The US refuses to do this, so we get a mess. Every state has different drivers license, Social Security numbers aren’t secure at this point, most people don’t have passports.
But if there was a true national ID, the government could provide APIs to verify those. Then these kind of things would be easy for the apps/sites.
All of that obviously ignores the problems in privacy from doing any of this in the first place, etc. i’m starting to think I’m on the side of our national ID given how much of a mess everything is with our current patchwork. But I certainly wouldn’t want to be giving it over to random sites.
We have sort of accidentally set up a system in which verifying someone’s age is a really really hard problem. If a credit card number or trying to use a photograph are the best tools we have it’s clear this doesn’t work.
I'd rather have a mess than allow the federal government to have more power over me. I'm trans and I would have to out myself every time I needed to show ID if I had to give up my state driver's license. I like not having to worry about getting harassed whenever I want to go to a bar.
I like the idea of a way of verifying who you are (in that you’re a real person) and age (so you could prove ability to do 18/21+ things).
I see no reason why random companies/etc would need to know gender identity, name, etc.
None of that is relevant to buying alcohol. If they need something, e.g. name on a mortgage, then maybe it’s optionally provided, under my control. I don’t know.
I’m not seriously suggesting we do this. They were clear downsides before the last 10 years made all of them ridiculously clear.
It’s more I hate the current mess and wish something nicer existed. I think it’s fixable in the abstract. But even if we had a good idea for a better system I don’t know how we’d get there. Between sovereign citizen nuts one side who don’t think there should ever be any way to prove they ever existed, to people like you with very clear and good reasons for fearing changes it just seems impossible.
I mean, honestly, there's a good question to be had: why do we even need gender on a modern ID? Assuming a reasonably up-to-date photo, there isn't even a whole lot of purpose in listing descriptive information about the person. And that's before we talk about other stuff that you could list instead or encode as data into a smart ID if you really want some descriptive data.
Unfortunately, I agree with you that while fixable in the abstract, we're not getting anywhere in the modern USA. Can you imagine what would happen if a politician suggested removing gender from IDs?
This is one of my biggest issues with pretty much any ID verification legislation. If the Gov wants to enforce ID verification, it is incumbent on the Gov to bend over backwards to ensure that everyone impacted is given a free, secure ID. I refuse to accept any situation where someone is excluded from public participation because they can't afford or are otherwise unable to acquire an ID.
Drivers licenses are the de facto one today. You can also get an id card for those who can’t drive.
But it’s fully incumbent on you to do it. You have to arrange transportation to get it, have the free time, necessary documents, live close enough, etc.
That already causes problems for people, and is getting worse as voter ID laws get passed.
“Everyone gets an ID once you’ve figured out these riddles three and gone on a quest” is a stupid system.
A quest indeed. In my state, it is not uncommon for there to be a months-long wait for appointments at the DMV. So, you can either wait the necessary months (how are you driving?), or try to slip in as a walk-in by showing up when they open and waiting the entire day for a chance to be seen. My local office will have 3 or 4 agents staffing the front and a line dozens long waiting outside the door before they even open. I get it, no one likes the DMV, bastion of inefficiency, blah blah... but for such a critical service, they're clearly not staffed for the demand that they're facing.
We already nearly have a national ID. That’s what RealID is clearly building towards. It helps to build a standardized and federated database of state ID cards that meet Federal guidelines. There’s an de-duplication system called SPEXS as well as a standard called Nlets that can be used to search the state databases. There’s a multi-state query (MSQ) that allows law enforcement to query all of the state databases and obtain a lot of the functionality that we get from a national ID. What’s missing from this is citizenship data, but ICE has a system called IAQ/IAR that can help with that. The recent “BBB” bill also tosses a lot of IT funding at DHS and ICE, which might lead to further expansions.
There’s also a system called mDL that allows you to obtain a digitally signed mobile driver’s license that can be used in your smartphone. This is only supported by a few states for now but it’s not hard to imagine this expanding to many more states in the near future, especially now that both Apple and Google are starting to support it. TL;DR we may not have a national ID, but it sure seems like pretty soon we’ll have an effective “national ID” that does most of the same stuff.
The US refuses to do this, so we get a mess. Every state has different drivers license, Social Security numbers aren’t secure at this point, most people don’t have passports.
But if there was a true national ID, the government could provide APIs to verify those. Then these kind of things would be easy for the apps/sites.
All of that obviously ignores the problems in privacy from doing any of this in the first place, etc. i’m starting to think I’m on the side of our national ID given how much of a mess everything is with our current patchwork. But I certainly wouldn’t want to be giving it over to random sites.
We have sort of accidentally set up a system in which verifying someone’s age is a really really hard problem. If a credit card number or trying to use a photograph are the best tools we have it’s clear this doesn’t work.