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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

The point is to authenticate residency, and while it’s not a great system, there also isn’t any better alternatives.

If all this was for is to ensure you live at an address then the local government can offer a number of solutions to that. If they want mail, they can simply mail you a unique qr code which you could then scan and complete the process entirely online. Or at a minimum bring physically to an office.

A utility bill doesn't require proof of residency to get. Neither does a credit card statement. Infact if I were creative I could say I live anywhere and provide false documents of that. It is the legitimate use of this system that is difficult, not illigitimate use.

The system is not designed to be secure or to ensure residency, that's not it's purpose. Its purpose is to create further government control to suppress citizens rights to operate freeley in their own country. Specifically, to target low income individuals. These people creating the policies are not the same people whom are affected by them.

If I am U.S. born I have a right to operate in certain capacities as a citizen. Voting, owning land, and working are all rights unalienable. The fact this is not currently true is proof of the federal fascism we live in.

I agree with everything you're saying, but disagree with the reason.

The US federal government has to be too loose about keeping track of citizens specifically to avoid looking too fascist. One of your many American rights is to have no ID at all. Protecting that right for two dozen people makes everything extremely complicated for the rest of us.

The federal government is not too loose in tracking citizens, and you cannot effectively operate in the U.S. without I.D of some form. Birth certificates and tax ID's are necessary for everything from school to work. Infact those that forgo it originally struggle as adults heavily to get those documents later, if at all.

It’s probably true that you can’t operate properly without an ID, and yet the US government is specifically avoiding the one necessary prerequisite to having reliable and convenient IDs: a complete list of its citizens, with place of residence and a mandatory assigned unique identifier.

It fuck people coming and going. You can’t get an ID if you don’t have a place of residence, and yet you can’t just go about your business without an ID.

> One of your many American rights is to have no ID at all.

Ha, if only. Everyone from FB to the NSA is keeping tabs on individuals in all aspects of life. There is no hiding in the US

The point isn't to prevent a skilled attacker. The point is to prevent casual lying and low-skill fraud. Most people who lie/cheat/steal do so because it's easy or because they're dumb. Your QR code idea will cost more money to implement and won't block skilled attackers either, as it doesn't take a genius to figure out a way to get mail from a mailbox you don't own.

Utility bills are the DMV's equivalent of a cheap lock. A smart attacker can pick the lock, and a determined attacker can cut it off. But the majority of thieves are walking around looking for unlocked car doors instead.

Do you really think DMV asks for a copy of a utility bill because it's a good way to suppress your rights? I would think that there are plenty of more effective ways to do so, if that were actually their goal.

Do you think low skilled fraud doesn't have access to a printer? If it cannot be implemented properly, then it shouldn't be done at all. It doesn't matter what good intent it may have had, in effect it is a suppression of individual rights. This entire process would be grounds for a civil war in the 1800's. Yet today we think being a citizen isn't enough to have rights. You have to be apart of a socioeconomics nomic class of people to have those rights.

The DMV complies with whatever regulations are imposed on them. Those rules are created by legislators whom are entirely disconnected from their constituents and are paid for their votes.

Yes, there are absolutely people who do not have the equipment or ability to fake a document.

> If it cannot be implemented properly, then it shouldn't be done at all.

Perfectionist fallacy. I can't think of any civic requirements that are perfect. We always compromise on perfection because our civic processes also have to be reasonable.

Implimenting it reasonably is properly. I did not say perfect.

> it doesn't take a genius to figure out a way to get mail from a mailbox you don't own

iirc stealing other people’s mail by tampering with a mailbox is a ~~felony~~ federal crime. If they threw out the mail and you went through their trash it might be different. I anal though.

You can also rent mailboxes, or use a friends. Neither of those are crimes.

And do you suppose nobody keeps track of who is renting that PO Box?

And election fraud isn't a crime or even a felony? If one is going to commit one of those things, would the threat of another charge REALLY stop them?

If you go to my local library and tell them you want a library card, but you don't have any ID, they ask you to give them your address. They send you a postcard, and when you bring it in, they'll give you a library card. No QR code necessary.

The USPS could function quite successfully as an ID system and a bank, were they allowed.

In fact postal services in many countries do function as banks. When I was a primary school student in South Korea, we all made a savings account at the local post office and learned about how banks work and the importance of saving money.

And indeed the United States Postal Service itself operated a savings bank system from 1911 until 1967: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_S...

