Hacker News Reader

Comment by eggpy | Hacker News Reader

> Multiple times throughout the hearing, Brazil’s Infraestrutura de Chaves Públicas system of citizen IDs through digital certificates came up as a potential model for the U.S. as it moves forward. In this model, a certificate lasts for three years at maximum and can be used to issue a digital signature much like written signatures are used now. Unlike its counterpart in the U.S., these identity accounts can be revoked and reissued easily through an established national protocol.

I believe most Americans are opposed to a national ID, so SSNs have been used as a (utterly terrible) workaround. Some reasoning for this, to quote an ACLU article on the subject[0], 'Former Senator Alan Cranston has described the national I.D. card as "a primary tool of totalitarian governments to restrict the freedom of their citizens." '

The Brazil solution mentioned seems pretty reasonable though. I like the built in expiration and ease of reissue. Anyone have experience with or thoughts about this sort of system?

[0] https://www.aclu.org/other/national-identification-cards-why...

View on HN

> Former Senator Alan Cranston has described the national I.D. card as "a primary tool of totalitarian governments to restrict the freedom of their citizens."

Ugh. National IDs are common in Europe as well as other places where identity theft is mostly an exotic concept featured in the news about America. It's hard to call Belgium a totalitarian regime.

Whereas in countries without national IDs, people are forced to provide personal details to scores of vendors big and small who use these details for their purposes and may lose them to online criminals. But hey, we are protected against a hypothetical tyranny.

Forgive my ignorance, I only (sort of) know how this works in the United States. How do Belgian creditors verify the creditworthiness of an applicant who claims to be the individual identified by a particular credit history?

Am I wrong to presume the Belgian National ID is not used for identification and verification by Belgian creditors?

I also wonder (just thinking out loud, not part of my question) what would prevent US creditors from shirking the responsibility and withholding the required resources to establish an identification and verification system which does not rely on a national ID (different from a Social Security number).

EDIT: remove extraneous word, add parenthetical to last sentence.

There is a governmental agency, part of the national bank, that keeps track of credit. Information is kept for three months after a successful repayment of credit, one year after a delayed yet complete repayment, and 10 years after a default.

Only credit information is kept, nothing regarding defaults on rent, unpaid medical bills etc...

Getting a record of your own credit history is completely free, either online, by writing a letter, or just stopping by the bank.

Yes, national ID is used for that purpose. I've only very rarely heard of identity theft by strangers, there are many hoops to jump through, like photo ID and a physical letter sent to the corresponding address for verification.

What would prevent that? Privacy laws. Keeping and sharing blacklists is not forbidden but regulated in Europe. Creditors also are obligated to use the central credit agency.

I'm not Belgian, I just had to deal with them extensively, so I can't reply. But the credit score is not related to the existence of the national ID.

I know that the monstrous institutions thriving on the FICO score are an exception. In most countries, it's the usual payslips, bank statements, stuff like that. No one needs weird stuff like secured credit cards or asking their relative to "piggyback" on their credit score.

I know that the US credit agencies tried to "educate" the local business communities in some countries on the importance of the credit score and are currently occupying a small obscure niche.

In this context wouldn't the EU be a better entity to compare against the US federal government? In that sense the ID situation in the US is pretty much the same as in Europe (each member state issues its own IDs), except the US has an extra ID number at the federal level that was never even intended to be a federal ID number (and is consequently terrible at being that).

No, at least some of the IDs in Europe is valid in all or most of EU. In Sweden, the ones given out by the police is valid in EU, while for example drivers licenses is not (as an ID. They are valid to drive with).

What do you mean? I can use my driver's license as an ID in any state.

An EU driving licence is only proof of being qualified to drive, not proof of residence or nationality.

That makes it ok for some identity purposes (age, name) but not sufficient for crossing a national border.

(I'm not sure this is relevant, but I'm explaining the situation here.)

To proof your age but not to identify for official business (e.g. opening bank accounts) or with governments.

A drivers license is not an ID in the EU. It is usually used for age verification.

If you do a post-ident or anything official, you need your proper ID.

