ID cards, followup
I should've known that posting something about ID cards would spark a number of reactions. In fact, I did—which is one of the reasons why I posted that; nothing like a bit of discussion every once in a while.
Brian M. Carlson writes:
The difference between the US and Belgium, for example, is that Belgium has comprehensive privacy legislation.
Well, yes. Obviously, ID cards require some privacy legislation in order to prevent abuse of said cards. In Belgium, only the police is allowed to require me to show them my ID card; everyone else can ask, but I can tell them to go screw themselves. Of course they can then also refuse to provide me with a given service, but I may be able to sufficiently prove my ID with other means. The point is, whether or not a designated ID card exists does not impact the need for privacy legislation; if you want to protect your privacy, you need such legislation anyway, ID or no ID. The fact that you don't have an ID card does not mean in any way that people can't ask you to prove your ID; and the existence of an ID card does not mean that all of a sudden all other ways for me to prove my ID are null and void.
"Anonymous" writes:
You seem to take as a given that we need an official government-issued ID card, and from there you draw the fairly reasonable conclusion that if we need one it ought to exist separately from a driver's license. I agree that your assumption leads to your conclusion, but I disagree with your assumption.
Well, no, I do not assume that we need an official government-issued ID card. I know we do. That's not to say we need government-issued ID in all cases where we need to provide proof of ID; but when we do, there should be a way that does not overload some document into something which it was never intended to be.
"bignose" writes:
You miss the main complaint of a national ID card system: that it would be *mandatory* for a person who wishes to operate in the country. That's the important part that is not true for a driver's license: not having a driver's license does not make the person an unperson.
It is not necessary for me to have an ID card to "operate" in Belgium. There are a few things where the ID card is indeed required; e.g., the last time I personally had to use my ID card was during the last elections. If I would have had an encounter with the police in that time, they could have asked for it, too; but that didn't happen. Also, when doing my tax declaration online, I used the electronic keys on the ID card, so that I could only update my tax declaration—and not, say, my neighbour's. But that's only doable when you have an electronic ID card system, which is not necessarily a good idea (in contrast to plain old paper ID cards, I do have privacy concerns with electronic versions—details on request)
Of course, the fact that I can "operate" in Belgium without the use of an ID card does not mean it is legal for me to walk around without one; but that is not entirely the same thing.
There were some more comments to my previous blog post, but I don't disagree with those.
Well, this is what happens in Venezuela: besides the police, your ID card can be requested by anyone you want to intervene in a business transaction with. You are required to carry it with you, and you're likely to be jailed if you don't. You need to give it to any cashier (not just in banks, in any establishment!) to pay with a debit/credit card, and to do almost any transaction.
OTOH, all databases holding private information are... well, of public domain. You can freely buy a CD in the streets which allows you to know the complete name and ID number of a person, birthplace, election site address, taxpayer ID number -- and without much effort you can know which political views has any given individual based on the latest public signature collection for revoking the President.
In some cases, technical negligence has leaded to privacy leaks which pass mostly unnoticed. For example, if you work for the Health Department (i.e., you're a doctor or a nurse) your salary has already been shown on the Internet (they published a whole SQL dump there, now there's just a 404)
That's how we live here. Privacy is not enforced. People are not aware of this problem, and governments do not care. Maybe this is an example of how people can live with their data being public, but personally I'm not comfortable with this issue