[HN Gopher] IRS Will Soon Require Selfies for Online Access
___________________________________________________________________
IRS Will Soon Require Selfies for Online Access
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 252 points
Date : 2022-01-19 17:20 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (krebsonsecurity.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (krebsonsecurity.com)
| djohnston wrote:
| I tried to setup my IRS online account but couldn't verify
| because I live abroad and don't have a U.S. phone number.
| Flagging that Id.me allows you to register with a foreign phone
| number (still need that data right?), you just can't complete the
| actual verification with that phone number. I tried to call the
| IRS and sat on hold for 90 minutes before giving up. I overpaid
| what I thought I owed (and couldn't confirm) and a month later
| they sent me a check for the difference. Fuck the IRS. Fuck ID-
| me.
| beefman wrote:
| Not just selfies, AI face model. Vendor is Id.me. Already
| required as of about a month ago for me (my IRS.gov credentials
| were disabled). Abusive onboarding too, which makes you enter
| lots of stuff before telling you there will be selfies. I bailed.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I was required to use it to unenroll from the child tax pre-
| payments which the the system defaulted me into.
|
| Automatically sign me up for something I don't want to do, then
| make me use a system I don't want to do (and worked horribly)
| to unenroll...
| throwhauser wrote:
| It's disconcerting that id.me seems to be managing access to
| government services and some kind of online shopping mall at the
| same time:
|
| https://shop.id.me/
| btown wrote:
| At first I thought this was just a white label of one of the
| many discounts-as-a-service platforms out there... but no, the
| code makes it clear that this platform was developed
| _specifically_ for id.me, with all assets in their S3 bucket
| and specific homegrown analytics code where it would otherwise
| make no sense to hardcode IdMe in an event name. This
| definitely feels like an unfocused company that just obtained a
| massive contract. I 'd be very curious to dig into the RFP
| process here and who else bid on the opportunity.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Can anyone with context speak to as why ID.me was chosen instead
| of Login.gov? SSA made Login.gov its primary identity provider,
| so I'm curious what the backstory is on IRS' identity story.
|
| EDIT: Follow up question: Is ID.me a shim until there's traction
| for the USPS to perform in person identity proofing [1] [2] [3]
| versus ID.me's remote proofing?
|
| [1] https://about.usps.com/publications/pub364/ch12.html
|
| [2] https://www.cfr.org/report/solving-identity-protection-
| post-...
|
| [3]
| https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a7b7a8490bade8a77c07...
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| SSA is using ID.me for the verification, Login.gov only
| provides the login/2FA not the actual identity matching AFAIK.
| My guess is the IRS thought if they are going to have to go
| with a third party for this anyway, might as well use their
| login as well.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > not the actual identity matching AFAIK
|
| I know they've used id.me for a while so this might not have
| been an option back then, but it now looks like login.gov
| also does identity verification (and my profile on the site
| does have my SSN and everything).
|
| https://login.gov/what-is-
| login/#:~:text=Some%20agencies%20r... "Some agencies require
| you to verify who you are"
| realce wrote:
| I would really like it much better if a 3rd party private
| company wasn't the arbiter of my ME-NESS and a potential
| barrier to a successful tax payment.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > I would really like it much better if a 3rd party private
| company wasn't the arbiter of my ME-NESS and a potential
| barrier to a successful tax payment.
|
| Let the IRS know: https://www.improveirs.org/submit-a-
| suggestion/
| realce wrote:
| Many thanks!
| gumby wrote:
| The use of a third party means you don't have to follow the
| same privacy rules as if the government collected the data
| themselves.
|
| It's why the police forces collect data from phone companies
| rather than collecting it themselves (which they might even be
| forbidden from doing).
|
| For extra credit: this is a large subsidy to a private company
| to increase the size of its database; in return it gets to sell
| the database contents to others as well.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| The stored communications act prohibits phone companies from
| sharing data with the police with just a request
| gumby wrote:
| One need merely do a web search for "parallel
| construction", Joe Naccio, etc to see how well such a law
| stands up in face of a representatlve of your regulator
| demanding that you breach it.
|
| The same applies to bank policies and privacy when it comes
| to doing business with certain industries.
|
| BTW I'm pro government and pro regulation so my statements
| are not some sort of libertarian rant. I simply recognize
| that complexities and misbehavior do exist such systems.
| tomrod wrote:
| I seem to recall there being integration in login.gov and
| id.me.