In most (all?) US states the DMV or equivalent issues both IDs and driver's licenses, with the side effect that if you have a driver's license it is also your state ID. So the fact that they are separate in the EU is tangential. The term "driver's license" in the US is synonymous with both "ID" and "driver's license" in the EU, and can be compared to either.

Isn't it legally required that you carry your ID at all times unless you are within 200 meters of your home? That would horrify most Americans. I know it is not in reality, but it sounds totalitarian.

Yes. People don't though. In practice people do tend to have a driving license in your wallet.

This joyous setup is the result of the Schengen zone. When national borders were "abolished" (not really, they came back due to the migrant crisis) the way governments got police and immigration forces on board with it was to say that everyone had to have their ID on them at all times and an ID check could be done anywhere at all within the zone. I've never heard of anyone getting in trouble for not having ID on them though.

That's a log of myths and misinformation spread here. In the EU you only have to carry an ID while you're crossing a border. If you stay in another country of the EU you should have your ID available somewhere in that country.

But if you actually have to carry around your ID all the time depends on the laws country you're in. Here in Germany you don't.

Year 2011, I was touring Berlin with a friend, and a policeman asked us to show our ID. So, tourists need to carry passport at all times? How'd police know who is a tourist?

Spotting tourists is usually not hard for someone who lives at the location.

Additionally, it could just have been chance.

In general, yes, you should have your ID/passport on you, but there is no real punishment for not having it other than being required to later show up at a police station and/or being escorted by the policeman to your apartment/hotel to show your ID.

A bigger problem is usually not having a drivers license on you, that gets some of the people in the police riled up (but again, no real punishment as long as you show up later at the police station)

> A bigger problem is usually not having a drivers license on you

Why? What about people that just don't have / need a drivers license?

Direct from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area#In-country_check...

It is the obligation of everyone travelling within the area to be able to show a fully valid form of personal identification approved by other Schengen states.[98]

and

Although travellers within the Schengen Area are no longer required to show documents at an internal border (although there have been some controversial instances when they have, and it is fairly common at major land border crossings with Switzerland), the laws of most countries still require them to carry identity documents

Your interpretation of this doesn't seem to be correct. The whole point of Schengen is that you don't have to show ID at internal borders, which were supposed to cease existence. Rather, you have to be able to show your ID at any time whilst travelling ... where "travelling" is such a general concept that it effectively means at all times unless you are e.g. at home.

It’s required but many people don’t do it. If you get into a situation where police stops you and you don’t have your ID on you, just tell them you forgot it at home or you didn’t take it with you because you just went out for short walk. Police should then drive you home where you show them your ID.

> (…) It’s required but many people don’t do it (…)

Not in general.

In Germany you just have to own an ID be able to produce it when legally required. However only under a very narrow set of circumstances it is legal to ask for an ID.

The police may ask for an ID only during a "Identitätsfeststellungsverfahren", which is only legal to do if you're suspect of a crime or if you happen to be within an area of specific public vulnerability, i.e. crime hotspots designated for vetting operations. Other than that it is in fact illegal for the police to ask for your ID. But even under that circumstance it is absolutely lawful not to carry an ID with out; worst case scenario is, that the police has to escort you to whereever you have placed your ID and you be able to show to them there. Depending on circumstances this might create (major) inconveniences, but has no legal consequences.

In addition to that there are certain business transactions where an ID must be produces. For example when checking into accomodation, closing a contract with a telephone company (that's new since this year, and totally ridiculous) and opening a bank account.

> Isn't it legally required that you carry your ID at all times unless you are within 200 meters of your home?

In Germany there is no such requirement, even though many Germans also think that you have to carry it with you. But the Ausweispflicht (Obligation of identification) only means that you have to own an ID, but you can leave it home most of the time (which I do).

I should clarify that I was talking about Belgium which was the country the parent comment used as the example. I am aware that the laws are not the same across EU.

When I lived in Germany I by mistake didn't check into a tram once and was discovered by a ticket inspector. Long story short since I didn't have ID on me I ended up getting escorted by two police officers back to my house to show them my passport.

