> It is also deputizing museum workers, gym owners, restaurant waitstaff as identity checkers. restaurant waitstaff as identity checkers
Every gym I've ever been a member of requires you to validate your ID. You either swipe your membership card (which has your personal information tied to it), or provide your license to get into the gym. If you can't provide either, they aren't letting you in the door.
Every restaurant in the US is already supposed to validate your ID when you order an alcoholic drink. Bars won't even let you in the door without showing an ID.
I don't think anyone is happy this is required, but when people that are unvaccinated decide to put others at risk because they don't want to be inconvenienced, this is what happens.
> While people in other countries may be used to always having to carry identification, this is rather provocative in a city and state which does not require identification, among other situations, when you register to vote or vote. It is also deputizing museum workers, gym owners, restaurant waitstaff as identity checkers.
Restaurant waitstaff are already regularly “deputized” that way by alcoholic beverage control laws.
> In the US, bars often ask for photo ID to verify that customers are old enough to be served alcohol
If I saw the person pull out a notebook and write my information down I would physically take my ID back and walk away. I'm pretty sure most people would be put off by this action.
> vaccine passport system that turns businesses into government agents
Businesses are government agents in the US, they enforce drinking laws that require you to show id, and somehow no-one in the US seems to have an issue with this.
> I think ideally there would be some kind of verification that the customer was indeed present and that their ID had been verified, but I don’t see how you can do that in the US as there aren’t ID cards or similar forms of universally available ID.
Requiring government issued photo ID for identity verification is not at all an uncommon policy for various purposes in the US, and AFAIK all states have universally available ID cards (they are generally not free of charge, but they are universally available.)
> but it would invite a secondary market for these cards
There are already markets for fake IDs, so unless you're suggesting that small local restaurants purchase scanners to confirm the authenticity of each ID, it would be relatively easy to circumvent this check too. (Some states require IDs to be scanned for selling alcohol, but many, e.g. in Oregon, do not, and the only check is some employee looking at a card in their hands for a couple of seconds)
> Plus having special cards feels corporate
Not at all. Plenty of local restaurants in my are (Portland, OR) have rewards cards, where you get stamps and a free meal after some amount of stamps.
>They are not a government agency with the authority to ask people for government ID,
What? You don't need authority to ask to see someone's ID. I have to show my ID to every cashier when I buy beer, or weed. I give my ID when I take a test drive in a car, when I apply for a rental. There's nothing nefarious about asking for someone's ID and it certainly doesn't require any 'authority'.
> Knowing my mother's maiden name, the history of addresses I've lived at, any of my various ID numbers, account numbers, etc. should not be sufficient to prove identity.
What should be, then?
I'd like to see a compartmentalized ID that doesn't have all the information there in one easily human-readable (or scannable) form. For instance, a bar only really needs to know if you're of legal drinking age. They shouldn't be able to get your exact date of birth, your address, a copy of your photo, etc.
> You can use whatever credential society is willing to trust. Practically that’s a state-issued ID.
Nearly every institution trusts the credentials that it issues. Your employer trusts your ID badge that they issued. Your bank trusts your bank card that they issued. Why does anything else even need to exist?
> All I’m arguing is that we should extend the concept of your state ID cryptographically into cyberspace.
And then it will be designed poorly but everything will start requiring it because the poor design will allow it to be used as a tracking ID (even if it was claimed not to, because malicious corporations are clever), but once everything is using it the poor design will be difficult to change. See social security numbers (which never should have been public).
> A liquor store isn’t going to simply “ask the user” whether they’re of age.
A liquor store doesn't need to verify identity over the internet because you're standing in the liquor store. Unless it's an internet liquor store in which case they already have your identity because you've provided them with payment info and a shipping address, and checking ID at the point of sale is useless when it's the point of delivery you care about, i.e. you need the delivery driver to check it. Otherwise minors can just buy alcohol with an adult's ID unbeknownst to both the seller and the adult, and have it delivered to themselves where nobody checks who receives the package.
You can't verify age over the internet because you have no way to know if the credentials being used are those of the user or someone else. In person you compare the picture on the ID to their face, or can notice if they're clearly a child.
> Users don’t rent safe deposit boxes at banks, and even if they did that would be chained back to your physical ID anyway so your apparent solution isn't a real solution.
The bank doesn't even know what's in the box, and you're not required to use a bank if you don't want to. You can use any safe place you'll still be able to access even if your house burns down etc. A safety deposit box is an example of such a place which is relatively inexpensive. Many people do in fact use them to store important documents -- that's one of the main things they're for.
> The dystopian worries are hyperbolic and mostly FUD. If a service needs your info and you need the service, you’ll give it to them.
If you make it easy to demand then services that don't need the info will demand it, and then you'll give it to them because you need the service. Which is the evil to be prevented, by making it hard to demand, so only services that actually need it will demand it.
> Anyway mobile DL is already happening.
That which is made can be unmade. Easier if done sooner.
> I’d rather a state that I have at least a modicum of control over be the root of my digital identity than some corporate run email system than can evict me without cause.
