In the U.S., identity providing is not a role the government fills. Not everyone has to have a passport, for example. A passport is merely a purpose-specific tool for crossing borders, not general identity.
You have plenty of government id's in the US as well. Driver licenses, tax number, birth certificates ...
I think often people mess up the subjects of privacy, freedom and a government provided id. You can have privacy and freedom even if you have a government issued id. And you can have your privacy and freedom taken away from you without the government giving you standardized way of proving your id.
You can’t have privacy if everyone uses the government as an SSO.
People might be more amenable if SSO wasn’t implemented as these stupid OIDC flows where the govt gets to know every time you login to your bank and what IP you’re using, etc.
> You can’t have privacy if everyone uses the government as an SSO.
Why not? Anonymous cryptographic attestation methods (e.g. of only the fact that you are over 18 years old, that you are a permanent resident etc.) exist.
But you can if you live in a well functioning democratic society - remember the alternative is not no id but privatized for profit identity providers like Google and Facebook.
Well functioning democratic society is and idea that US explicitly rejects, because democratic society can point a finger at you and that doesn't feel nice.
A well functioning democratic society is one of the valid states before an autocratic regime. The Nazi party was elected.
Apart from regime changes, being a functional democratic society doesn’t protect you from technical incompetence nor does it limit the ability for people with access to the DB from abusing it.
Android and iOS now support driving licenses for seven states. They’re working on an anonymous credential library to allow you to authenticate and verify to websites, and you can use tap-to-ID with TSA. You’re right that not everyone has a DMV-issued ID but other than that, we’re pretty close to having an optional national electronic ID.
In Norway our BankID system, which is similar to what the Danes have, is owned by the banks, and is a run by a private company.
While I personally think that in principle it should be run by the government.
It works well enough, and it is imo. proof that it does not have to be run by the government.
Federal government or governmemts in general? As far as I get, driver licenses are doing in US what id cards are doing in Europe and are issued by governments too.
While a driver's license does normally fill that role, it's not mandated and not everyone has a driver's license (or even a state issued ID).
Some stuff like voting you can use something like a utility bill. Some stuff will want your birth certificate. Some stuff will want multiple types of documents.
Americans have historically been against mandated government IDs (though mostly with the concept of a federal/national ID).
This whole thread is going to motte & bailey between the various forms of US gov ID. Between the union of {SSN, birth cert, driver's license (or ID in lieu thereof)}, it seems to be there's the equivalent of a federal ID. Just, like everything else we do, a terrible incomprehensible mess to Europeans.
My employer requires an SSN when I start a job. TSA keeps alleging they're going to require Real ID any day now. Voting, if I have my jurisdiction's requirements right, requires an SSN, though most people will experience that in the form of driver's license, since getting a license is usually automatic voter registration where I've lived.
Well, what I was replying to is about who is providing the service. Whether or not the service is mandatory is a different one. I know places on the European continent where having id and registered address is mandatory, but the fine for noncomplience is about 1 EUR.
And the worst part is a federal ID would not enable tracking any more than your employers withholding wages for tax purposes and paying into Social Security does, but every time a federal ID has been proposed (which would be really useful as a way to keep SSNs from becoming something you have to disclose to everyone and their dog) it's been shut down by the "it's all a road to tyranny" crowd.
I could get a Real ID that reads "1060 W Addison St" today. All I have to do is pirate Acrobat, change the addresses on PDFs downloaded from the websites of my bank and power company, and walk into an Illinois Secretary of State office, as that's enough for the residency portion of a Real ID. They do not double-check any of this information, and I know this works because I had to edit a power bill PDF so my SO would have a second document for proof of residency. All it would take is one phone call to find out I'm the only one listed on the account, but it was never verified.
Why anyone thinks a federal ID would enable mass surveillance and tracking is beyond me. The NSA doesn't need a unified federal ID to track us, and law enforcement isn't exactly foiled by people who hold fake IDs or who have no IDs whatsoever (unless being undocumented or Amish is some magical "get out of jail free" card).
The government is already tracking things like your financial investments. Except now, they're doing it in a disconnected and sprawling way, centered around your SSN. Which is insecure.
I'm very paranoid about tracking and privacy, but the reality is that identity verification is just a necessary part of some services. Like opening a brokerage account, or riding a plane. So, if we HAVE to do it, we should have a more secure way of doing it. There's no reason we should be relying on easily-gathered 9 digit numbers.
Ironically, lax to nonexistent data privacy laws and the ubiquitous use of SSNs as globally unique identifiers are achieving exactly the outcome that the lack of government ID verification purportedly achieves.