So yes, you don't have to carry ID on you in Germany, but only in the most pedantic sense. You'll just get a free police escort back to where you keep your ID in case you need to identify yourself. That hardly qualifies as not needing to carry ID when going about your business in the sense that Americans would be familiar with.

But could they have forced you to identify yourself if you hadn't broken some rule? I get it was a mistake (which I've made in the past as well), but still, the US police will probably want to identify you as well if they have reason to fine you.

I'm not sure, but in several European countries the police is able to ask you for your ID when you're going about your business, there's no limitation that it must only be in relation to an offence.

Thus any interaction with them could result in you needing to put a stop to anything else you're doing as you're escorted back to your house to fetch your ID, unless you're carrying it in the first place.

But the example I provided wasn't such an example, since there was a fine involved. However just having compelled ID changes even that situation. If Germany didn't have that I'd probably been able to just pay the fine on the spot without need to establish my identity.

I don't believe there's anything equivalent to that in the US. Furthermore since there's no national ID system they don't even know if you have a driver's license, social security number or passport, so their options for compelling you to produce ID are limited.

In most US states, the police can't force you to provide a physical identification card period. At most, they may be able to compel you to verbally identify yourself, e.g. by providing your name and address.

The idea of being legally required to provide government-issued identification to a law enforcement official under any circumstances is simply verboten in the US.

>The idea of being legally required to provide government-issued identification to a law enforcement official under any circumstances is simply verboten in the US.

As long as you're not within 100 miles of the border inside the "limited civil rights zone". [1]

Personal experience is that border patrol officers feel no need for "probable cause" before pulling you over and searching your vehicle.

[1] https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

In such situations you have to identify yourself somehow, that's what obligation of identification means.

I was with a friend in the same situation (he forgot his ticket and had no ID). I just had to witness that he was indeed the person he said he was and it was fine.

There are many situation where in the US the police will immediately arrest you while the German police will just write down your identification and let you go for now. I will rather take the German approach.

Ironically, if you drink alcohol in the United States, you're essentially forced to carry your ID at all times because bars and restaurants check ID aggressively (even for people who are visibly much older than the legal drinking age).

So even though, as an American, I'm not required to carry my driver's license around at all times, I almost always do, and many of the few times I've left it at home I ended up regretting doing so.

Based on my visits to Europe I'd imagine Germans would find this whole situation ridiculous.

Isn't it legally required that you carry your ID at all times unless you are within 200 meters of your home?

There might be a country somewhere in Europe that has that law, but it's certainly not normal.

I was talking about Belgium, which is the country the comment I was replying to had used as example.

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

That's already the de facto case for non-white Americans. If you don't you risk getting snatched up by ICE.

In Romania it's legally required to carry your ID everywhere. I am not aware of a minimum distance :)

I think it's only fair to compare that the to _de_ _jure_ status of many modern day US states.

More than 23 states require that someone be able to prove their identity (probably with a government-issued card) "if there is reasonable suspicion of a crime"[1].

Given that a book called "Three Felonies a Day" which cites facts such as the number of crimes in the US Code, the fact that most people haven't even started reading it nor have it memorized, nor have the legal skills required to determine whether (if it's even deterministic without a judge/jury) they have committed a crime, I would argue that a clever police officer probably has the ability to use that law as a tool to create a crime where none existed before.

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

>>>Ugh. National IDs are common in Europe as well as other places

Proving the Senator Point.. I am sure you believe Europe is free, it is not. Europe is very very very very very Authoritarian and restrictive.

> It's hard to call Belgium a totalitarian regime.

Belgium is Totalitarian. Seemed pretty easy to me, I just typed things on my keyboard and they appeared like magic on my screen....

National ID is the first step to https://www.aclu.org/ordering-pizza

> National ID is the first step to https://www.aclu.org/ordering-pizza

A national ID is by no means required for something like this. If businesses wanted to, they could already identify us uniquely enough to pool all their information and be able to do something like that.

Did you miss a <sarcasm> tag or are you being serious?

> we are protected against a hypothetical tyranny

This is America in a nutshell. Most of it's efforts are spend protecting against what it can't see and not on the problems in front of it.

Sad I can only upvote once. But then, aliens and zombies will have a hard time invading the US.

