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Hmmm I personally would hate this, why are you so for it?
And yes I agree, I appreciate that a politician who got elected on downsizing the system is ACTUALLY doing that for a change. It's incredibly refreshing.
Legibility, first and foremost.
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The state already has all your biometric data if they want it and if you’re a remotely well-travelled person (or if Apple’s security is less watertight than it implies). The current system is a form of anarcho tyranny, in that the only people without biometrics in the system are the scum at the bottom of society.
Android users?
If you travel to much of the world your biometrics are stored by US “allies” who (as part of Five Eyes or other intelligence alliances) will gladly hand your data over to US intelligence.
Lots of people don't travel that much, though. Your average republican in particular goes to Europe/Australia perhaps once in their lives, if that- wealthy conservatives buy lakehouses and cabins to which they drive(not fly), and have destination travel to places like the grand canyon or Yellowstone, and middle class ones take cruises which start and end at US ports, or go to Mexico or an in-US vacation, or get an RV.
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Why would you hate it? The only downside I can conceive are trivial relative to benefits.
First, that isn't something the federal government is allowed to do per the Constitution. So it's up to the states. Second, I don't want even the states accelerating the panopticon by incorporating all our biometrics into it. I don't know what benefits you have in mind, but I can't think of any which are not dwarfed by that massive cost.
The federal government can do anything necessary and proper to enforcing the immigration laws (as long is it doesn't violate the Bill of Rights).
Since universal ID is, in fact, required for effective in-country enforcement of immigration laws, this seems like an easily winnable legal argument.
That's an opinion, not a fact. Not saying we should digress into debating that point, but it's definitely not a factual one.
Yeah probably. The federal government has been winning far worse legal arguments to expand its power since Wickard v Filburn. But that doesn't change my opinion that these things are a blatantly unconstitutional use of power, and that the government shouldn't have it.
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It also isn't allowed to regulate the drinking age, but it does. It just has to extend the REAL ID provisions so one must have a compliant ID from the moment of birth till death. Or say maintaining a database of IDs is required for regulating interstate commerce.
Yes, I am aware that the federal government regularly and flagrantly violates the Constitution. That doesn't mean I'm going to simply accept more violations. We should both refuse to allow new violations and roll back the ones which exist.
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As much as I sympathize with this point of view, Mr Filburn, given the legal developments over last 100 years, I can scarcely think that national ID cards is the most advantageous location to pick this battle.
What is meaningfully changed in your life by state learning your biometrics? What kind of realistic nightmare scenarios are prevented by preventing Feds from issuing national biometric IDs? I really cannot think of any.
Improving elections integrity, for one thing.
Anyway, I really disagree that there is massive cost here, and I think you are not doing a good job articulating it. Consider, for example, other countries that do have national ID systems on top of very comprehensive census registries. This covers almost the entire Europe, for example. To the extent these countries are controlling panopticons (which, to be sure, they to a large extent are when compared to US), I cannot think of any aspects of that panopticon that would be meaningfully relaxed by making their population registries less comprehensive, or their ID systems less centralized. I’d be happy to hear concrete counterexamples, if you can think of any.
Disparate impact doctrine would like a word. How would this be anything other than a bludgeon against the outgroup in either direction, depending on who has the billy club in hand?
First, disparate impact doctrine has nothing to do with it. At best you could argue that it’s related to equal protection.
More importantly, this is a fully general arguments against any laws. Why prohibit theft if it’s just a bludgeon when the your political opponents are the ones controlling law enforcement?
It's a fully general argument that usually only gets deployed in one direction. I'm happy to see how the gander likes it.
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I am certainly aware that the federal government has been using the Constitution as so much toilet paper for the last 100 years. But I don't see why that means one should not raise the objection. We can't get back to following the Constitution by adding more violations to the pile
As far as the rest goes, I appreciate that I haven't said much to convince you. But unfortunately, I don't know what else I can say. The idea of having biometric IDs issued by the government (federal or state, for that matter) is something I find to be deeply disturbing and corrosive to freedom. By comparison, having less election fraud doesn't really register as a meaningful benefit. I like election security well enough, but I like not giving powers to the government far more. I can definitely imagine that the situation is reversed for you, which means... we simply prioritize different things, and I don't know that one can resolve that with debate. Certainly I'm not anywhere near a talented enough writer for that, though I wish I were.
What would help is if you actually articulated how exactly national ID cards give government more power over you, relative to status quo. You claim this, but this is far from obvious to me.
Easy! First, let's inroduce a national artifact that everyone "should" have. Next, let's add penalty modifiers to civilian life for not carrying said artifact. Finally, since this isn't legally mandated (nor guaranteed), start imposing conditions for revokation.
