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Comment by jandrewrogers | Hacker News Reader

It is more that the Federal government is Constitutionally prohibited from mandating such a thing, the most they can do is ask nicely and hope for compliance. Coordinating the several dozen States, which can do it, is like herding cats. This is further complicated because there are large factions of both Democrats and Republicans that are against it for a litany of unrelated reasons, so the resistance to it is robust and bipartisan.

It has little to do with "monied interests". It is primarily the product of nigh insurmountable legal and political hurdles.

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Where does it say in the Constitution that the Fed can't operate a unified ID system?

The Federal government can build one but they can’t require it or make people use it, and an ID you can opt out of is useless. Only the States have that authority. This is settled law with a lot of precedent, and largely the reason the US has no national ID system no matter which politician runs the country. Courts have consistently held this to be outside the narrow Constitutional authority of the Federal government.

Having a mandatory Federal ID would require a Constitutional amendment, but since the States have refused to do it voluntarily it seems exceedingly unlikely that a super-majority of States would ratify an amendment that forces them to do it.

Is a legally mandatory ID is required to solve this problem? The Federal government could create a voluntary one and/or coordinate the state IDs system into a modern digital ID system, then Uber and banks could use that instead of letting an SSN number or photo of ID being enough to commit identify fraud. If someone don't want to use the system, that's between the client and Uber.

Yes I know if this happens it will become of those "technically not mandatory but in practice yes" things.

I think the problem is the government would not go to the trouble (nor get approval for) developing a solution that is not guaranteed to be used by anyone.

It doesn’t have to be mandatory. Just offering it means businesses will use it to offload liability, and only accept customers that sign up for it.

I don't believe that this is actually unconstitutional. The whole argument about the Fed not being able to set up a Federal ID hinges on the Tenth Amendment, saying that it's not a specifically delegated power.

But that is a ridiculously weak argument, there are tons of ways the Federal Government can mandate the unified ID. For example, it can be tied to the Social Security number. The government can (quite reasonably) argue that it needs to positively identify people to be able to correctly track their SS contributions.

Why this hasn't been done yet? Probably because nobody cares about that. Real ID gets postponed time after time, exactly for the same reason.

What you believe isn’t backed up by the long history of a national ID in the US. Your legal theory would have to explain, for example, why some States today (e.g. Washington) do not recognize or accept any Federal IDs, like passports, only State IDs. This is strictly in line with the Constitution, it is entirely permissible for States to reject Federal IDs for all legal purposes. What would compel a State to recognize any new Federal ID in the future if they already have the power to disregard Federal IDs in theory and practice?

A Social Security Number is not an ID expressly as a matter of law, because it can’t be legally. The many loopholes the Federal government tried to use to backdoor a national ID were shutdown by the Supreme Court repeatedly. The US can only have a mandatory national ID system if the individual States, in aggregate, decide to create one. Thus far, they have shown no interest. Real ID is not a unified ID because the Federal government cannot compel it.

As with most persistent problems, the “obvious” solutions are not being ignored because no one has cared or no one has tried but because there are fundamental technical reasons they don’t work.

> What would compel a State to recognize any new Federal ID in the future if they already have the power to disregard Federal IDs in theory and practice?

The same thing Congress does to add a workaround for any law it's constitutionally forbidden to enforce on the States. A "voluntary" program where states that don't agree to the ID law don't get any federal highway funds that year.

This has been extensively tested and the Supreme Court is fine with it, e.g. [0]

Alternatively, enforcement through military means - Congress hasn't authorized the use of force against dissenting states since the 1860s, but the threat is always there.

Or paramilitary means, where an armed federal law enforcement group seizes control of state installations that aren't aligned with aspects of federal law. The DEA and ATF have a blueprint to follow here.

Or financial means, where Congress orders federally-regulated banks not to engage with customers that don't respect its ID policies.

There are other levers to pull, too. It's not that the States don't have any power, but in practice they are allowed the powers that the federal government chooses not to centralise - the opposite of how it works in theory, where the federal government governs only to the extent the States allow.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_...

I don't believe any state does not accept a US passport as ID, and would need to see a source on that. A quick google returns no results.

https://dol.wa.gov/driver-licenses-and-permits/documents-pro...

US Passport is listed as acceptable identification.

> why some States today (e.g. Washington) do not recognize or accept any Federal IDs, like passports, only State IDs.

So, note to self: do not move back to the US from overseas to these states or they won't believe I am American.

> Your legal theory would have to explain, for example, why some States today (e.g. Washington) do not recognize or accept any Federal IDs, like passports, only State IDs

I don't believe you're correct. WA accepts all kinds of identification. I can't find anything in the RCWs to mention the exclusivity of WA identification for ANY purposes.

> A Social Security Number is not an ID expressly as a matter of law, because it can’t be legally.

