And it's a good thing, and personally I would love it if we could stop having even SSNs.

Yep. I would oppose any sort of National ID card whether it has biometric security or not. Passport is about the only thing that is a Federal level ID and accepted everywhere as an ID.

I would want states to have their own ID system where an average citizen can vote for policies that make a difference. I am also against cross-state data sharing (Driver's license) and such.

My state engages in actually illegal data sharing and retention that violates state law. Nobody does anything about.

Who watches the watchers? The people who comprise "the system" rig the system in their favor and cover for each other.

I could accept identifying with a passport, since the costs alone means it would not be supported in most cases, but only if it was associate with a strict requirement that the passport number or any other number/qr/barcode was hidden, and if it was illegal to save copies of even the image of the passport with the numbers hidden.

So I'm guessing you're saying: Nothing > ssn , and Nothing > public key cryptography.

Are you also saying: Ssn > public key cryptography? And if so, why?

Yes, yes, no.

See my other comment: people should be in charge of their identity, NOT the government.

Like penis circumcision, SSN is voluntary. Typically parents enroll the child for giggles or whatever.

And no, passport application does not require SSN.

This is completely wrong. The IRS requires children to have an SSN to qualify their families for tax credits, and SSNs are required for most employment. Even if you are a member of a group that does not have to pay into social security, you still need an SSN so that the SSA and IRS can track that you are exempt.

> I would love it if we could stop having even SSNs

Why?

I guess the general premise is that any national ID number, SSN or otherwise, is liable to be used in all the wrong ways by untrustworthy institutions both inside and outside the government, damaging privacy and opening you up to exciting forms of fraud against your name (/ ID number); it is often treated as a secret, but it is not a secret at all.

— Unfortunately, with enough computers and enough tracking information, bad actors can often do the same thing without a number, anyway, and you can get different kinds of fraud.

The case that a universal identifier, or even some authoritative list of people, has a benefit that exceeds its cost, has never been made. It’s simply “one of those things”

"The invention of permanent, inherited patronyms was, after the ad­ministrative simplification of nature (for example, the forest) and space (for example, land tenure), the last step in establishing the necessary preconditions of modern statecraft. In almost every case it was a state project, designed to allow officials to identity, unambiguously, the ma­jority of its citizens. When successful, it went far to create a legible peo­ple. Tax and tithe rolls, property rolls, conscription lists, censuses, and property deeds recognized in law were inconceivable without some means of fixing an individual's identity and linking him or her to a kingroup. Campaigns to assign permanent patronyms have typically taken place, as one might expect, in the context of a state's exertions to put its fiscal system on a sounder and more lucrative footing. Fearing, with good reason, that an effort to enumerate and register them could be a prelude to some new tax burden or conscription, local officials and the population at large often resisted such campaigns."

— James C Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

(Thanks shoo — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29885742)

The problem with SSNs is that places treat it like a secret, when it's an identifier. They were not designed to be a secret, and obviously are a pretty terrible secret at this point in time. What with the fact that probably every person older than 18 has had theirs leaked at some point in time.]

If places would just stop treating them as a secret, it wouldn't even matter.

Until the existing system is reformed with something like the GDPR, nobody should support increasing the technical strength of identification.

Currently, the only way you can prevent surveillance companies from unaccountably creating permanent records on you is to avoid feeding them your personal information in the first place. There is absolutely no recourse or even legal concept that prevents "ID.me" from using the data you're basically forced to give them here, for any purpose they later desire. Until there are real data protection laws that allow for the creation of trust through accountability, auditing, and right of deletion, then opposing anything that benefits the surveillance industry is the only way we can protect ourselves.