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Comment by throw0101a | Hacker News Reader

> […] a national ID which I am more against the more I hear about […]

The US already has a de facto one AFAICT: the Social Security Number (SSN).

Unique to every individual, assigned from birth (or whenever applied for), and which never changes for the life of the person until they die.

> Many countries issued such numbers for a singular purpose, but over time, they become a de facto national identification number. For example, the United States developed its Social Security number (SSN) system as a means of organizing disbursing of Social Security benefits. However, due to function creep, the number has become used for other purposes to the point where it is almost essential to have one to, among other things, open a bank account, obtain a credit card, or drive a car.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identification_number

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Unfortunately....

> Unique to every individual

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3004654/a-tale-of-two-women-...

> assigned from birth (or whenever applied for)

Sort of. Mostly yes, but not for everyone. As social security and medicare are de facto insurance policies, there are populations in the U.S. which object to them, and are not required to register, and therefore do not have SSNs. The Amish are one group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_number#Non-uni...

> and which never changes for the life of the person until they die.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_number#Replace... Note that one valid, accepted reason for issuing a replacement is when a duplicate has been issues.

And finally, as anyone who has ever worked in records management for a large institution that happens to receive SSN information, an SSN very explicitly is not a candidate primary key for an identifier of an individual. Everyone I've met who has tried has horror stories to tell. SSNs are not primary keys for individuals in the U.S.

Unique to every individual

Oh, wow. I laughed at that one.

Come work in healthcare IT, where in some geographies if you were to pick a group of 50,000 unique person records, you'd find that dozens, even hundreds, of people are using the same Social Security Number.

Sometimes you'll find eight or ten people with the same SSN in the same household. Or more often, several dozen unrelated people in the same state who have the same SSN because they all bought it from the same guy at the border.

Unique keys are a bitch in healthcare.

assigned from birth

Also nope.

I'm an American-born American citizen. I didn't get my Social Security number until I was 17.

The SSN is not an ID but a number: anyone with your number can claim to be you for the purposes of transactions. The number is only tied to name and birthdate, maybe address if you are of the age to pay taxes. This enables a lot of fraud: I once saw someone apply for a rewards (credit) card in a US store with SSN and no photo ID ("Oh I left my drivers license at home, could you take a student ID?")

Not sure how Europe handles this, but here in Korea phone numbers are tied to government-issued photo IDs. Sellers of phones have to fax ID scans to the central office for verification. Remote transactions such as signing up for a credit card require phone name + first half of ID + phone number 2FA at a minimum.

As a result, I'm not aware of any cases of identity theft. US infrastructure is so broken.

Yes. It’s important to emphasize that US infrastructure sucks because we have chosen to make it suck, not because fixing it is impossible or even difficult. “Identity theft” is a joke.

> This enables a lot of fraud: I once saw someone apply for a rewards (credit) card in a US store with SSN and no photo ID ("Oh I left my drivers license at home, could you take a student ID?")

They could have also just done it online in the US and not needed any photo ID to begin with.

As an aside, I assume the student ID had a photo on it, although accepting it begs the question of whether the teller is able to distinguish authentic and fake ones, although this is a problem for obscure state IDs as well.

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