I've never understood this. There doesn't seem to be a natural synergy between delivering mail and storing money. Is it just because post offices are everywhere? Why not make court houses banks? At least they would have security. Or town halls?

It just feels kinda random.

Because in some countries it is/was rather common to receive payments (most often pension payments) in cash that where delivered by the postman. That's why it makes sense in a way.

Few reasons (US Centric)

1. Court Houses are not everywhere like Postal offices

2. Court houses are not part of the Executive Branch, where as a Service like the Postal Service or banking would need to be part of the Executive Branch, not Judicial. A Better counter would be DMV or some other government service.

3. Court Houses are not nearly as accessible and are much harder to get in and out of due to their nature. Not consumer friendly

4. Court Houses by the nature have alot of criminals going in and out of them all the time, probably a bad idea to put money services in the same place....

for the record I do not support the idea of USPS being a bank either.

Post offices have to be able to handle money orders paid for in cash, so I guess they already have the infrastructure to do a significant subset of bank-like things. At least with respect to document authentication and cash management.

https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Money-Orders-The-Basics

This is what California did for RealID when they made a mistake early on. Federal government didn’t recognize one of two forms of verification California used and California mailed a post card to those affected. Was able to just go online with the code and verify receipt of the card.

Most countries whose postal service offered banking stopped.

Know why?

Wikipedia had a pretty good summary of implementation in different countries[0]. It seems most implementations are stopped because of privatization efforts, but the blurbs don't give much context.

I can see people having different opinions of this trend. What is your take on it?

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_savings_system

>they can simply mail you a unique qr code which you could then scan and complete the process entirely online. Or at a minimum bring physically to an office.

How is that any different than bringing any other piece of official mail that you receive at your home address?

Because it actually validates your address. Plenty of “official mail that you receive at your home address” can be accessed (or produced) without access to the listed address, but you can't spoof knowing information that you never received.

It would be reasonably easy to check my mail before I do every day.

Or maybe I conspire with someone that doesn't live here but wants to appear to live here (which can obviously also be done with utility bills).

I'm all for making it as easy as possible to vote, I'm analyzing the properties of the piece of mail that the government sends.

If you want to make it as easy as possible to vote, you can't have a permanent address requirement as such. As has been said, many, many people don't have one.

When you move to a new state, I suppose you don't fill in a bunch of forms to register yourself as a resident in the state then? So that when DMV and other institutions ask for residency they could just check back in the states records (or have you bring a copy of the state's residency certificate) ?

The state surely must know how to tax you, and thus they need to know who you are and that you're a resident in the state... It seems the information inevitably must be there already so why try to imitate that with a bunch of random tokens such as bills sent to an address where they could go straight to the source?

Just curious.

In the US, no, you don't need to fill out any forms to register yourself as a resident. The closest is probably moving your drivers license registration, which many people wait years to do after moving. Other than that, you generally prove residency by showing (as GP mentioned) bills mailed to you, or a copy of your lease.

You're responsible for filing your own state taxes based on when/how/where you worked.

> The closest is probably moving your drivers license registration, which many people wait years to do after moving.

Most states do require by law that you do this in a very short period of time after moving. (Although yes, it is not uncommon for people to violate this)

Only if you have a driving license and plan on driving.

I agree, it's quite odd that you never officially register as a resident of the state, but I guess it's part of the US's aversion to "papers please."

Or voting. You typically register with the secretary of state to vote.

It’s also that there are different standards of requirements across the thousands of different government entities that care about residency. And there’s not much chance they’d agree.

My municipal tax authority and the US State department may have very different standards for validating “residency” and very different reasons for doing so.

There's also the state v. federal political issue of the interstate commerce clause. Some municipalities in the pretty far past have tried to restrict people moving there by creating onerous registration barriers that were then struck down by the feds. They're allowed some leeway there, but there's a limit that they don't want to push and the feds are more than happy to enforce their power.

My state (CO) semi recently hit a morph of this concern because they had "pioneer" license plates that cost an extra $100 or so and were only available to people who could prove N generations of ancestry in CO. The feds struck that down as .gov services provided being dependent on state origin and therefore against the interstate commerce clause.

As a Colorado born kid, I always thought the pioneer plates were the ultimate form of the "Native" bumper sticker. Mind you, I think that basing your identity on where your mother happened to be when she gave birth is exceptionally stupid.

That said, Florida can take Rep. Boebert back at any point.

California requires you to register your vehicles within 20 days and firearms within 60 days of moving in-state.

