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Comment by amarant | Hacker News Reader

Again,I struggle to think of how it'd be used gather any data not already available.

Yes it's selling point is convenience. Convenience is good.

In this particular case I disagree that there's a price in privacy. At least currently, and the way the Swedish electronic ID is implemented, I don't see it.

With other variations there might be problems of course, though I'd worry more about someone messing up the security of it rather than privacy

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I used to think like that. Now in my country we have a president who would use that to deport or target political opponents, track people who criticize Israel, etc.

You can never put the genie back in the bottle and you never know who will be in charge in 20 years

Yeah but the US was never a full democracy. Part of the problem with the US is that the president has way too much power to begin with.

If trump was elected prime minister of Sweden, he wouldn't have been able to do half the stuff he's done.

The president isn't supposed to have that much power in the US either. The federal government in general wasn't supposed to have much power; power is supposed to be reserved to the states except for specific scenarios enumerated in our constitution. Unfortunately, a century of blatantly illegal power grabs by the federal government, combined with Congress (which should've acted as a check upon the president) willingly giving their power over to the president, we are in a pretty bad spot. However, if it happened to us it could happen to any country. At the end of the day the constitution of a nation is only meaningful to the extent that people will actually enforce it.

The President doesn't have that much power in the US. Head of the executive, yes, but that's it.

And what has he done? Enforced immigration laws according to written law? Reorganized the executive branch?

He can't pass any laws by himself. The judiciary can overturn his executive orders.

How about stacked the supreme court with sycophants (at least one of which has been caught taking bribes) whereby allowing his gross violations of the law to be tolerated on appeal to the supreme court (legal eagle has a great video on this).

And then bullied executive who dare disagree with him (e.g. jan 6 commission, and his first impeachment) and even perform completely baseless criminal investigations that (e.g. against Comey) that are so ill-advised that he has to appoint unqualified prosecutors to even file these claims because no serious one would stand for it.

He now wields enough scary-factor that even though we have handwritten proof of his involvement with Eepstein that his own party is too cowardly to impeach him or even release the files (the same party that freaked out about Clinton getting a blowjob now afraid to go after a pedophile, and one who flirts with the idea of pardoning Maxwell and moved her to a minimum security facility)

> He now wields enough scary-factor that even though we have handwritten proof of his involvement with Eepstein that his own party is too cowardly to impeach him or even release the files

I think they're only cowardly because each elected individual's goal is to survive long enough to get a sweet exit deal. Voting to impeach Trump is the correct thing to do (blatant corruption, violation of due processes, etc.), but it will surely lessen their chances of reelection.

I think Congress is full of a bunch of individuals trying to maximize personal gain agnostic of the outcome for the country, but I'm not sure how to realign the incentives to fix that.

Time to bone up on your civics!

The President nominates but the Senate approves Supreme Court appointees.

And just because you disagree with rulings doesn’t mean they are “violations of the law”.

The President is also head of the executive, as in they have direct authority for all executive functions. Yes they can fire anyone they want. Trump is hardly the first to do that.

In Parliamentary systems the Prime Minister has far more power. Their party has a majority to pass whatever law they please, combined with a rubber stamp senate.

I don’t get it, so you’re saying that the US isn’t a full democracy and the leader has too much power, but you think the US should implement digital ID anyway ignoring that situation? As if that will help?

There are many examples of democracies backsliding.

> Now in my country we have a president who would use that to deport or target political opponents, track people who criticize Israel

He can already do that?

I struggle to see how it's a good thing for Sweden. I disagree convenience is a good thing.

We can all play "I struggle to see" and throw out weak arguments but it does not advance the topic

You still haven't presented even a weak argument for how it infringes on privacy.

You just said "privacy" and pretended that's an argument

There’s not a lot of privacy ins Sweden anyway. Way too much private stuff is public and continuously scraped by private companies.

For those who don’t know: by just looking up a name, you can find a persons birthday, address, who also lives there. Oh and the person’s salary is public too.

Ridiculous.

I think it's awesome!

Try lying about your wealth during an election in Sweden!

Did trump's tax filings ever get published by the way? I recall there was a lot of outcry for them during the last election cycle........

> You still haven't presented even a weak argument for how it infringes on privacy.

NB I was calling out your weak arguments. I wasn't attempting to do something that isn't my job ;)

For countries introducing digital ID etc, it's for the advocates to present a strong argument and evidence how it will respect privacy, how it will remain secure etc beyond "trust us bro" and "I can't see how it wouldn't be secure"

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