Who has authority to revoke the ID? Can someone get angry and un-citizen me? Will the process of getting re-identified take a day, a week, a month, years? Will I be able to continue working in that time? We need to build with these security concerns in mind. The reason SSNs are failing is that security was never supposed to be a concern for them, so no thought was paid to it.

The clear answer to that would be only you can revoke the certificate either by signing or by going to something like the post office/DMV with 1-2 additional pieces of ID (for cases where your card is lost/stolen). Also the cert is only for SSN like things and proving your identity in those cases not that you're not a citizen if your cert is out of date. So you couldn't say open a new bank account or apply for a new loan but everything else just keeps working.

No, the ID's cannot be revoked, and they are assigned at birth or at the moment you apply for immigration. There are some efforts to allow stripping dual-nationality criminals of their citizenship, but that process requires both a judge and a cabinet minister to sign it, and the ECHR will not allow people to be stripped of their only citizenship. And even in those cases, the national ID's will not be revoked, just invalidated.

So let's skip all the hypotheticals about having to recover one, unless you can point to an actual case from the EU, instead of Hollywood?

> The reason SSNs are failing is that security was never supposed to be a concern for them, so no thought was paid to it.

NO.

The reason SSNs are "failing" is because they have been adopted by the public and private sectors because they are a de facto "username".

SSNs serve the same purpose as driver's license numbers and passport numbers, only they have less authentication, but are still more common (because most young children don't have DLs or passports).

IDs get lost and stolen sometimes, so there are established processes for that. In Germany, they cost 28.80€ to replace and take 3-6 weeks to be manufactured. You can continue working normally, and generally there are is no impact on your daily life. The process takes less than an hour, excluding waiting time.

Your citizenship isn't tied to the ID, either.

On the other hand, there are countries that use national IDs to restrict the freedom of their citizens.

You can't base your reasoning about something like this solely on what's happening in some countries right now. That's how SSN mess started in the first place. They weren't intended as a global identifier, there were concerns that they will be used as such, but those concerns were ignored.

Also, I'm not convinced that spinning up a new ID system is necessary to solve the issue at hand.

Here's a relevant pop science video by CGP Grey[0] that explains all the various problems with SSNs. My favorite part is the fact that until quite recently (2011) you could decrement or increment a given SSN by 1 and get another valid SSN, since they were sequential.

[0]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus

SSNs are 9 digits, which means that mathematically 1 of 3 SSNs must be valid

Unpacking this for others who scratched their heads like I did:

There are 1 billion possible social security numbers. There are roughly 300 million people in the USA. So roughly 1/3 possible SSN’s is currently in use.

Does the US re-use previously issues SSN's when people die? With such a limited numeric space, they probably have to, right?

Yes, they do.

Haven’t had to yet - they’ve only been around since the ‘30s and we haven’t quite used them all up yet.

Q20: Are Social Security numbers reused after a person dies?

A: No. We do not reassign a Social Security number (SSN) after the number holder's death. Even though we have issued over 453 million SSNs so far, and we assign about 5 and one-half million new numbers a year, the current numbering system will provide us with enough new numbers for several generations into the future with no changes in the numbering system.

https://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html

100 years doesn't really equate to "several generations"...

A couple of years ago I accidentally filed my tax return with a typo in the SSN. I was stunned to find that the IRS accepted it. It took months to fix.

My twin and I have SSNs a single digit apart.

Why would that be surprising? They are incremental, as far as I know..

> I believe most Americans are opposed to a national ID, so SSNs have been used as a (utterly terrible) workaround.

The federal government was never intended to administer services or benefits directly to all US citizens. The US Constitution enumerates a very limited set of federal powers: defense, foreign policy and regulation of interstate commerce, none of which concerns the average citizen day to day. It was intended for state and local governments to directly serve the people in almost all circumstances.

The New Deal was a terrible imposition of big government on the country and we're dealing with the cascade of problems and constitutional issues to this day, SSNs being a very visible example.

While you're right, and I dont think you ought to be downvoted, governments evolve.

Actually, Social Security is a terrific program which has done more to reduce and prevent poverty than any other government program ever.