| [deleted]
| easton wrote:
| It looks like (I'm inferring based on a couple different
| docs) that login.gov offers its own identity verification
| service (you scan your drivers license or other government
| ID): https://developers.login.gov/testing/#testing-ial2
|
| I'm not sure why that's not enough, and given login.gov is
| free(ish) to government agencies, there must be some
| requirement they are missing. I was promised government SSO,
| why don't I have it yet?
| 1121redblackgo wrote:
| The cynical lens says follow the lobbying dollars and personal
| relationships of those involved.
| Supermancho wrote:
| My cynical lens says it's an image recognition data-gathering
| operation expanded to a state service.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Since all (?) states take an electronic photo for a drivers
| license (and mine takes a thumbprint too), I'm not sure
| that this gives them any additional information they don't
| already have.
| Lammy wrote:
| My license photo is a decade old, but I'm forced to file
| taxes every year.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Do you need to refresh your ID.me registration every
| year, or is it permanent?
|
| I file taxes every year, but I file through my tax
| software or tax preparer, so I don't think I'd even need
| an IRS.com account.
| Supermancho wrote:
| You do not need an IRS.com account. That's what makes it
| look like a not-so-innocuous data collection system. This
| is a possible first step to tighten identity tracking,
| slow boiling the frog, so to speak.
| fullstop wrote:
| Many states also sell this information to third parties.
|
| https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a32035408/dmv-
| selling-...
| jhart99 wrote:
| Isn't it required that they support login.gov? Everything in
| other departments has been switched to login.gov over the last
| couple of years.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Under 6 USC 1523: Federal cybersecurity requirements [1], as
| well as a recent White House Executive Order [2], that would
| be my interpretation. ~211 federal agency applications
| support Login.gov, so I have a bit of curiosity in the
| outliers, especially when public facing.
|
| [1] https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-
| prelim...
|
| [2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-
| action...
| rsync wrote:
| What aspect of "the IRS" is being discussed here ?
|
| I don't believe I have ever had an account with the IRS for any
| reason and have not interacted with them online and have no plans
| to.
|
| On the other hand, the IRS payment portal (EFTPS), which I do
| use, is not mentioned anywhere in the article or here in the HN
| discussion thread.
|
| Is this for EFTPS access ?
|
| Or is there some other "IRS account" that I've never discerned a
| need for ?
| jrwr wrote:
| Its always a fun thought experiment to understand the source of
| "truth" for ones ID in the USA. The main source is your Birth
| Records. but these can be lost and do often as older records are
| rather scattered about. If your older they want proof of stuff in
| your name like bills and other records, but these tend to be what
| ever name you gave them over the phone. Bank records are based
| off SSN or Driver ID, and thats based off your birth records.
| What if your birth records are lost? Lets say you have nothing,
| No ID, No Records, What do you do? how do you prove yourself is
| really your old you?
| nightski wrote:
| Welp, better download everything now because it looks like I
| won't be using the IRS website any more.
| artistsleadus wrote:
| I discovered this issue last night with the selfie requirement
| and ID.me when I attempted to log in to the IRS website to make a
| payment with my already verified ID.me account. Today I sent a
| letter via form to ID.me. It is my belief that this is part of
| the continued agenda to track us and violate privacy - this
| includes the Real ID agenda, which is also unnecessary when you
| have a government issued passport. Data will be linked to
| identity and movements and we don't yet know how they all use
| this additional video and camera access on our "smart" phones. If
| you also find this a violation of our privacy and overstepping
| necessary ID verification, please join me in writing a letter to
| ID.me demanding a change in policy or simply copy and paste my
| letter below. Link to submit "https://help.id.me/hc/en-
| us/requests"
|
| "Hello, I attempted to login to my IRS account to make a payment.
| Even though I've already verified my ID.Me you are now mandating
| that I give you a selfie video. There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON for
| me to give ID.Me access to my phone camera or further visual of
| my person or likeness. This is a total violation of my privacy
| and I DO NOT CONSENT. I'm writing to notify you that I am
| vehemently opposed to this requirement by ID.Me and I urge you to
| stop this requirement. I attempted to access the IRS.gov site
| from my phone and desktop. Both required me to provide a selfie
| video. I am extremely upset by this new requirement and even more
| so by the fact that I can't contact you to notify you as such
| without filling in a form. Please contact your product team and
| management and tell them to roll back the selfie requirement now.
| It is not necessary and it's a privacy violation. You are
| overstepping your boundaries and I won't be complicit. Moreover,
| I've been notified that you, in lockstep with the IRS, plan to
| make this the only way that American citizens can access our IRS
| accounts. The IRS is not a federal institution. It is a private
| entity that is run by banking interests and earns interest on
| printing US dollars. I demand access to my account with the
| existing government-issued identification and verifications
| points that I already provided to you. I look forward to your
| response outlining how ID.me will resolve this concern
| immediately."
