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Comment by schoen | Hacker News Reader

> Aadhaar is fundamentally different than a National ID which every other country in this world has.

Not the United States!

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card... seems to suggest national IDs are voluntary in 15 countries, nonexistent in 9, and mandatory in 82. One thing that seems possibly significant is that six of the non-mandatory ones include the entirety of the "Anglosphere".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglosphere

That's right, each of the Anglosphere countries has no mandatory national ID. And although the culture and politics of those countries varies quite a bit, including with regard to privacy and civil liberties issues and beliefs about state power, I believe that each one includes a significant number of citizens who are quite proud that there's no mandatory ID, regarding it as a particular way in which their country is more free than others, and as something worth defending.

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Aadhaar has the same data that your US birth certificate has. Name/DOB/gender/Address-if-available. Unless I'm mistaken everyone in US has a Birth Certificate.

EDIT IN RESPONSE TO YOUR EDIT

An birth certificate is also an ID. There's no rational reason of being proud of not having a national ID, when you have mandatory birth registrations and birth certificates.

If anything Aadhaar store less information than your BC - no record of who your parents are for example.

Birth certificates don't contain biometrics [edit: I guess some hospitals include a newborn's footprints] and may not contain address in some states; the address is also never updated (nor is the name in case of name changes). They also aren't issued by the national government and are kept in databases at the state level -- sometimes on paper.

I don't believe there are any national standards for what data a birth certificate must contain.

Really. So anyone can physically break into an archiving unit, steal someone's BC, change some details and use it get benefits/fraud? And the victim wouldn't even get a hint? Sounds very dangerous!

I have my details saved in a centralised database, which notifies me via an SMS anytime my credentials are used.

I acknowledge the BM issue elsewhere in this thread. But please realise that unless you live in a cave your BM are already public. I can take you out for a coffee and steal your finger prints.

The point is that for KYC/payments BM are much more secure than the alternative you would use - signatures/xerox which are even easier to steal since you just need a pen and a paper.

No, a birth certificate isn't proof of identity. It's typically used to establish an identified person's citizenship or date of birth.

A birth certificate isn't required in the US for every single transaction you make.

SSN/TIN is required to open a bank account. Like it's in every other country. Or to get welfare payments.

It's kind of common-sense. To give welfare to someone, you first need to identify them.

> There's no rational reason of being proud of not having a national ID, when you have mandatory birth registrations and birth certificates.

Some of the Anglosphere's pride in not having national ID should probably be eroded by the standardization of other forms of ID and the movement toward requiring them for more things by regulation (e.g., air travel, banking, some forms of train travel, and proof of age to enter regulated venues that serve alcohol).

However, the lack of national ID should in principle make it harder for the state to routinely easily identify us in public, or to institute movement controls, or to require people to be identified for more kinds of transactions. Possibly all of these things are tending to fail over time in different ways, which may end up making the lack of national ID increasingly symbolic.

At the same time, I do think there are jurisdictions where mandatory national IDs have made it easier for both state and commercial entities to switch some kinds of transactions and interactions from anonymous by default to strongly identified by default. Since we've seen someone else in this thread argue that identifying people for air travel and mobile communications services are desirable benefits of national ID, I'll count that as a point against national ID from my point of view.

Ah yes, the superior totally optional SSN in the US is... a better implementation.

Or the U.K. Who also categorically ditched their biometric ID cards.

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