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Comment by save_ferris | Hacker News Reader

Of course it could be abused by the government, but that can't be the only standard we use to decide on state-mandated identifiers, or really anything else for that matter, because it's not realistic to create a system that simultaneously impacts lives in a fundamental way (as IDs do) while not being susceptible to abuse. We make this tradeoff all the time as a society.

This is equivalent to arguing that government mandated lockdowns could potentially be abused and used to oppress citizens, therefore we shouldn't allow the government to mandate lockdown orders, no matter how many people will die as a result.

You cannot give an entity like a government power without the potential for abuse, which is why elections exist. If we don't like what government is doing, we vote them out of office.

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You were doing so well! Then you appealed to voting. Is any American happy about either of the currently proposed candidates for President? They are both confused loudmouth old men from the Northeast who grab pussies! If voting could change government, it would have done so by now.

The lack of voting is precisely why we have the candidates we have. Others ran and polled well, but their bases didn’t show up to vote and they lost.

Criticizing voting perpetuates the system that produces the candidates that you dislike. Grassroots efforts only work when people get out and vote.

I’d argue that their bases did show up. There’s just too many people that like loudmouth pussy grabbing old men.

This just isn’t true. Only one state in the 2020 primaries showed increased turnout among young voters, Iowa, while big states like New Hampshire and Michigan saw sizable declines[0].

There was just no way that a candidate like Bernie Sanders was going to overcome the momentum of the DNC without huge turnout, which never materialized. If the citizens don’t vote, we’re gonna be stuck with people who’ve amassed political power and likely done some terrible stuff along the way in their personal lives. Participation is critical, and mass movements have taken hold many times in American history. The issue facing us now is figuring out how to overcome the passive entertainment that is social media and traditional media and actually participate in the political process.

0: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/sanders-banked-on-youn...

You weren't around for the whole South Carolina-Super Tuesday week? Remember, Sanders was the clear leader after Nevada. Biden was an also-ran. How did that change so quickly? How, indeed.

Blaming the voters is easy. The national news media corporations don't report on the many hours that urban and minority voters waited to vote in Texas, California, Michigan, Georgia, etc. since numerous polling places and voting machines were removed. They don't report on "provisional ballot" shenanigans. They don't report on the double-digit percentage differences between exit polls and results, when the UN considers 4% differences to be clear evidence of vote-rigging.

But we don't have to get bogged down in pesky details. They can't report around the obvious fact that while this system might be working for someone, it ain't working for us. We've failed as hard on Covid-19 as we've failed on "spreading democracy" and "The Drug War", and the whole world can see it. We'll reelect Trump because he's on TV all day, which is why we elected him in the first place. Sure, we could ask why voters are so dumb that they'll vote based on that sort of thing. Or, we could just not have him on TV all day. Could we try that? While we're at it, could we not have as his opposition someone who is worse than him by pretty much any measure?

I'm not sad that Bernie isn't the nominee. As feckless as he's been for the last month, it's clear Trump would have abused him in the debates just as thoroughly as he will abuse Biden. The point is, we shouldn't expect that the function of voting in this nation will just miraculously change from how it has been for 70 years, just because we really want it to. The flawed system will not fix the flaws in the system. When the opportunity for a real change appears, it will be attacked by defenders of the status quo on precisely these terms: it's not democratic like voting! Those attacks won't come because they want a real change.

The immediate problem isn't government abuse per se, but rather that there is no political willpower for the government to prevent abuse by private companies. The only constraint on abuse of the current identity system is people's vague worry about their identifiers being used fraudulently. If we fix the fraud problem before fixing the abuse problem, that constraint goes away.

> The immediate problem isn't government abuse per se

The Snowden leaks proved that this isn’t true. The NSA dragnet surveillance program originated from the highest levels of our military intelligence apparatus, not private companies. Sure, companies were complicit, but it’s important to remember that those orders originated from the Government, not business.

Can we please stop with this false dichotomy of government surveillance xor corporate surveillance? Arguing against one by implicitly justifying another is a losing game. They're both independent threats, while also feeding off of each other. Power always coalesces, regardless of our categorizations of it.

Specifically, the other half of the subject of your comment is that there would have been no troves of data for the NSA to take from web businesses had web businesses not collected it in the first place. (And just in case it's still not abundantly clear, I'm not validating the NSA for collecting this data simply because it was sitting around!)

Regarding the original topic, I said "immediate" for a reason. I don't think the bona fide government is particularly abusing citizen identification right now, regardless of what it could end up doing in the future.

I'm not justifying either of them, I'm pointing out that the government is just as capable of abusing citizens rights as private companies are. I still believe the government is capable of acting in a positive and responsible way, but we have be honest and forthright about their transgressions or else history repeats itself. I don't believe in perpetuating a false dichotomy here, one is not better than the other.

> Specifically, the other half of the subject of your comment is that there would have been no troves of data for the NSA to take from web businesses had web businesses not collected it in the first place.

This is an oversimplification as well, since NSA wasn't just collecting internet data. The initial scandal was around phone metadata collection, which was conducted at the behest of the government and had been alleged by whistleblowers for years before Snowden leaked his documents.

> I don't think the bona fide government is particularly abusing citizen identification right now, regardless of what it could end up doing in the future.

Part of this comes down to your political preferences and whether or not you believe that immigrants should be treating differently by government, as they have been for a few years now. There are numerous reports that stimulus checks aren't going out to immigrant families as consistently as they are for others. Profiling is very much in the conscience of this administration, and that comes back to identification.

> I'm pointing out that the government is just as capable of abusing citizens rights as private companies are

Your comment that I initially replied to was downplaying the possibility of governmental abuse of stronger identification. I replied pointing out that apart from direct government abuse, the current identification system is already rife with abuse by private actors.

In response, you switched to pointing out how the government does indeed commit abuse (which you had been downplaying), and invoking the dichotomy by saying "not private companies". This is detracting from discussing corporate abuse, by pushing the topic right back to focusing on government abuse.

> Part of this comes down to your political preferences and whether or not you believe that immigrants should be treating differently by government, as they have been for a few years now

I'm willing to entertain whatever perspective your argument requires.

> There are numerous reports that stimulus checks aren't going out to immigrant families as consistently as they are for others

You're going to have to be specific about what you mean technically. I feel like we have an inversion here, because stimulus checks are only going to people who can be identified to begin with. So yes, the profiling relies on having an identity - but the identity is already necessary for the bona fide government function, to prevent someone filing multiple claims (Sybil attack). It's not the same situation as say a hypothetical bread line where being a person who has waited for hours is good enough proof, but now ID is being requested solely so you can be profiled. It's also not like a situation where someone with a green card claiming a stimulus check has that fact used against them when applying for citizenship (at least I hope not).

There's an abstract argument to be made that identification in general is a cornerstone of the ever-growing government (legibility of humans), but I think that ship has mostly sailed, especially in a thread about unemployment compensation.

That's why its essential to limit the power of government, and to make sure it doesn't creep into areas where it has no business being (like pandemic management).

> to make sure it doesn't creep into areas where it has no business being (like pandemic management).

If it shouldn't be the government's responsibility to manage pandemics, a fundamental public health issue, then who should take that charge? Why can't we bestow responsibilities on the government and vote them out if they don't fulfill those responsibilities? What's the alternative?

What business should the government be in? What is your opinion on what should happen during a pandemic, and on what do you base that opinion?

If you believe that the government doesn't have business being in public health, I'm curious to know what area you believe the government has business being in.

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