| guilhas wrote:
| So the scammer just has to go on social media and get a profile
| picture?
|
| OTP app would seem a better idea
| jppope wrote:
| What do you think the over/under for months until there's a
| security breech of ID.me?
| tarellel wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is "absolutely new".
|
| A few months ago my wife and I had to do some stuff through the
| IRS. And in order to login through ID.me. We had do an actual
| video session with ID.me so they could see our drivers licenses,
| SSN cards, and a few background questions. In order to verify our
| identity.
|
| It was a bit time consuming rather than just logging in. But with
| so much identity theft, I think something like this was
| inevitable.
| psanford wrote:
| I don't understand why ID.me refuses to accept my Google Voice
| number. They seem to be checking the phone number supplied
| against the numbers listed in your credit history, so if they
| match why not allow it?
|
| Its frustrating because I've had the same number for 20 years,
| and right now it happens to be associated with a Google Voice
| account. It is literally my only phone number. But because of
| this policy I have to wait for 3 hours to video chat with someone
| just to get this account verified.
| 34679 wrote:
| If the number isnt tied to an IMEI, then how are they supposed
| to use it track you as your phone pings different towers?
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I've had my Google Voice number rejected at a lot of places
| that want an cell number for SMS -- I assume it's flagged as a
| VOIP number rather than a cell carrier number.
|
| I recently ported that same number to GoogleFi and now it works
| everywhere.
|
| Whatever the database is that they use, it's updated quickly, I
| tried using my new GoogleFi number at my bank the day after I
| ported it to Fi and it worked, while they still refuse to send
| an SMS code to my Google Voice numbers.
| csdvrx wrote:
| They probably use something like twilio API that can tell you
| which provider is behind a NANP phone number.
| myko wrote:
| I'm another person whose Google Voice number is their only
| phone number, this blocks me from a lot of services. Extremely
| frustrating.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Previously, you could not create an IRS account if you did not
| have debt. :^)
| xori wrote:
| JPGs are not security, and moving JPGs can be fabricated very
| easily. Some v-tuber software with a deepfake GAN strapped to it
| I feel like would fool 1-on-1 meetings too.
|
| I got my weekend project.
| probablyexists wrote:
| From personal experience with a family friend and bitcoin
| scammers, this does not work any better than prior forms of
| verification.
|
| The scammers just convince you to take a picture and send it to
| them and then they submit it on your behalf.
| the_watcher wrote:
| I had to use ID.me for something earlier this year (I forget
| what), and while it was not a terrible experience technically, I
| literally had to shave off my beard to complete it, as my drivers
| license photo is me with a freshly shaved face.
| rexreed wrote:
| That sounds like a terrible experience. Please modify your body
| (albeit non-permanently) in this particular way in order for
| this app to work.
|
| What if I said you had to sing "mary had a little lamb" exactly
| in the key of F# in order for a login to work? I think we'd
| classify that as a terrible experience.
| MrZongle2 wrote:
| And millions of Americans will gleefully comply, "because of the
| convenience".
| rkagerer wrote:
| They can have a nice video of me giving them the middle finger
| for subjecting citizens to such a user-painful and elderly-
| discriminatory system.
|
| There are saner, more humane ways to prevent fraud.
| themadturk wrote:
| I went through this earlier this week, to pay estimated taxes.
| Fortunately the automated process worked for me, so I didn't have
| to go through the writer's additional verification. It was a bit
| tedious, but not a difficult process, all performed on my Mac
| laptop.
|
| The only thing I didn't like was having to download their
| authenticator app...and I'm still not sure if it was required, of
| if I could have used the Google authenticator I have for my other
| 2FA tokens.
|
| Of course, the level of difficulty here is that you _have_ to
| have your ID documents scanned or in a scannable form, that you
| _have_ to do a video selfie, etc. My wife, for example, has the
| hardware and software needed to do this, but not the flexibility
| and patience I 've gained from a few decades of digital
| frustration to actually use all her tools to see this process
| through.
| Hokusai wrote:
| > an online identity verification service that requires
| applicants to submit copies of bills and identity documents, as
| well as a live video feed of their faces via a mobile device.
|
| This looks like a solution you will expect by a small shop which
| owner hacks some technology together. It sounds ridiculous for
| any modern government.
