Live data from Hacker News

FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

gitlab.com

351–360 of 399 posts

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#351
post #95

I had another version of this at the DMV. They needed to see bills that offered proof of my residence (ie power/water/etc). Turns out they wanted them to be mailed to you, which wasn't going to work because I do paperless billing for everything. So I printed them out and tri-folded them as if it had been in an envelope. People in front of me in line got turned away for using printed bills, but mine worked just fine.

Yes, they also do this for ID's, and for voter ID's. It's specifically created to prevent people whom don't have only 1 permanent address,with paper billing, being able to live their daily lives. I had to go to a local county courthouse 4 times to get a "realid" and to renew a driver's license. I had to call all sorts of people to get printed statements sent to me. It's incredibly ridiculous, I would call it complete…

> I had to go to a local county courthouse 4 times to get a "realid" and to renew a driver's license.

If you have a passport... no need for a "real ID" driver license.

If you don't like having to carry that big book around, other solutions include a federal passport card (USD 65) [1]. Same size, so fits in wallet. Bonus is it does not have my address on it, nor does it show what state I live in.

If you're a legal non-citizen, you can use the passport of your home country (which you're required to have in the USA, and should carry with you when you travel anyway).

[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-pa...

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just requiring ID, it's closing polling places, discarding mail-in ballots, and a whole host of techniques designed to "ensure the quality of voters". And these techniques disproportionately affect voters of color and the poor. Also when I was a kid (20 years ago) no ID was required to vote. Actual voter fraud is incredibly, vanishingly rare. But the lie that it is common is used to drum up support for these…

I'm astonished that anyone would advocate for voting without some sort of Id. If you cant drink, drive or get a library card without an ID you shouldn't be able to vote. The Id laws that states do have on the books are incredibly liberal in what type of Id is acceptable to vote . Texas, a state lots of people are quick to assert has suppressive voter ID laws, doesn't even require a picture ID or original documents. I…

I'm not really advocating for it, but I am pointing out that for whatever reason this was apparently the way things were done in the USA for voting for a long time. So as astonishing as it may seem on the face of it, there is some historical precedent that it is actually a very normal idea.

But as I said, this is not just about IDs. There are a whole host of laws being introduced, typically by republicans, that do definitely have the effect of disenfranchising poor people and people of color, who tend to be the political opponents of the people introducing the laws.

Closing poll places for example. They will suggest closing down polling places in poor neighborhoods, using some extremely thin disguise over their motives. It seems obvious to any person who believes in one person, one vote, that the color of your skin or the amount of money in your bank account is no reason to degrade someone's ability to vote. But we see long lines at polling places, where some people have to stand in line for many hours to vote! An obvious failure of democracy.

And they strike voters off of voter roles, going after people with hispanic names for example, finding a "Rosalind Sanchez" and a "Rosa Sanchez" in some city and deciding, based on that information alone, that this is a "duplicate voter" and disqualifying one voter's vote from being counted.

There is a transparent effort to block people from voting, and voting with ID is used as a talking point to steer the conversation away from the more egregious side of their efforts.

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#353
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Poverty traps are emergent phenomena, not a conspiracy Except that when everyone knows what a poverty trap is, how they form, how to spot them, and what to do about them, and none of that gets done, we start to fall on the opposite side of Hanlon’s razor. It’s not like that scholarship is new or controversial, so why is this still a problem?

Everyone knows what lightning is, when it forms, what to do about it (go inside), and why it's dangerous. Yet still, somehow, people get struck by lightning. It's not like this knowledge is new or controversial, so why is this still a problem? Does this clarify things a bit? I'd like to find a better rhetorical method than just swapping out terms, but it really does highlight the point here. Can we conclude that gove…

Many poverty traps exist because they can be a lucrative enterprise. People in poverty are generally the most vulnerable to begin with.

Curbing people's ability to leverage poverty traps for profit in a capitalist system would reduce how many people get stuck in them.

In general, government legislation can and does directly affect poverty rates as well as who is most likely to be affected.

People will argue about the effectiveness and intent of government actions to ameliorate/impose poverty. Claiming that it is outside of a government's influence is nonsense.