It is the US Constitution that is bad, by making entrenching dysfunction and hindering reform.

How does the US Constitution entrench dysfunction and hinder reform?

There are a number of issues that contributed. Predominantly a lack of clarity on federal vs state power which stems from a combination unnecessarily high barriers to change (other countries tend to change their Constitutions rather frequently) and a lack of accountability (very long election cycles).

The patchwork nomic-style lawmaking that leads to eventual entrenched dysfunction and resistance to reform was assured. The US will not likely last half as long as Rome. We're 1 economic collapse away from fractionating into new aggregations.

Do you have an opinion on the correct balance between state a federal powers, and how long ought an election cycle be - does the adding a ballot based recall mechanism change things?

I'd argue our style of law making is no different than other western democracies. How do you feel law making should be different?

> on the correct balance between state a federal powers, and how long ought an election cycle be

The US doesn't have mechanisms for removal through accountability. This would mediate any need for an optimal cycle (which doesn't exist due to factors like breadth of initiative). Legal controls on "good faith" grace periods would be an effective control, but we don't even get that due to corruption. The US legal system has festered for too long imo.

You don't engage in interstate commerce on a day to day basis? Do you only eat food grown in your own state, sold by local businesses who don't operate in any other state?

Do you only eat food grown in your own state

Even if you did, it doesn't matter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

So what? People who live in the EU engage in inter-state (-nation, I mean, to disambiguate) commerce daily as well, and that seems to be going no worse over there than it is over here.

I don't really see your point. Practically speaking, I only food sold in my local grocery store. Sure the grocery chain probably really does take deliveries directly from other states every day, but I'm not directly involved in the interstate portion of the supply chain.

The role of the government has certainly evolved since the 18th century, and thank goodness we're not stuck with a union with a weak central government. Do you really look at the balkanized, fractious EU and think to yourself, "Gee, I wish we had that"? IMHO the New Deal didn't go nearly far enough.

Do you look at the balkanized fractious USA and think to myself, "Gee, I wish we had that"? Endless wars, being rules by people who live thousands of miles away and don't understand your states' needs?

Not OP, but I actually do wish that, yes. I think a lot of the problems we're having with political deadlock on the federal level these days boil down to pulling too many divisive issues onto that level, where the resolution, whichever way it goes, applies to over 300 million people - so you end up with a large dissatisfied minority more often than not. Specific issues aside, it doesn't strike me as particularly democratic, either; and I'm not sure representative democracy can even meaningfully scale to the point where legislators ostensibly "represent" millions of people at once.

OTOH, if we had more federalism, I think the West Coast states might have been implementing their own full-fledged public healthcare system right now, instead of trying to come up with some compromise that the other half of the country can maybe accept (like ACA).

All that said, I don't see a problem with national ID. It's just as useful to the states as it is to the feds, and it's clear that something like that can only be run by the feds.

> Do you really look at the balkanized, fractious EU and think to yourself, "Gee, I wish we had that"?

That sounds pretty nice actually.

>and think to yourself, "Gee, I wish we had that"?

No I think "why the hell didn't they put a sunset provision in all those bills?"

As an aside, one could construct a pretty good argument that the new deal was the result of all the Europeans who got off the boat in the prior decades throwing away freedom they really hadn't come to appreciate in exchange for the government playing the role of a lord who has some responsibility to prevent his peasants from hitting rock bottom (lest they revolt) with the catch being that said lord also has a ton of control over their freedom.

> most Americans are opposed to a national ID

Easy solution: make the national ID optional, just like a passport.

Let financial institutions decide whether they want to risk extending credit to anybody, or just people with secure national IDs.

They could require the passport right now. Financial institutions want to loan money to everyone with low friction, if they think they will make a profit.

Brazilian here, currently attending the Brazilian Symposium on Computer Security, and today's speakers include the people behind this proposed national ID (it's not widespread yet).

If you have any questions I can relay it to them directly.

New Zealand has RealMe (https://www.realme.govt.nz/) which is an opt-in system you can use to identify yourself when interacting with various government departments and other entities.

