The "(non-) response" utterly failed to address some key concerns - well, key concerns for me, anyhow. How are these digital ID's to be carried and presented? The only mention I saw was something they euphemistically called a "phone wallet" I have a phone, and I have a wallet - but I'll be damned if I'm gonna rip the phone off the wall and try to cram it into a wallet or try to carry it around, and it appears from the announcement that unless I do that, I would be excluded from government services and benefits, or any interaction with government at all. It seems a supremely cumbersome way to live, having to lug a phone around everywhere I go. Those things are bulky and ungainly, but I suppose they might come in handy at times, like to beat recalcitrant civil servants about the head and shoulders with.
They said this system will be "more secure", but completely failed to mention HOW they are supposed to be "more secure". Can someone steal my total being simply by running past me and grabbing that big-assed bulky phone out of my hands? If not, WHY not?
I do not have a "smart phone". Does that mean that if/when this scheme comes to pass, I become a "non-person" in the eyes of government? Can government still arrest me if I no longer exist to them? What is the mechanism for arresting someone who is not there to be arrested? So can I embark on a life of crime with impunity simply by not getting a "smart phone"? I mean, without access to government services or benefits, the time will eventually come when I MUST embark on a life of crime simply to survive. But if, according to the government, I do not exist, am not "there", what the hell are they gonna do about that when it comes time for an arrest? How do you handcuff a ghost?
It's hard to believe they are serious about this, and even harder to believe they've bothered to think it through. Since lack of a "smart phone" is a poor people / old people problem, I reckon lack of digital ID, which sounds like it will amount to a lack of existence, will by extension also just be poor people / old people problems.... and, really, it's only the poor people / old people who have to worry about government recognition when it comes time to get paid.
Maybe this is really just a scheme to streamline (i.e. "eliminate") government payments, and save the government some big bucks so they can buy their bureaucratic dachas on the Black Sea for their retirements.
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They said this system will be "more secure", but completely failed to mention HOW they are supposed to be "more secure". Can someone steal my total being simply by running past me and grabbing that big-assed bulky phone out of my hands? If not, WHY not?
I do not have a "smart phone". Does that mean that if/when this scheme comes to pass, I become a "non-person" in the eyes of government? Can government still arrest me if I no longer exist to them? What is the mechanism for arresting someone who is not there to be arrested? So can I embark on a life of crime with impunity simply by not getting a "smart phone"? I mean, without access to government services or benefits, the time will eventually come when I MUST embark on a life of crime simply to survive. But if, according to the government, I do not exist, am not "there", what the hell are they gonna do about that when it comes time for an arrest? How do you handcuff a ghost?
It's hard to believe they are serious about this, and even harder to believe they've bothered to think it through. Since lack of a "smart phone" is a poor people / old people problem, I reckon lack of digital ID, which sounds like it will amount to a lack of existence, will by extension also just be poor people / old people problems.... and, really, it's only the poor people / old people who have to worry about government recognition when it comes time to get paid.
Maybe this is really just a scheme to streamline (i.e. "eliminate") government payments, and save the government some big bucks so they can buy their bureaucratic dachas on the Black Sea for their retirements.
.
“Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books. For to you kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned with the flick of a finger.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Tactics of Mistake
― Gordon R. Dickson, Tactics of Mistake