I hope you mind me not asking but while I know on some general level how things work in the US the details are infinitely interesting the deeper I think about this.

You're responsible for filing your own state taxes based on when/how/where you worked.

This seems like having so many knots left untied, considering how much importance one might expect to be placed for a fundamental question such as residency.

The obvious case is that it seems like people could just move into a state and never tell anyone and omit paying taxes. While there must be mechanisms to prevent or curb this, it still probably applies to a non-trivial minority of so-inclined people already? Not an option for people who want to settle, of course, but for certain people, living some months or years anonymously in a particular state might be a viable opportunity.

Do counties / cities / towns also lack similar logging of identity? How can they offer public services to people if they really don't know who the people are, and most importantly, if the people are residents or not? Does everyone just keep showing their utility bills? How do they deal with the various John Smiths moving from place to place -- inevitably to addresses where another John Smith was living before as there will be collisions without an unique identity? Or does the driving license become the de-facto proof of residence once people move it over, and the driving license has a unique number to differentiate between individuals regardless of name and address?

I mean, for the state government there's an inevitable and pragmatic need for uniquely identifying the people who live in the state and if there's no central registry then this need will be approxximated by various mechanisms so that the society can function at all.

Conversely, let's say the government does track down residents who nobody officially knows about. If the state government really doesn't know who lives in that state how could they impose liabilities such as taxes onto people whose identity and location and length of official residence they don't know? If I move in with my friend who lives in another state at which point can I still say "I'm just visiting, no taxes me for, thank you" and if the state were to disagree how would they go about establishing I was a resident after all? How would I prove I'm still actually a resident in the old state (if I were) vs how could they prove I'm no longer a resident in the old state (if I weren't)? What is the mechanism that prevents me from living in two states and claiming always in one that I'm resident in the other state?

> check back in the state

I wish, but I don't think each of many departments talk or share individual's personal data between them, unless its collections or something. Like, DMV would not have access to one's tax status or details, and tax one's might not know one's driving license details. I wish the willpower & technology increases to make it happen.

But given how easy it is to foil, I don't understand what it "authenticates".

If you wanted to truly authenticate residency or at the very least prove that someone has access to the mailbox, sending them a one-time auth code per mail would be a better idea rather than relying on third-party services where people may use paperless billing for convenience.

I explicitly said it was not good authentication. :)

Mailing someone a code would be more secure but, to the parents point, would be even more onerous of a process for people to comply with.

Some comments above suggested above that this is an intentionally burdensome process, but to the contrary, bringing in a bill is one of the least burdensome ways to authenticate residency.

> bringing in a bill is one of the least burdensome ways to authenticate residency

My problem with this is how is the recipient supposed to authenticate said bill. Now we're talking about bringing a paper bill vs a printed one (or "faking" a paper bill by creasing/folding the printed one), but the real threat is fraudsters completely making up a fake bill to begin with. Unless the recipient has a relationship with the company that issues the bills, there is no way for them to verify whether the bill is real in the first place, making the whole endeavor pointless and only inconveniencing legitimate users.

Yes. There’s no question that a bill is a weak piece of evidence for residency. I am sure it only prevents low-effort or low-skill fraudsters, or casual fibs.

The latter is probably where they get the most utility out of these requirements.

Requiring people to print out a paper and fold it as if it had been in an envelope doesn't authenticate anything but access to a printer and some imagination. Just removing the requirement would be a better alternative.

I am referring to the requirement to produce a utility bill. Not the silly front-line bureaucratic interpretative variations thereof.

That's false. Many other countries have implemented simpler, more accurate, and less discriminatory systems.

> The point is to authenticate residency, and while it’s not a great system, there also isn’t any better alternatives.

"No-one important enough is bothered, so we haven't had to try to fix it" is a far cry from "there [aren't] any better alternatives". We're HN; that's not the hacker ethos.

RealID requirements were written in the past and exist in the present. While it would be great to have another solution, one doesn’t exist. Happy to hear a proposal, however. I, personally, haven’t been able to come up with a more equitable idea.

Why do you need to authenticate it in the first place? If people are discovered lying somehow, send them to jail. Otherwise, trust that people will be honest.

Fraud is not nearly the problem people think it is...

They could pay Google and Apple to tell them where you sleep, based on your phone GPS anyway.

>there also isn’t any better alternatives.

Of course there is. It's having a central resident registry like is common in most countries other than the US.

That is not an alternative for the DMV. There is no central registry and they can't create one.

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