I see it as an almost total impracticality to transition from our current system to a centralized national identity document.
There is no central database of:
* Citizenship
* Births
* Drivers Licenses
* Marriages
* Deaths (SSA death reporting is voluntary and customary by funeral homes -not required)
* Education history
* Criminal Records
* Firearm Ownership
* Property Ownership
* Vehicle Ownership
The only thing the feds or even the state government has a certain idea of is, how much you made in a given reporting period - not that reporting periods always overlap in any meaningful way. There is no requirement (as far as I can tell) to even request a social security number - most parents do, because they want to claim their children on their taxes.
Now, many of those records do exist - they exist at the county, state or local level in some manner or fashion - and of course, its not standardized either, sometimes its at the county, sometimes the state, sometimes at the county or state for the same record type based on year. (e.g. Marriages from 1902-1962 are in county records, and 1962 to current in state, or the other way around.)
Trying to link all of this data in a meaningful way, would be a monumental task that would likely require a vast amount of manual data matching - and it would still be wrong 40% of the time.
They could do an audit and census approach as a one off to get all this started. For a national ID though wouldn't you only need drivers license / property data / marriage data / criminal data / citizenship / births?
Not sure you need firearm / vehicle / education history for an ID system
The way they got SSNs through is by promising that it would be illegal to use them for identification. The only remnant of that is that it (still?) remains illegal to refuse services to people who refuse to give their social security numbers, although if you do it you'll break customer service.
Between passports, SSNs, state IDs, your birthday, homeowner records, and metadata like addresses/phone numbers/employers, it's already trivially easy for any actor to fingerprint you anyway. Even the private sector does this for cheap. To say nothing of biometrics like facial recognition, which ironically, the government sometimes tries to protect you from (like in Illinois, where it's banned).
It's so weird to me that people are afraid of the government knowing who you are when like every private company asks for the same kind of information all the time, and data brokers gobble that up and resell it all the time (including to government), and nobody bats an eye.
> The government already has the power to do this — just ask any trans person in the South
Any citations on every trans person in the South being singled out for denial of services by the government? Because that sounds like inflammatory nonsense.
Banning gender affirming care effectively is singling out transgender people and denying them services[0]. Additionally there was a recent Supreme Court decision allowing businesses to discriminate against people[1].
Additionally in living memory, many businesses and government services were segregated by race. In some cases some races were denied access to services or those services were severely underfunded. The legacy of that legal system still has impacts today.
> Banning gender affirming care effectively is singling out transgender people
For children. Or for state funding, but the state doesn't pay for the vast majority of plastic surgery.
> Additionally in living memory, many businesses and government services were segregated by race.
Race doesn't need affirming medical care, or identification to single out. Also, businesses and government services weren't abstractly segregated by race, they were specifically discriminatory toward black people.
1. The grandparent comment asked for “Any citations on every trans person in the South being singled out for denial of services by the government.” The great grandparent comment only mentions asking the opinion of a transgender person if the government has the power to deny services to them. By banning gender affirming care, even just for children, wouldn’t that be an example of government discrimination against transgender people?
2. The example of racial segregation was to point out an additional time that a minority group was discriminated against. Black people getting less than adequate medical treatment is not them needing specific affirmative care and being denied it but an example of discrimination that was government sanctioned. Beyond pointing to the two sets of laws and their discriminatory natures the link is superficial, just another example of legal discrimination.
I cannot speak for you but denying the government the power to discriminate or oppress minorities and empowering the rights of individuals to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is worthwhile to me. Which is why seeing all these states pass these discriminatory laws is disheartening.
>Here we go. CBDCs are next, and also national Digital IDs
No, this is a long term replacement for ACH, a function that the Federal Reserve was already carrying out.