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#354

I hate PDF's with a passion. Not once have I ever wanted to use one. All the pinching and zooming, such a waste of time. I'm giving this a shot next time I need one, the whole scanner thing needs to go. Are we stuck in the 90's? Just bought another rental and it was an ordeal trying to find a scanner. Tried the college near me, was denied as you have to be a student. The library is closed down apparently. FedEx didn'…

I was told by a convenience store clerk that it's best to simply write "SEE ID" in place of a credit card signature. In the event the card is stolen, or there is some doubt as to its user, perhaps the criminal would be stupid enough to actually show their ID.

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they also do this for ID's, and for voter ID's. It's specifically created to prevent people whom don't have only 1 permanent address,with paper billing, being able to live their daily lives. I had to go to a local county courthouse 4 times to get a "realid" and to renew a driver's license. I had to call all sorts of people to get printed statements sent to me. It's incredibly ridiculous, I would call it complete…

It's also designed to make sure that poorer people who don't have stable, permanent housing have a tough time

and more directly, to keep them from voting.

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t help but see this as some sort of propaganda. Where’s the evidence this is a concerted effort against poor people? You can’t do much in life without ID.

It's not just requiring ID, it's closing polling places, discarding mail-in ballots, and a whole host of techniques designed to "ensure the quality of voters". And these techniques disproportionately affect voters of color and the poor. Also when I was a kid (20 years ago) no ID was required to vote. Actual voter fraud is incredibly, vanishingly rare. But the lie that it is common is used to drum up support for these…

Not to mention having biased election volunteers look at your ID and deem it fake or a "different signature." You can take them to court, but by then the election is over, so it doesn't matter. There's so many ways for the Republicans to corrupt the vote and they've had great success in doing so thus far, so why not go deeper down that path? Who is going to stop them? Democrats who even with a majority can't get a caucus going due to there always being conservative democrats who are pretty much republicans and loyal to republican causes.

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#357
I used to use tools like these but then I wondered - why do I "need" to make an image look scanned? Why do I have to add all this noise to the image before sending it over? Why can't I just take a photo of whatever I need to send and leave it at that?

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#358
post #336
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you go to my local library and tell them you want a library card, but you don't have any ID, they ask you to give them your address. They send you a postcard, and when you bring it in, they'll give you a library card. No QR code necessary. The USPS could function quite successfully as an ID system and a bank, were they allowed.

Most countries whose postal service offered banking stopped. Know why?

Wikipedia had a pretty good summary of implementation in different countries[0]. It seems most implementations are stopped because of privatization efforts, but the blurbs don't give much context.

I can see people having different opinions of this trend. What is your take on it?

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_savings_system

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#359
post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the mechanism is indirect. After 9/11, Congress wanted to make it difficult to falsify IDs. The optimization was to maximize the probability that an ID is real and correct if an ID is presented to board a plane. Unfortunately there’s was no constraint that the process shouldn’t prevent people from getting IDs or make it easy. Poor people don’t have enough of a voice for Congress to care. Poor people are exclu…

I also know directly from people running state DMV offices (and also coincidentally or not, in the official GOP power structure) that there was a serious effort for drivers licenses from all states to be more standardized and validated by the process that became RealID. This was around 1995-7, so 9/11 had zero infuence on the origin of this idea, although it likely helped provide justification for it. That said, I fi…

I wonder if it took two decades because it was an unfunded rider to an Iraq war emergency spending bill added with next to no discussion in Congress. Yes, I'm annoyed, but I imagine the lack of enthusiasm many others shared at the time contributed to the dilatory implementation.

Re: FalsiScan: Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#360
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do not have a physical address (e.g., live on a boat / in an RV), our local DMV will tell you to use the street address of a local homeless shelter. This probably won't get you past the requirement of utility bills in your name at that address to get a "Real ID" that allows domestic flights without a passport, though. Same thing for getting a PO box, you need a physical address first. The post office will tell…

What if you're living in a van because #vanlife and you want to drive around the country nomadically for a couple years and not because you are actually financially qualified to be homeless? Like, what if you are a millionaire living in a fancy RV driving around national parks for a couple years?

Former van-denizen here. I always used friends' addresses (with their permission, for a limited amount of time) when I needed to get important docs or plates. Usually it's not too hard to find someone to let you receive some mail at their house. Utility bills were always a problem for me, but there are usually ways around. Proof of filing a tax return in-state is enough in most cases, even if you're not "at" that address anymore.
Post reply on HN