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Comment by 0xmohit | Hacker News Reader

Ever wondered why such "secure and privacy-concious" national ID cards only find place in third-world countries.

"Citizens of Australia, Canada, NZ, UK, and the US successfully opposed biometric national ID schemes." https://www.eff.org/issues/national-ids

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Calling Estonia a third world country is incredibly ignorant!

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia#Economic_indicators for instance.

Hong Kong is at the top - looks like that list will need to get updated soon.

Because the defacto IDs, e.g. SSN (US) or NiNO (UK) are so much better! They have no identifying features, so it's trivial to commit identitiy fraud. And once that happens you're fucked because they cannot be changed. But sure is better than one of those nasty ID cards that e.g. Germany, one of the most privacy-conscious nations, uses. (/s)

SSNs have been terribly abused by private industry. They were never meant to be handled by private companies, but here we are with a non-consentual credit scoring system based atop it.

Should people be required to hold a national ID card? It may have been rammed through in Germany, but many are not happy with national IDs. Its a basic consent of the people problem IMO. Passive acceptance is not consent or support, but merely dealing with the situation at hand.

What's your point? People have driving licenses, a passport and never think twice about using credit cards or loyalty cards. But somehow an ID card is uniquely dangerous? I don't buy it. The status quo is already worse!

The status quo is terrible, that is not a good reason to add a "secure" national ID though, it is apt to make the problem of tracking worse.

Its because its so open to abuse by the police and reminds people (sorry germany) the Gestapo - that's why post ww2 the UK rejected ID cards.

Considering they are the most privacy conscious, it's pretty hard to avoid running into bullshit like Schufa or the need to register your address with the authorities.

The UK has a weird "identity" system: you now need proof of immigration status in order to get a job, a bank account, or rent a house (and you need to show ID to buy a house too). For British nationals this effectively means you have to have a passport, which is biometric ID.

The system also rests on utility bills - my wife was securing the services of a lawyer recently, and the government-issue driving license with photo and address is apparently not enough, you have to have a utility bill in your name too.

I have managed to open bank accounts and ISA's with no pass port or driving licence just a credit card bill and my p60 (tax documents)

The 5-eyes countries you mention don't need national ID cards to track their citizens. They're way ahead of the "third-world" countries.

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