I get that "let's not turn into Europe" is a thing, but there's at least one New World nation that has a wide variety of ID cards (from various levels of government) and doesn't have a problem with this.
Canada doesn't have a national ID card (the SIN doesn't really qualify, nor does the birth certificate or the passport), thus not being able to answer "papers, please" isn't a crime here. None of the various government-issued IDs really have anything to do with biometrics, either, besides a general description of your person (including whether you're human or subhuman, useful when it isn't physically obvious, and lots of these ID cards are issued to subhumans for a variety of reasons anyway).
When you go to deal with the Federal government (for instance, when voting), Provincial IDs are acceptable.
It doesn't, and shouldn't, need to be anything fancier than that. Forging these cards generally isn't a problem since the advent of cellular networks and general anti-forging techniques, and the biggest market for these cards is subhumans who require an ID stating they're a real human being anyway.
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This argument proves too much. It’s not an argument specifically against federal ID cards, but against any and all ID cards, including state issued ones. Given that none of this is a problem with state issued IDs, I don’t find this vision very likely.
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The State already is a panopticon. The only fly in the ointment is that it's only a panopticon for members of society who are well-integrated into the economy, own assets, and generally "have something to lose."
This extends the panopticon to those who have nothing to lose. So we lose the anarcho part of anarchotyranny. Perhaps losing the tyranny part instead would be better, but throwing out the rulebook altogether seems a bigger lift than just ensuring it's applied universally.
This is undoubtedly true. But it seems to me that it's better to fight for that than to apply the tyranny to everyone (which is what you seem to be in favor of, correct me if I'm wrong).
I live in a city where the government will punish you more (up to putting a lien on your house and, if you don't pay the rapidly accumulating fines, appropriating it) if you change your windows to be double-paned without getting the appropriate permit than if you regularly go to elementary schools, expose yourself, and masturbate to the children. And god forbid if a taxpaying resident decides to perform any vigilante activism against the public masturbator. And, of course, the chronic masturbator can throw a rock through your window, and if you don't respond appropriately and request permission to fix it through the city channels, the same appropriation process begins.
This colors my views.
Is there some method for preventing you from wearing a mask and beating the vagrant senseless with a baseball bat? The police are unlikely to investigate this particularly beyond just declaring it a fight between bums, if he reports it at all. Is there 24/7 surveillance to stop you from just hiring a local Mexican to change the windows when the city isn't looking, and simply not telling anyone you did?
At a certain level, respectable and polite people make it easy to enforce laws unevenly against them.
Which is a worse problem: a fire, or the arsonist who set it?
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As far as the vigilantism, more likely than not it would be fine. There's the risk of getting stabbed, and I'm a relatively petite guy. But getting stabbed with a hepatitic knife is kind of a medium case scenario. The worst case is the city figuring out it's some kind of vigilantism, deciding to make a grand symbolic point, and putting in the effort to ruin my and my family's lives. A year or two back a guy took a hose and sprayed down a homeless woman shitting in front of his business during open hours, and the city suddenly took far more interest in charging that assault than in homeless people stabbing each other. Additionally, there are hundreds of people doing the exact same thing or worse; it would be a drop in the bucket for little payoff.
People do do that, but it's taking a risk. You're surrounded by a 24/7 surveillance system called your neighbors. I'm on good terms with all of them, but if someone wanted to screw me over, it would be very easy.
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In the former case, unless everything goes shockingly well for you, including many things over which you have no control, you run a significant risk of literally destroying your life. Some would argue the entire purpose of participating in civilization is to avoid needing to take that risk in the first place.
In the latter case, unless you somehow don't have neighbors, and unless you're certain that every person who will ever pass in front of your house won't call up the police for an unpermitted job, there's no such thing as "when no one is looking" - your neighbors voted for the city government. Even then, it may still come up if you ever sell the property, or try to get other work done.
The previous poster spells out examples of obvious, deliberate, unequal enforcement of the law that specifically targets the kind of noncompliance you're suggesting no one would enforce against. Are you seriously suggesting this is a bluff we should call? If so, you go first.
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It being an informal panopticon is still better than a formalized system, imo. It is about dignity and what our society is willing to do to its citizens in the light of day.
If character is what you are in the dark, is government what everyone is in the dark?
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It's a step towards national ID for everything / internal passports. Not that we aren't precariously close to that already with REAL ID (I use a passport card, which is indeed a national document) and nowhere-near-the-border papers checks.
That scarcely seem to me like something to worry about. We already need IDs for many normal activities. Having those issued on federal level would not change much, and in fact would probably be an improvement for reasons like Voter ID.
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