Well as much of an answer to others who have replied, what do we even need to be identified> of course so our identities are not stolen; so voting is secure, banks are not illegally accessed.
But I don't particularly like the entire digital system; if I want to order one thing, why do I have to be==have an account and thereafter receive endless propositions to buy something else. Even on substack, I buy by the ear when I can afford a subscription because I can guarantee you those who insist on my leaving my debit card on fille so they can take out a payment every month are going to be sorely disappointed because every four to six weeks I'm going to report suspicious activity of some kind and change my card number. If I want to buy something, let me decide when and where to do it.
It's not that I don't like the idea of a single ID; I'm not terribly keen on needing to be identified universally at all.
If you want to know the key to the discontent of so many, it's those who have no reason to be identified by many who want to identify them.
People are tired of being targeted and categorized as if we are mere dissections on someone else's laptop, their future behavior predicated on their past behavior.
Maybe these respondents are not, but I am.
What does it matter to any purchase who I am if I wish to purchase online? Why don't I have a right to control my own identity?
I know you're going to give me a thousand reasons why it could be necessary.
They may be correct.
But what is also correct is people are becoming more and more merely computerized bits of information and then you wonder
why society is rumbling; how mass shooters are formed...
I can't go to the face and ask an unknown woman for a spin around the floor, I have to be identified, she has to be identified and then we have to very non-spontaneously meet somewhere in an exposed forum where our identities can be verified before we can proceed to the dance.
Maybe we wouldn't need to worry about identity theft so much if there was less data available to identity Maybe we would be more social, and more accommodating to strangers if everyone wasn't pre-identified.
To reverse an old Garth lyric,maybe we are missing the dance because over-identification as made us so wary of attending the dance that we are heaping all the pain on ourselves by those who make usd think we need to miss the pain.
And there you go. The pain is manufactured by knowing more about your identity than you know yourself and you hide online and venture forth only when the pain is so overwhelming that the Son of Sam of the damned computer is identifying you into a mad ball of passion and you begin to kill.
figuratively or literally, when you have become a microscopic dot what else can be expected?
A single identifier, whether digital or not, is not by itself a danger.
The real panopticon problem is the ability to access data that is currently dispersed among multiple "owners". A digital ID would assist in correlating records from separate places, but the access is the critical problem. This is what DOGE were up to, grabbing data from many different government agencies. Previously those databases were kept separate as a matter of policy. Musk probably expected to use AI to do the correlation (SS numbers, driver licence, etc). Most health care systems seems to use DOB to locate patient records. Without a shared ID, the failures and false correlations would cause harm to a lot of people.
If the access is kept under seriously secure need-to-know control, the ID itself is mostly harmless.
Agree. It's how the data will be used. And also the government's ability to enable — or restrict — access to your needs. Spying and control; STASI on steriods. That's the concern.
No question digital id could be used as you describe. As one who uses their own identity online, I have often wanted all of us to be "responsible for our keystrokes" - we seem to behave better when we are known, easier to be awful when you hide your identity. I remember a discussion about a constitutional right to privacy a few years ago, not sure one was found in the current Constitution.
Our digital fingerprints are already everywhere, collected by governments and corporations. Add AI to the mix and we may finally get to George Orwell's Thought Crime.
Well as much of an answer to others who have replied, what do we even need to be identified> of course so our identities are not stolen; so voting is secure, banks are not illegally accessed.
But I don't particularly like the entire digital system; if I want to order one thing, why do I have to be==have an account and thereafter receive endless propositions to buy something else. Even on substack, I buy by the ear when I can afford a subscription because I can guarantee you those who insist on my leaving my debit card on fille so they can take out a payment every month are going to be sorely disappointed because every four to six weeks I'm going to report suspicious activity of some kind and change my card number. If I want to buy something, let me decide when and where to do it.
It's not that I don't like the idea of a single ID; I'm not terribly keen on needing to be identified universally at all.
If you want to know the key to the discontent of so many, it's those who have no reason to be identified by many who want to identify them.
People are tired of being targeted and categorized as if we are mere dissections on someone else's laptop, their future behavior predicated on their past behavior.
Maybe these respondents are not, but I am.
What does it matter to any purchase who I am if I wish to purchase online? Why don't I have a right to control my own identity?
I know you're going to give me a thousand reasons why it could be necessary.
They may be correct.
But what is also correct is people are becoming more and more merely computerized bits of information and then you wonder
why society is rumbling; how mass shooters are formed...
I can't go to the face and ask an unknown woman for a spin around the floor, I have to be identified, she has to be identified and then we have to very non-spontaneously meet somewhere in an exposed forum where our identities can be verified before we can proceed to the dance.
Maybe we wouldn't need to worry about identity theft so much if there was less data available to identity Maybe we would be more social, and more accommodating to strangers if everyone wasn't pre-identified.
To reverse an old Garth lyric,maybe we are missing the dance because over-identification as made us so wary of attending the dance that we are heaping all the pain on ourselves by those who make usd think we need to miss the pain.
And there you go. The pain is manufactured by knowing more about your identity than you know yourself and you hide online and venture forth only when the pain is so overwhelming that the Son of Sam of the damned computer is identifying you into a mad ball of passion and you begin to kill.
figuratively or literally, when you have become a microscopic dot what else can be expected?
A single identifier, whether digital or not, is not by itself a danger.
The real panopticon problem is the ability to access data that is currently dispersed among multiple "owners". A digital ID would assist in correlating records from separate places, but the access is the critical problem. This is what DOGE were up to, grabbing data from many different government agencies. Previously those databases were kept separate as a matter of policy. Musk probably expected to use AI to do the correlation (SS numbers, driver licence, etc). Most health care systems seems to use DOB to locate patient records. Without a shared ID, the failures and false correlations would cause harm to a lot of people.
If the access is kept under seriously secure need-to-know control, the ID itself is mostly harmless.
Agree. It's how the data will be used. And also the government's ability to enable — or restrict — access to your needs. Spying and control; STASI on steriods. That's the concern.
Thomas
No question digital id could be used as you describe. As one who uses their own identity online, I have often wanted all of us to be "responsible for our keystrokes" - we seem to behave better when we are known, easier to be awful when you hide your identity. I remember a discussion about a constitutional right to privacy a few years ago, not sure one was found in the current Constitution.
Our digital fingerprints are already everywhere, collected by governments and corporations. Add AI to the mix and we may finally get to George Orwell's Thought Crime.
Best...H