. And if you print it it‘s encoded in a format similar to QR codes. Tax offices are fully digital since at least 10 years. If you file with paper it‘s scanned and destroyed. Your local tax office receives all the documents digitally. Of course this could vary by canton.

> Of course this could vary by canton. It does. Zurich still sends me a thick envelope with the 20 pages and tells me to throw away 90% of it if I do my taxes digitally.

In backward Wallis, I've been receiving a single folded A3 page for at least 5 years. And since last year, I could even snapshot the substantiating documents with my mobile and attach them to my digital tax form if I wanted to.

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

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our country rolled out two certification based systems (Carta Nazionale Servizi which then got rolled into the Carta di Identità Elettronica), plus a federation based system built around SAML (Sistema Pubblico di Identità Digitale) where you can access to most italian bureoucracy. And we're talking about Italy, not some first rated technological paradise.

Yes and now your picture, a picture of your id card, your email and telephone are in the hands of the same people who store banking passwords in plaintext..

The goal of SPID (the authentication system) is to let more citizens access to government services without going physically going to a place, and this goal is kinda working right now. During Covid, many italians asked for social welfare from their mobile phones, among other bonuses.

For how it is designed, there are a dozen companies that offer this service. The citizen can choose the one they trust more (there are some small differences between them; some require to pay a small fee; others require you to physically go to an office to be recognized; others offer you an app to login through a QR code...) BUT they are all required to implement industry-standard security. At one of my past jobs, many years ago, I had to implement this login system in a public portal. It was a mess (the technical specification was on a PDF written in bureocratic language) but shortly after a new team overtook the project and created a proper website with SDKs etc. To this day, the only known attacks to SPID were Phishing attacks, that require the user to do some dumb action on their side.

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

#344
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the presumption is that the women in question are being forced to do this and don't want to. But your solution is to implement a law which punishes the victim, rather then doing anything about their presumed victimizer. If the women who didn't want to wear the covering didn't want to wear it, what is stopping them from simply not doing it to start with? The answer of course is husband's, brothers, family etc.…

I imagine the women are not physically forced (or maybe only some are) but instead are “educated” from childhood that this is the way. How would you solve it then?

Massive public education campaign, as is routinely done for many other topics found objectionable by various religions but acceptable in secular society? From birth control to blood transfusions to interest on loans?

At minimum, show the non-religious benefits of doing (or not doing) a thing and why it is relevant for the individual. Don’t punish the victim for doing the thing; if someone must be punished, make it the person imposing the action.

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

#345
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to be precise here. Firstly "accepting a law" implies - in western liberal democracies - a legislative process in which a law is proposed and accepted by some kind of parliament. This is not what happened here - in Switzerland, laws can be given to the population directly by non-parliamentary, non-governmental organisations in referenda, which then become binding. The law you are referring to was accepted by…

Exactly. Genital mutilation of minors is next (Scandinavia is front running here). Nothing judeo-islamophobic, just the protection of what is dear to all of us (in this case bodily autonomy of children), and in no means against circumcision: you may still do it when you are 18, just parents should not be allowed to do it to you. A little tyranny of the majority is not always a bad thing.

> you may still do it when you are 18, just parents should not be allowed to do it to you

You can read this in a positive light or a negative light. I know a guy who had that surgery done as an adult and it was incredibly painful and took a while to fully heal. I want to say it was almost a month. You could certainly argue that it's a lifetime of pain if it's done and you don't like it but that's likely a slippery slope in some regard.

I can agree that we should probably be doing a better job of explaining to parents the pros and cons of each so they make more informed, realistic choices but some of the outrage rhetoric around circumcision is a bit much.

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

#346
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So, while spain sends soldiers to die in Afghanistan, or the UK wastes decades of development on a grand EU project, or US citizens get spied on by their own govt via Patriot Act.... CH is just sitting pretty, doing its thing. Arguing about every little detail to exhaustion. Switzerland can afford to do this because it's surrounded by countries that protect it from the real world. It doesn't have a real foreign poli…

Switzerland used to be surrounded by Nazi Germany on pretty much all sides. They remain independent because they are a mountainous country that set its defenses up cleverly so that any invasion would be a pyrrhic victory at best.

There's this joke in Switzerland: When the war wasn't going so well Hitler sent a note to the Swiss government demanding a supply of tanks. The Swiss council deliberated and responded in due time: "Will one be enough or do you need all six?"

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

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually at the same votation, Switzerland accepted a law which forbid women to wear Burka. Which is not exactly let live.

We need to be precise here. Firstly "accepting a law" implies - in western liberal democracies - a legislative process in which a law is proposed and accepted by some kind of parliament. This is not what happened here - in Switzerland, laws can be given to the population directly by non-parliamentary, non-governmental organisations in referenda, which then become binding. The law you are referring to was accepted by…

The second part of the law in question disallows anyone to order someone else to wear this or that.

Imho that was the deciding part.

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

#348
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

What's wrong with banning a backwards custom that limits women's rights?

I don't know, countering an authoritative practice that affects women's choice with another authoritative practice that affects women's choice kinda just seems dumb.

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

#349
post #107

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.

No, we don't. We have millenia-old nations that have been through what the US is about to be. We've had enough wars, treaties, territory shift, that everyone's family tree is nomadic. To put it simply, there's more culture in a territory the size of Texas, than the whole US combined.

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

#350
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, of course, each of those countries is internally very diverse, and in relation to the others. Each of those countries was made by a mix of native, European, African and Asian peoples of different kinds, in different proportions, at different times. Europe is made of just Europeans, and immigration is a very recent thing.

Is this what American education sounds like? Do you recall that European nations practically ruled the world at different times in history and gladly took in and integrated foreigners? Unlike Americans who mostly wiped out the natives and grandfathered in slaves.
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