RealMe is a shitty non-compliant SAML2 (not really) identity provider that's impossible to interact with correctly. I worked on a contract where RealMe was giving us different unique IDs for the same people. It's a joke and a piece of rubbish.

It's from the government who brought you Novapay and it's a piece of shit. No one uses it to manage identities and you don't really need to because there are only 4 million people there anyway. Their problem set is much more manageable.

Please never use RealMe as a real world example of anything done right. Please also never use RealMe if you can avoid it.

I think I have 2 RealMe accounts, and they're linked to different services, I have no idea which ones though. I'm not really sure what's up with them. The only government service I really use online is the IRD, who don't even use RealMe, they have their own login system.

NZTA don't even bother, and just require your drivers license number and version, which is useless security, I could change ownership of anybodies car, just to be a dick, or possibly even to steal a car.

RealMe is a RealMess. I find it's usually easier to just ring up the relevant department that requires me to login to RealMe.

New Zealand is a bit funny because people don't (or didn't) want a national identity system. There was public concern when photo drivers licenses were introduced because they might become a de-facto national ID card.

The privacy commissioner (that's a thing) had this to say: "the proposal to oblige drivers to carry the licence at all times while driving would mean, in effect, ... provide ideal conditions for government agencies, police officers, retailers and other businesses, to ask for the card as standard identification in a variety of dealings unrelated to road safety." https://privacy.org.nz/news-and-publications/reports-to-parl...

Which is has. Every time I've been pulled up, or talked to, by the police for more than 30 seconds, they've asked me for my drivers license, regardless of whether I'm driving, or walking.

Indeed. Which means they have the worst of both worlds - hard to hide your identity and no common standard for everybody. So now there's all kinds of alternatives - licence, passport, 18+ card, birth certificate(!). RealMe is pretty nice from the user's perspective to avoid all that crap.

It's funny in light of all the "cars are freedom!" posts in the Bob Luntz post that is also up on the front page, but we DO effectively have a state-level ID system in the form of driver's licences.

The idea that people have a single, unambiguous identity is fallacious, in my opinion. If you're interacting with people, you usually only need their identity for the purpose of that interaction. The main place it becomes critical seems to be when you have a system that is driven by number bias rather than consideration of reasoned, adaptive alternatives.

how do you stop fraud from people opening a new ID and taking out loans with it instead of their "main" ID ?

What lender would trust a new id with no history?

How would you get history if no one trusts an id with no history?

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

This is not a new problem. The solution is the same as it is today, you must build a history with small limit revolving lines, cosigners and guarantors.

Slowly.

Ask anybody who immigrated to the US, it's a royal pain. (Especially since you have global brands - like e.g. Mastercard - incapable of referencing their data from outside the US).

You start with a secured credit card for $200. Next, you buy a clunker of a car for all-cash. At that point, you have enough history to get a CC with $500-$1,000 limit. Now you pay everything through that CC. And make damn sure you're always 100% on time - a single slip costs you a lot of time setting up that history. After a year or two of that, you usually get a CC covering one or two months of income. Keep building.

It's a really painful process.

Or you start by getting a job with direct deposit, and depositing some savings in a bank account.

That doesn't help at all, unfortunately.

In the USA, what builds credit scores is showing a pattern of using revolving credit and servicing the debt over a period of time. You are penalized if you use too much of your available credit. You are also penalized if you use too little of it, as I found out when I paid off the balance of the one remaining card that held a balance, and saw my credit score hit by about 15 points shortly thereafter. There are other rules, too.

Basically, I can only conclude that we are encouraged to be 'good citizens" by borrowing money and paying interest on it while slowly paying back the principal. People who live on a cash-only basis, which was considered to be a respectable practice not that long ago (borrowing was shameful) have terrible credit scores.

So what, you may ask?

There are very real and increasing disincentives to having bad or no credit. Creditworthiness (in the form of a nice, easy to understand number) is being taken more and more by various entities as a sign of responsibility and even good character.

A credit score is now used by some entities, beyond the mainstay car dealers, to judge risk and character: apartment rentals and employers, to name two.

I'm not suggesting that all employers and apartment management companies do this, only that the trend (I have no citations but it should be searchable) is on the increase.