So buy a domain name for $15/year to use for your email, which you can point to any third party email service if you don't want to host it yourself, and you can point somewhere else if they disappear or become adversarial. Or make it easier for the average person to do this (though it's really not that hard).
ID scans at bars have been normal for at least decade. Have you really never had your ID scanned? I find that hard to believe.
I hate it. There's no good reason to scan my ID when I'm very obviously of legal age. Some of the bars do this for tracking data and to sell your personal info. Some of the bars are lazy and it's a relatively straightforward way to validate your card.
There's a good reason to validate that I have a vaccine, though, because my presence there affects the life of the staff and other customers. I'm not giving up freedom here, because it's not my freedom to put others at risk, and they shouldn't have the freedom to put mine at risk.
Your slippery slope arguments are also really bad. You can already be (and already are) tracked by your cell phone at all times. We don't need vaccine checks to do it. If the scary government was going to come get you, they have more than enough at their disposal currently to do it.
I get and fully support what you're going for, but friendly reminder that (in America) having an ID can actually be somewhat difficult in a variety of circumstances where people are most vulnerable to being left out. It's actually kind of a hot button issue
> Unless they pass a new federal identification law what they are doing is unlawful.
How so? The Federal government can set ID standards in areas that it has jurisdiction over, and reject IDs that don't meet these standards in its jurisdiction, which is all that's happening here.
Like other federal levers over state behavior (No highway funding if your drinking age is under 21!), this is grating, but it's not illegal. This has been going on in one form or another for decades and has been consistently ruled legal, as long as its not an unfunded mandate on the states.
> This feels weird in a society where you can require government id to buy alcohol
Other examples notwithstanding, showing id to buy alcohol doesn't really affect your anonymity because it's a 2-second face-to-face interaction. You can be reasonably sure there's no chance of all the id's containing information to stay in their systems indefinitely. Even immediately after putting the id back in your pocket, even the cashier themselves probably doesn't have any idea who you are, just that they've verified you're over the legal age for drinking.
For most of your other examples, you're showing your id to institutions of your government. That's different than showing your id to private entities. With regards to showing your id when flying on a commercial airline, there's very few airlines when compared to number of websites, they're highly regulated, etc. Institutions of government, highly regulated private entities of huge proportions with huge liabilities, they all get different levels of trust when compared to random websites from who-knows-what jurisdictions.
Sounds like what the parent said, "that's on you" to fix that, then. In the aggregate, your (as well as those similar to you's) business is simply irrelevant to the vast majority of businesses that need to check IDs. Just because you don't want to get such a driver's license does not mean that a restaurant must honor your choice.
> As I understand it, you still need to identify yourself in countries without such an id, like the US or UK, for a lot of reasons, like when opening bank accounts, interacting with the state, etc. But without a national id card, this can become complicated, and these countries often use a lot of defacto ids "replacements" like birth certificates, driver's licenses and so on, which increases the bureaucracy for citizens/customers and potential for fraud.
There is a big difference between having it being compulsory to carry identification and being required to show identification when my identification need to be verified.
When I am buying my lunch. I don't need to verify who I am. If I am going to the bank they need to verify who I am.
> So while I see a lot of pros about national ids, what's the "horrid" drawback of ids?
Because I shouldn't need be required to carry a piece of paper/plastic card to go outside of my house. The idea of it is bonkers if you are in the UK.
If the identification isn't compulsory and is voluntary I have no problem with them. However from what I understand many places in Europe they are compulsory.
> Belgium requires people carry id with them all the time. Does that mean the US should be like Belgium and require everyone carry id?
There's places in the US where you need to bring an ID and your vaccine card everywhere. If we're not willing to require ID to vote, then we should definitely ban that.
> Most of those countries have a national id system. Why wouldn't that be a prerequisite for the US?
Why aren't you counting any of passport books, passport cards, or REAL ID-compliant IDs (which are finally available nationwide) as national IDs?
> We've all got anecdotes, so here's mine. I was asked for ID each time I wanted to modify my AT&T account with a rep, and as such I produced one in the form of driver's license.
This is a security precaution to edit your account. It's a good thing and this is also not part of a condition of setting up the account.
> At a major city hotel late at night, I produced my ID to a security guard who otherwise would not let me in with just my room key.
Same thing as above. You have to show ID as part of security for the Hotel and it is not required by law.
> At an airport security check, being over 18, I produced a government-approved ID to board the flight.
You don't have to produce ID to fly. Again, this has been shown time and time again.
"this is rather provocative in a city and state which does not require identification"
I've spent not more than a couple of weeks in total in the NY and during that time I was required to produce identification more times than I had in years spent in various continental European countries - where in theory you were obliged to carry Id with you at all times.
Just because I wanted to buy a beer or order wine with food in a bar or restaurant. I was in my late 20s at the time.
Every gym I've ever been a member of requires you to validate your ID. You either swipe your membership card (which has your personal information tied to it), or provide your license to get into the gym. If you can't provide either, they aren't letting you in the door.
Every restaurant in the US is already supposed to validate your ID when you order an alcoholic drink. Bars won't even let you in the door without showing an ID.
I don't think anyone is happy this is required, but when people that are unvaccinated decide to put others at risk because they don't want to be inconvenienced, this is what happens.
reply