Hacker News Reader

Comment by jbattle | Hacker News Reader

I'd trust this system if it were double-blind. The government issues an identifier to me (separate from SSN). I feel OK giving that number to restaurants. If there is a reason to initiate contract tracing, the restaurant hands its list of identifiers over to the appropriate government agency, which cracks open its vault of identifier --> contact information

Seems no less open to misinformation than the current system but gives vastly more protections to personal information. Doesn't even seem that hard to set up in the grand scheme of things.

View on HN

> The government issues an identifier to me (separate from SSN). I feel OK giving that number to restaurants.

Wow, can anyone imagine reading this in the beginning of 2019? The totalitarians come out in huge numbers recently.

It was once considered totalitarian to be asked at the East German border if one had any "contraband" (books or magazines that were frowned upon).

Now at the U.S. border one can be asked if one has any "contraband".

Next we all get a government id to pass on to private businesses. How about a "social credit" score, China style?

> Next we all get a government id to pass on to private businesses.

Most of the rest of the world actually has government-issued identifiers and ID cards and they don't devolve into totalitarian dumpster holes. To make it even more absurd, the lack of a proper government-issued ID scheme in the US actually leads to problems only the US has, like people opening up credit lines and siphoning large sums of money with stolen SSN+name+DOB combos.

I'm in the UK and we don't pass on said government ID to a plethora of private businesses so that they can turn around and hand it back to the government for tracking.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the UK is still part of the EU and thus subject to the EU KYC/AML laws requiring people who want to open a bank account/credit card to undergo identification with a government-issued ID?

I'd imagine you're right, I don't know enough about that to say otherwise.

However, my point was a "plethora of privates businesses", not "all private businesses"

I can't tell if you are trolling. I'll assume good faith.

We show ID to enter bars. We show ID to buy certain products. I provide identifying information when I pick up tickets at will call. Some items (like houses, cars, guns) you have to register the purchase with a government authority

Asking about contraband was totalitarian because they were trying to control what information people had and made certain thoughts/books verboten. Customs/border patrol has asked for ... ever? what you are bringing into the country.

I'm not saying the government would get an automatic transcript of every purchase I've made. I'm saying individual restaurants could collect a list of unique but meaningless numbers on a piece of paper or wherever they want. If the restaurant gets tagged as a place where COVID is believed to be spread, then the government now has a way to contact everyone who had visited the store.

>I'm not saying the government would get an automatic transcript of every purchase I've made

You make the assumption here that governments don't trend towards looking for ways for that information to be automatically supplied in future in the name of "efficiency".

Honestly, the history of the 20th century should be the closed book final assessment on why it's permanently a bad idea for governments to collect files on people.

Given how long governments have kept records (domesday book, bablylon) and how few governments have slipped into totalitarian hellscapes, I'm not as worried about this as you are.

I'm more concerned about the patriot act & etc because a lot of those survelliance programs are actively centralized.

The system I outlined would work XX% as well if it were entirely optional and if it were managed by independent agents. You could sign up with "ID Corp", or a credit union, or whatever. And they could keep your records.

>and how few governments have slipped into totalitarian hellscapes

Just because it's improbable doesn't mean we shouldn't protect against tail risks. Not taking meaningful tail risk protection is why we're in the covid-19 problem we are now.

>I'm not as worried about this as you are.

I wouldn't want to be presumptions of your background, but have you talked with many people from countries where they or their parents were victims of state bullying via secret police that kept files on them?

>I'm more concerned about the patriot act & etc because a lot of those survelliance programs are actively centralized.

I don't think what we're talking about is any different in the long run.

>The system I outlined would work XX% as well if it were entirely optional and if it were managed by independent agents.

I'm actually not opposed to a temporary system of tracking like this in order to stamp out coronavirus. However, it needs to have iron-clad provisions in law to make it time limited, along with laws that mandate that independent international observers witness data audits and subsequent destruction of said data. Unfortunately, when governments legislate provisions, they're usually in the form of "we promise to be very good" platitudes.

There is a difference between purchasing a house and buying a sandwich. Do you bring a notary to buy a sandwich?

The U.S. border agents can ask to hand over passwords to social media. They can search your computer in order to see if any intellectual contraband (their words) is imported.

Very similar to the East German restriction on printed contraband.

>Wow, can anyone imagine reading this in the beginning of 2019? The totalitarians come out in huge numbers recently.

sorry, are you saying a national id is totalitarian? Virtually every democratic country requires one. Using it to say, verify online age-sensitive purchases like booze or in South Korea for things that require identification is common, and of course for everyday interaction with public agencies and whatnot.

A national id was first and foremost for visual and ephemeral verification in exceptional circumstances.

If no record is stored (e.g. a supermarket worker briefly verifying an alcohol purchase), it is not totalitarian.

Making a copy of the id, like PayPal wants, is more sketchy, but at least this is banking.

Requiring an id that is stored in a database for minor transactions like buying a sandwich is definitely totalitarian.

The government could at a later date decide that all restaurants have to hand in all these identifier lists, regardless of whether a potential covid-19 case has been identified or not.

Of course, this could also happen with clear text lists. So I would be better for cases like in the article. I just want to point out that it's not a perfect solution.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com