Yet it is an ID (although not a strong one), and it's used for that purpose by the IRS. You can't be legally employed without an SSN (with several narrow exceptions).

Males in the US are also required to register with the Selective Service, which also requires an SSN.

All this has been upheld by the SCOTUS, the government just needed to show that it had a legitimate need for the ID system.

> As with most persistent problems, the “obvious” solutions are not being ignored because no one has cared or no one has tried but because there are fundamental technical reasons they don’t work.

Really? Have you lived in Europe, in countries like Estonia? It somehow managed to do the technically impossible.

You didn't answer the question.

Perhaps you could cite the main precedents and/or quote the US constitution?

The tenth amendment would be a good place to start. As others have out throughout this thread, the Constitution has a whitelist of powers allowed to the federal government. All other powers are outside it's purview.

Everything you say is true of state IDs too. They are not mandated. They are useful because some people choose to have them. Some people would also choose to have a federal id.

Sure, but in the US, many many many more people have a state-issued ID than a federal one (a passport).

If a company needs to implement age verification, they're not going to limit their market to the set of US citizens with passports if the federal government were to offer an ID (passport) verification service. They're going to want state-run ID verification services, or, as in the case here, a private company contracted to do it for all ID types.

Then again, if the federal government (or my state government, even) offered an ID verification service directly, I would be more likely to use a product that offered it as an option, vs. one that only offered some private company's shoddy ID verification service.

But this feels vaguely analogous to the municipal broadband fights. Private ID verification companies would certainly lobby against states or the feds building their own ID verification services.

Indeed. We call them “passport holders”.

Are there any example rulings that you can share to illustrate this how courts have “consistently held” this?

Not off-hand but it goes back to at least the early 20th century. There have been many attempts at a national ID system via technical loopholes but the courts have not looked kindly on them. It is the reason a Social Security Number is explicitly not to be used as an ID in law, so as to maintain its legality. It is the reason that every part of the Real ID Act that involves the Feds aggregating a centralized ID database from the States is strictly optional (and many States have opted to opt out of that). The Supreme Court has already ruled that Federal regulatory and taxation power cannot be used to induce States to comply, as that would be an end-run around Constitutional limits on Federal authority. Whether I like it or not doesn’t matter, I recognize that this is the reality.

As a heuristic, when something obvious and simple, like a national ID, has inexplicably never existed across every political administration, it is unlikely to be an oversight. This has been playing out for a very long time, it is unfortunate that most Americans are not familiar with the legal history.

It is similar to why people were surprised the government didn’t even try to enforce lockdowns during COVID anywhere in the US. Freedom of travel was thoroughly adjudicated across many cases by the Supreme Court covering almost every circumstance imaginable. Any prohibitions on freedom of movement are subject to the “strict scrutiny” standard, same as freedom of speech. Any politician attempting to do so would have invited instant wrath and injunctions from the judicial system, and their legal advisors knew it.

Perhaps you didn’t hear about “Real ID”. You need it to fly, and it involves data sharing/matching with the federal government. They did a back door federal ID system by simply integrating with all of the state ID systems.

The Federal integration is optional, it cannot be compelled, and many States have opted to not implement it. The only thing the Real ID does is compel uniform standards for how States implement ID, it does not compel them to share their databases.

All 50 states, DC, and 5 territories are all issuing Real ID-compliant IDs. It’s also required by TSA to fly from 7th May of next year.

They can operate a national ID system. For instance SSNs and passports. They can also force states to do things (like RealID).

The constitution doesn't say what the federal government is disallowed from doing. The constitution says what the federal government is allowed to do, and they are not allowed to do anything it doesn't say.

If this is the case, how are they allowed to issue passports?

Good question! I think the short answer is because the Supreme Court has interpreted the constitution as having granted that power. It is not an open-and-shut case, however, and stems from the constitution's grant of power for Congress to control the Rule of Naturalization, and from the 14th amendment. A conservative reading of the constitution, however, might imply that Congress does not have the power to bar entry to foreign nationals.

> Article 1, § 8, clause 4, of the United States Constitution specifically grants Congress the power to establish a "uniform Rule of Naturalization."

http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/immigrationlaw/chapter2.html

> This passport function, recognized since 1835, is one of the privileges and immunities of American citizens protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/citizenship-passports-a...

I don't think you need to really coordinate all the states. Each state can provide their own ID verification system. Yes, it's a pain that every product wanting to use it will have to do 50 different integrations rather than one, but ultimately things will converge to a more or less standardized API (or a few of them).

Of course it's dumb that taxpayers will have to pay for 50 of these things through their state taxes instead of one of them through their federal taxes.

Then again, what's most likely to happen is that the states will outsource it to a private company like this one, and we're no better off.

> Coordinating the several dozen States, which can do it, is like herding cats.

... or a matter of finding the correct leverage. Drinking age 21, for example, got bullied through by threatening to cut highway budgets [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_...

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