Showing your ID to buy alcohol because the govenment has decided that under 18's cannot buy it. That's widely practiced and accepted without issue

>That's widely practiced and accepted without issue

There's two components to this.

1. It's widely accepted because in most cases the cashier just glaces at the ID. How is the vaccine passport going to be implemented? Are they going to give you a laminated ID card, or is it going to be some QR code thingy on your phone? The latter would necessitate some sort machine scanner, which would mean it's trivially easy to turn this into some sort of a tracking system.

2. "being 18" isn't a medical intervention that's forced onto people.

The last time I was asked for ID to buy alcohol in a supermarket in the UK was over 15 years ago (and the last time I was asked in a pub was probably 20 years ago). It's not like parts of the US where venues are required to check literally everyone - it's only people who look like they might be underage.

> Showing your ID to buy alcohol because the govenment has decided that under 18's cannot buy it. That's widely practiced and accepted without issue

The situation is likely different in the United States, but in Germany the youths solve this problem (under 16's/18's cannot buy alcohol) simply by the fact that always some friend has an older brother or sister.

No, there's a "Think 25" rule where if the person looks above 25 you don't have to check.

I would say the hotel stay situation is more like a "papers please" than a "situation where I wish to identify myself".

Last time I booked a hotel via an app at the last minute for an overnight stay after going to the pub in a city away from home, the booking process didn't mention we needed to show our passports at reception. It was a new policy for that hotel.

When we went to the hotel, about midnight, of course we didn't have passports with us, why would we? It's not normal to take your passport when visiting a neighbouring city for a night out.

I've stayed at countless hotels, and never had this problem before. But I understand the UK is becoming more draconian so perhaps a rule had kicked in since the previous time I went to a hotel. But I had the impression, it was a recent policy change by this hotel, and "oh, we should update our website".

It was pouring with rain, there were no other hotels accepting bookings by then, and the last train home would be in a few hours. Our Uber had dropped us off, and hotel reception was telling us we had to go outside into to the pouring rain as we couldn't stay despite having paid.

They knew perfectly well who we were. It wasn't an identity thing. We were able to show booking numbers, credit cards, confirm emails, and other forms of identity. But not the type their new policy required.

They required every guest's passport, not just one person. As luck would have it, we each spent about an hour trawling through the contents on our electronic devices and online, and we each found images of our passports in some location or other because of the ubiquitous requests for photos of passports these days, and those photos were accepted by the hotel.

It varies in the US. Some is probably locality. Some is probably chain policy. Although hotels don't in general do the copy of passport things that is common in many places.

A few years back, I got in a tight situation. I had a last minute trip and, among other things, didn't grab the little travel folder which I have with backup ID, credit cards, etc.

Get my license out in the back of the car for TSA. Somehow I managed to lose it between there and the airport doors. Called the driver. They looked no luck. No idea what happened.

To my considerable surprise, the TSA let me fly with no real hassle. (Rules may have tightened.)

But when I got to the crappy Travelodge motel on the other side--no luck. I assume I would have had better luck at one of my regular chains but they didn't want to budge in spite of a wallet full of other cards and a photo company ID.

I wasn't sure where I was going to sleep but they eventually relented so long as I paid cash. Fortunately the cost was relatively low enough I was able to get enough of an ATM. (I didn't have photos on my phone.)

Airbnb is usually good for those scenarios, they have your details already, and hosts will not ask any further.

It was a bit late at that point. I was near SFO in the evening and needed a room.

of course, you were already at the motel so it made sense to try and negotiate there first.

Airbnbs near SFO at San Mateo or Burlingame is just as expensive as hotels anyway!

Providing ID to enter a bar or nightclub (where some have these machines which no doubt capture and store that data) is commonplace even though the venue has no business knowing who the person is.

I mean the reason you do this is to prove you are 21. Requiring anybody who enters any random business on the street to show a vaccine card is not even close to an apt comparison.

The vaccine card is to prove you are vaccinated. In both cases they're merely after a boolean (is_over_18? vs is_vaccinated?).

But we're clearly accepting the idea of giving up way more information in the former case even though all that's needed is the boolean, so why the fuss around the vaccines when they're ultimately also after a boolean?

I don't understand the downvotes. This is a legitimate distinction.

Discussions generally don't sway people. When someone has a fixed worldview and you present facts that undermine that worldview, he perceives you as a threat (like he would a large bear) and reacts to those facts with the same fight-or-flight response that threats generally elicit.

Online, this fight-or-flight response manifests as people downvoting you, flagging you, doxxing you, and so on for presenting hard-to-refuse facts and arguments contrary to any entrenched but incorrect narrative.

The problem is exacerbated on HN by high-karma accounts having the ability to flag discussions to death without engagement and essentially end them unilaterally.

It’s not about disagreeing with them. I generally downvote pedantic exceptions because you should respond to an argument in the most generous terms. largely proving your identity did apply to the examples given but doesn’t address the thrust of their argument.

Showing an ID to drink or get a senior discount isn’t about identifying you specifically just something about you and that is completely accepted by the general public. Show your military ID to get a discount is another.

The issue I take with such pedantic exceptions is they derail the thread.

Edit: This is a far more direct response which I upvoted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28501323

There argument was a one line "we regularly [do this"].

My two line "no, those things are different to this thing" is responding both directly to the thrust of the argument and with an appropriate amount of effort.

Except the first line actually acknowledges your argument doesn’t apply in every case thus making it a pedantic argument.

Saying X is usually Y, doesn’t actually mean showing ID to demonstrate an unrelated fact is somehow unusual.

I don't actually follow what you said here, but to be clear pedantry is a focus on arbitrary precision or something close to.

My argument isn't that, there is no level of imprecision where I'd be satisfied. I went straight to the substance which is the examples listed are acceptable in ways that a vaccine mandate is not.

It is perfectly reasonable to expect proof that someone is who they say they are when picking up a parcel or borrowing a book in their own name. It isn't like it is information that they aren't implicitly volunteering as part of the transaction. Ditto ID for a hotel stay to an extent, the normal case for a hotel stay is you have already identified yourself to the hotel.

There is a fair comparison when it comes to drivers licenses (I echo Mr Mouse's argument there). But 25% relevant examples is not a good batting average. And it isn't pedantry to point that out, it is routine argumentativeness. The complaint against vaccine passports is people are being forced to reveal information about themselves that they may not want to. I don't want to have to start registering information about myself with the government to have a pub lunch; the risk for those systems to go bad is off the charts high.

That's not true: people in the peanut gallery can be swayed. sub-midwits like myself only form opinions based on what smarter people have convinced us about areas we're not experts on.