The bottom line is that in the USA today, credit scores depend on how - and how much - you borrow and repay.

Furthermore, the higher your credit score, the better you are treated, to a degree: better rates on loans, no problems getting a job (all other things being equal), and so on. The opposite is true for bad scores.

This is one of the many ways we are corraled into greasing the gears of the economy, and it is a wasteland for cash-only operators (unless, I suppose, they have a huge amount of cash).

>>Basically, I can only conclude that we are encouraged to be 'good citizens" by borrowing money and paying interest on it while slowly paying back the principal. People who live on a cash-only basis, which was considered to be a respectable practice not that long ago (borrowing was shameful) have terrible credit scores.

Welcome to the new consumerism.... Being Thrifty, having savings, and generally being responsible with your income is bad. The Government does not like it and punishes you with low/no interest on savings and inflation that outpaces that savings, Banks hate it because they would rather you spend spend spend so you need their loans to live above your means so they can not only get interest but maybe you will also over draft on your checking and they can kill you in fees.

Retail shops hate it because they need to sell you increasing amounts of cheaply made poor quality product you must replace every 12-18 months

The economy lives and dies with debt. If everyone started saving and living with in their means tomorrow the national economy would come to a screeching halt and we would have a depression that would make 1929 looks like a boom year

American Express can reference and transfer credit if you move abroad.

https://www.americanexpress.com/global-card-transfers/

I'll second that. Had a similar experience.

You can also go with capital one which has an unsecured $500 credit limit immigrant credit card. Citibank also had a program for new immigrant credit cards. The citibank one references your current income, I got a card with a $10k limit.

This was ~6 years ago so YMMV

yes but if you can make a new independent "ID" cert at a whim then any unsecured debt instrument will be subject to massive fraud

The same way someone new (young people, immigrants) gains history now. Start with something low/no risk in order to build history.

You don’t really need a history. I.e. it’s very possible to get around just fine without credit card or loans. Most people I know in continental Europe just have debit cards and only buy things they have enough cash in their bank account to afford.

The only exception is mortgage which is usually the only loan people take their entire life. And it’s possible to get it without having a credit score. You’ll need your complete history of employment and addresses and based on that bank can borrow you money. Perhaps car leasing is another loan people might take but that works similar way.

Borrowing money to buy everything seems to be an American fetish (but also present in U.K. which is most America like part of Europe and Asia, not continental Europe though). It always seemed insane to me to have to borrow money from bank to buy a latte or groceries.

Having my consumption expenses separate from my actual bank account is quite nice - it means my bank account statement gives me a quick summary of what I spent this month (x went to my mortgage, y went on utility bills, z went on buying things) and then my credit card statement has the details. You could see it as borrowing money for your latte but you can also see it as being billed at the end of the month for your lattes which is normal for many things. In principle I'm all about living within your means, but really why wouldn't I do things this way and get a month's grace on paying for everything and free plane tickets every so often?

Because I don't want to pay an extra 2% "tax" to the banks, for loans that I don't need?

The only place I use a credit card is online. So i can pay quickly and worldwide.

How do you end up paying anything? I don't. A few shops charge a fee for using a credit card, in which case I'd use cash[1], but that's rare.

[1] Not actually true, because I find the convenience of the card is worth it - but I understand people taking the opposite position.

There's a risk you miss the credit card payment and have to pay exorbitant fees. Why risk it, just pay with debit and there is zero risk.

I've got a direct debit set up to my bank account, so there's no risk of accidentally not paying (of course it's possible to overdraw my bank account, but that would be possible when paying by debit card as well).

Yes I had similar setup when I had credit card in the past (when I worked in Hong Kong I had to open bank account with HSBC and my account came with Visa credit card, the debit card they issued was not Visa or MasterCard so did not work in many stores so I used credit card mostly).

It was annoying as even though I setup automated direct debit I simply didn't have peace of mind. I don't trust HSBC systems to be bug free and a bug in their software which would not process by direct debit is something I'd keep worrying about. Much better not to have this additional subconscious stress.

But if you are in UK or Germany or country like that there is no need for credit card really. Debit cards are ubiquitous and work everywhere (UK banks will give you a proper Visa/MC debit card, not some Mickey Mouse debit card which only works in ATMs).

