It’s a very Anglo-Saxon objection, they are not mandatory in any of the Five Eyes countries unlike the majority of Western countries. Something to do with preventing government overreach.
> Something to do with preventing government overreach
Which doesn't make any sort of sense, really, if you think about it for more than a few seconds. Any of the governments in question already has at least one, usually multiple databases of their citizens (drivers licenses, births, passports, health systems, social security, taxes etc.) which are easy to correlate for probably 99.99% of people. They wouldn't gain anything from an overreach/surveillance perspective for everyone to have an uniform ID with number and a photo, because they already have all that information anyways. But regular people would gain a ton because they would be easily able to identify themselves uniquely to whoever needs it, without useless intermediaries (like utility bills), and without any risk of identity fraud or errors.
sofixa|2 years ago
Which doesn't make any sort of sense, really, if you think about it for more than a few seconds. Any of the governments in question already has at least one, usually multiple databases of their citizens (drivers licenses, births, passports, health systems, social security, taxes etc.) which are easy to correlate for probably 99.99% of people. They wouldn't gain anything from an overreach/surveillance perspective for everyone to have an uniform ID with number and a photo, because they already have all that information anyways. But regular people would gain a ton because they would be easily able to identify themselves uniquely to whoever needs it, without useless intermediaries (like utility bills), and without any risk of identity fraud or errors.