I don't understand, if you actually assume that ID screening is actually 100% useless (in reality it probably has some reduction), you wouldn't screen at all yes.
If you disagree with the premise that ID screening is 100% useless, then dig up some evidence of its effectiveness.
Sorry, I was trying to summarise there because the points get repeated a lot. I'm not saying that all ID checks are easy to bypass, but that:
- a lot of people do not want effective ID checks, for a lot of reasons
- effective ID checks are not necessarily easy or even feasible to implement (this may vary depending on your region/government)
- there's a fair chance (some would say high likelihood) that any implemented ID checks are not effective
- ineffective ID checks can fail to do what they were supposed to do (age gating) while still having negative impacts (reduced privacy, more data to the datalords, lower barriers to law enforcement access to your activity, connecting government ID with day-to-day identity, etc.)
The direct purpose of any ID system is for the state to assert more control over the population, by making it harder to plausibly deny one's identity, and therefore easier to punish for disobedience. It's historical good luck that many of us live in countries and at times where this is actually a good deal, and I think it's a mistake to dismiss the opposite end of the argument as "absurd".
I don't think photo ID's are an effective certificate for proving identity.
So why are we even talking about them? Photo IDs are the solution being discussed here, not some theoretical has-yet-to-be-invented technology that is indistinguishable from magic. You wrote why do we keep excusing people from having a basic mechanism to prove who they say they are? in the context of a mechanism that doesn't do that...so what exactly is the point of introducing a very costly "solution" to a non-existent problem that doesn't actually solve anything?
It still wouldn't work. People will complain that either they are not properly checking people are who they say they are or they will say it is too difficult to get an id and it will disenfranchise the poor/minorities.
This is not a retort. The claim is not that photo ID is unforgeable. The claim is that "it would ameliorate a lot if it meant that people had to show up in person somewhere".
I don't think the process of getting an ID is optimal but it is not an excuse for having lax ID requirement rules either, which is an argument I often hear.
It would get them out of the ID business, or yield federal dollars to be in that business.
It would also streamline lots of use cases that require ID. Various federal programs administered by states require that you authenticate people in different ways. The states spend millions to do a shitty job (driven by Fed requirements) for unemployment, social services, Medicaid, etc.
You're repeatedly making the argument that requirements to obtain ID are too onerous. Perhaps what's broken is the process for getting that ID. Let's look for ways to streamline that process so that it's less of a burden.
Exactly. It's a terrible tool for that job and wasn't designed for it, but there's such a great need for something like that, that businesses and governments have grabbed onto it anyway, for lack of something better.
Despite what might be described as an absolutely huge market signal that there's desire and need for this, resistance to actual national ID is so high among elected officials that propositions for it have, so far, always been DOA. Maybe national IDs really are terrible and it's worth the shared-over-the-population pain and expense not having one causes in a modern society and economy, IDK.
If you disagree with the premise that ID screening is 100% useless, then dig up some evidence of its effectiveness.
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