> But if you are in UK or Germany or country like that there is no need for credit card really.

There's no need, indeed. But as I said, a month's grace on paying for everything and free plane tickets every so often.

Shops make everything slightly more expensive if most people use a credit card... So you still end up paying for it.

I get the same thing with prepaid debit card. I use Monzo which sends me push notification every time I buy something and I can see my weekly / monthly / annual spending habits per category (utilities, groceries, entertainment, eating out etc). The credit card is absolutely not needed for this and most modern banks give you very detailed summaries like this via their web / mobile interfaces.

The same way you do now, as a new adult: apply for a very low-limit credit card, get an older relative to co-sign a loan for you, etc. Over time you build history that shows you are (or are not) trustworthy to lend to.

You skip it - don’t have a credit score, and when you finally get around to buying a home use a lender that will manually underwrite your mortgage.

The fallacy of needing to use debt for day to day living is ruining people.

People do have a single identity, it just isn't bound up in their documents.

You must not know (m)any LGBTQ+ people. I have several identities, and each serves a perfectly legitimate and harmless purpose.

Those are arguably facets of a single identity.

For instance, you did not refer to yourself as "we".

The confusion you have here is that you have the wrong conception of "identity". You are assuming there is a single "authoritative" identity established by your physical being, and that is the fundamental error here. You can't refute that by simply assuming it again.

I'm not the same person I was when I was 30 years younger, and I'm not the same person here that I am in person. Those differences are differences in Identity. It doesn't matter if you want to call the 'different facets', because the only thing that matters is that they are distinguishable, and thus not the same identities. Your understanding of Retra is as much an understanding of me as it is an understanding of 2-year-old me.

Sure, but you're still the same person/individual underneath. Your various identities share, for example, the same creditworthiness.

There are crypto solutions that could make his much more interesting, such as bling signers, identity based encryption, zero knowledge proofs, etc. Most of the downsides could be worked around, if we innovate a teal solution instead of something off the shelf.

Blind signers. But I do wonder what a bling signer would do...

And “an ideal solution”. How long until we have semantic awareness in autocorrect?

Certainly national IDs are a feature of totalitarian regimes, but I don't see how they necessarily lead to one. Plenty of free societies in the world have national IDs and live quite democratically.

Estonians seem to do kind-of fine. Ignoring the weak random number generation thing ofc.

How would you know you were issuing the certificate to the right person though?

The same way you do with any other document.

Doesn't that not even really work though?

I think the idea here is that it shifts the person checking identity to the government, rather than individual organizations.

Most of the time it does. When it doesn’t you revoke the cert.

By checking their Social Security number?

National ID is the first step to https://www.aclu.org/ordering-pizza

It would be incredibly expensive to implement. I personally would make a lot of money on it, but the complexities are almost unlimited.

The GOP would never let it happen because it would make it too difficult to suppress black and poor voters by making registration unnecessary.

Wait, I thought GOP was in support of voter ID to suppress voting?

If you replaced SSN with a universal ID, that would imply that anyone filing a tax return would need one.

The purpose of voter ID laws is to suppress voting by poor people, especially African Americans, who lack ID because they do not drive, or have a difficult time meeting the standard of proof for getting an ID, or have difficulty going to the one DMV that supports their geography an hit away without a car. It’s the most recent of techniques used to suppress voting since the poll taxing and literacy tests of the reconstruction era.

Unfortunately my comment wasn’t well-received, but that doesn’t take away from the reality. A federal ID, unencumbered by the bullshittery imposed in many states, would be opposed bitterly.

Digital certificates sound like a terrible idea.

I would prefer a smart token/card with a PIN on it.

And the government should not do anything stupid like try to put a GPS on it "for security purposes", which even if it was technically a good feature for that and not just another backdoor through which intelligence agencies can spy on everyone, it would kill the whole idea immediately.

A smart card is just a carrier for a digital certificate.

So, you would prefer that your legal obligations be determined by a privately manufactured black box?

> I would prefer a smart token/card with a PIN on it.

What do you think is inside the token?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com