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Comment by blizdiddy | Hacker News Reader

We don’t have a national ID system, just a single, poorly suited Social Security number that’s been overloaded to serve as our entire identity in the eyes of the state. These numbers are effectively public knowledge, thanks to private credit agencies created to fill the gap when banks failed at risk assessment. We could’ve replaced this broken setup decades ago, but there’s a vested political interest in ensuring federal programs fail, to justify further privatization and the dismantling of social services.

A proper national ID and strong privacy laws would be obvious policy wins, but that would require competent lawmakers.

In my lifetime, the most consequential federal legislation has been the DMCA (1998), the Patriot Act (2001), and Obamacare (2010), which effectively marked the end of meaningful legislative power and the handoff of governance to the executive branch.

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We have at least two different national ID systems in the US: passports, and Real ID.

One of those two is as of last week or so required to board a flight in the USA.

What about ID.me that irs.gov uses for tax-related matters? When I tried to get it once, it is pretty hard to get authenticated -- required 2+ gov't IDs, plus pic of yourself holding them. That should be pretty safe. Not good enough? (Overall: I agree. There is no concept of a national ID in the US, except a passport which huge numbers of people do not have.)

It's a very similar situation in the UK, though the hostility towards National ID cards comes from the public not the government.

Apparently people associate it with the authoritarianism of 1984 even though mandatory ID existed in 1948 when the novel was written.

As I understand it, it’s mostly fundamentalist Christians blocking national IDs.

I'm not Christian and I don't want a federal ID. I don't even want a state ID but I will eventually be taken to prison if I continually get caught driving without one.

Coincidentally and/or anecdotally I've never had my identity stolen.

You’d be wrong. It’s coming from the same crowd that claims showing a driver’s license or some other form of ID in order to vote is racist.

The last big push for a secure national identity system was during the 90s as part of the negotiation on the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. It was opposed by fundamentalist Christians then, but it was more vociferously opposed by civil libertarian groups like the ACLU and the EFF, Cato, as well as immigrant rights groups like La Raza.

I'd argue that the fundies have more political clout than those other groups combined.

Half of the house Democrats, not exactly a group known for kowtowing to religious fundamentalists, voted against improving the design of social security cards. If 16 of the 91 that voted against the McCollum amendment had flipped from Nay to Yea, this would be a solved problem.

Or at least a different problem.

Based on what?

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