Comment by krbbltr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by krbbltr | Hacker News Reader

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As far as I'm aware (correct me if I'm wrong), there is an ID card or a functional equivalent thereof in most if not all countries, as the ability to verify someone's identity is pretty much a requirement for a modern society. Whether it's an actual "ID card" or a passport, birth certificate, driver's license, social security number, whatever doesn't really matter IMO.

As for having to reveal/prove my identity to the police: I could do without that, but I consider it mostly a non-issue. In practice it happens rarely, and if it does the police officers tend to be pretty friendly and reasonable. Case in point, one of the two or three times this has happend to me in my life, my ID was invalid as it had expired several months before. They were basically like "Well you better get a new one soon, m'kay?" and then sent me on my way. YMMV of course.

The big difference though between the ID card thing and privacy violations by spying is that the spying happens behind people's backs, and they may never know how broadly their rights are violated until one day the gathered information is used against them. There can be no effective oversight and that's why it must not be allowed to happen in the first place.

If on the other hand the police started abusing their authority – acting like dicks, grabbing people en masse to check their IDs on every street corner, it would be immediately obvious to everyone and could presumably be corrected (by vote, protest, civil disobedience, etc).

> In practice it happens rarely, and if it does the police officers tend to be pretty friendly and reasonable. Case in point, one of the two or three times this has happend to me in my life, my ID was invalid as it had expired several months before. They were basically like "Well you better get a new one soon, m'kay?" and then sent me on my way. YMMV of course.

Well remember, when we discuss government programs the only valid point of discussion is what could possibly go wrong in the hands of a despot, not how the program is applied in practice. ;)

> The big difference though between the ID card thing and privacy violations by spying is that the spying happens behind people's backs, and they may never know how broadly their rights are violated until one day the gathered information is used against them.

That has always been true in the U.S. though. Just look at the NFL tight end Aaron Hernandez, who was arrested on murder charges yesterday. During his arraignment the prosecution managed to produce a horrifying assortment of evidence against Hernandez, after only a week's worth of police work (all fully legal and with proper oversight).

The only effective difference was that in this case the government did not retain the records by themselves, but subpoena'd them from the companies as needed.

The government could still theoretically switch to doing this too. PRISM is a good example, but there's no technical reason why the NSA couldn't just require the phone and Internet companies to store all the data that the NSA would anyways, and access it on demand.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the things "spying on us behind are backs" are the things we've built onto the Internet. The Internet Never Forgets and that works to the government's advantage as much as it does ours.

Yes but in the UK having a passport is not required. And a short while ago on on here some one living in Germany commented that it was funny how it was the Non Ethnic Germans that got stopped a lot more.

> [...] it was the Non Ethnic Germans that got stopped a lot more.

That's probably true to some extent. I imagine though that the situation is similar in other countries, and the problem is racism in itself. It's sad, but it has nothing to with the ID requirement.

Just look at the US; they may not require an ID, but it sure does not seem to stop their police from physically abusing anyone who looks at them the wrong way. Or in rare cases, literally beating up or even murdering someone just because they're black/mexican/whatever.

(Disclaimer: I've never been to the US. American pop culture may have distorted my view on the American police. :)

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