|
| Edit: link to the Spanish certificate authority (Fabrica Nacional
| de Moneda y Timbre) https://www.fnmt.es/en/ceres
| 692 wrote:
| I've just signed up to the equivalent in the uk called
| government gateway
|
| you have to provide information and details from two of the
| following: Passport, last tax submission or driving licence
|
| the sign up to the internet healthcare system used by my doctor
| seemed to be run by a 3rd party (not happy) needed general
| information and a picture of my passport or driving license. I
| declined, because it's a third party and I could not be
| bothered reading the large list of ways they will likely sell
| your data and partially because I don't need my doctors info
| online
| dheera wrote:
| > via a mobile device
|
| Why the F does it have to be a mobile device? Is this another
| excuse to install a spyware mobile app that tracks your GPS?
|
| Why can't it just be a web-based thing that I can do on any
| device I want?
| tedunangst wrote:
| > either with the camera on a mobile device or a webcam
| attached to a computer (your webcam must be able to open on
| the device you're using to apply for the ID.me account).
| joshstrange wrote:
| Who knows if it actually requires a "mobile device", that
| might just be their way of saying "device with a camera"
| seeing how all phones (or any I've ever seen) have a front-
| facing camera. Lowest common denominator and all that...
| YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote:
| Can you provide any government doing a better job? In Germany
| it's basically the same system for ID confirmation it's called
| postident over here.
| searchableguy wrote:
| In India, you can generate a new virtual ID based on aadhar
| (national ID).
|
| You will need to confirm the virtual id with 2fa on the site.
| The default is sadly phone OTP for this which I hope changes.
|
| I haven't needed to do video call for kyc. For example, groww
| (investment app) will pull up your national ID and have you
| scan your face. It will automatically match the face.
|
| If it fails, then you can connect with a person.
|
| Newer services also use CKYC which means you don't need to do
| this process again. Just update kyc from the central repo.
| Your virtual ID can pull your KYC status.
|
| If you need to verify documents, you can use digilocker login
| to do that. Digilocker contains all the government generated
| documentation on your name and services can use it to verify
| you have genuine documents. For example, school certificate.
|
| I was in shock to find that most colleges in US require your
| school to send a sealed school transcript because they don't
| have another way to verify the genuineness.
| [deleted]
| likpok wrote:
| All this boils down to: in India there's a national ID
| database you can use, which makes this a lot simpler.
|
| The US does not have a national ID database, and there is a
| lot of resistance against making one. Each state could
| probably use the driver's license, but that locks out
| people who don't drive -- a small but disproportionately
| marginalized group.
|
| Government services are tricky because they need to serve
| everyone. That means that you have to handle a lot of
| special cases and struggle to categorically ban bad actors.
| Google can say "you've used your gmail account to send spam
| emails, so we're banning it". The IRS can't do that (I
| think even if they put you in prison for tax fraud).
| jdmichal wrote:
| > The US does not have a national ID database, and there
| is a lot of resistance against making one.
|
| Which is hilarious, because if you combine the databases
| of the SSA and IRS, you get most everything that would be
| in such a database anyway. SSA gives you a pretty
| comprehensive list of people, even non-citizens. IRS
| gives you an annually-updated address and some other
| info. Throw in the State department and you get passport
| information for those that have gotten one, which will
| include a photo.
| olyjohn wrote:
| If you don't drive, every state that I can think of will
| still assign you an ID that is just like a license, but
| doesn't give you permission to drive.
| fabian2k wrote:
| There are some important differences here as in Germany
| everyone has an official ID card. So there is no insanity
| like requesting copies of bills there. Stuff like VideoIdent
| feels a bit silly, but in the end this is somewhat close to
| how you do that in person, you show someone your official ID
| card and they take a look at you and try to decide if you
| look roughly like the person in the photo.
|
| There is an official and modern alternative using the RFID
| chip in the ID cards, it's not used that widely but it seems
| like support is getting a bit broader. I tried it for the
| state pension site, and I could directly access my
| information there using only my ID card and the PIN for it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There are some important differences here as in Germany
| everyone has an official ID card. So there is no insanity
| like requesting copies of bills there.
|
| Copies of bills are usually requested in the US _in
| addition to state issued photo ID_ , not to replace it.
| They are usually explained as requested as a means of
| verifying current residency at the address listed on the
| ID.
| fabian2k wrote:
| Here, private companies will just sent you a letter if
| they need to verify your address. The government already
| has access to your address, it generally doesn't need to
| verify it.
| pintxo wrote:
| Have you every see postident used by any Government service?
|
| I'd say the German government's solution is to just not offer
| any digital services in the first place. /s
|
| In reality, they have some things moving, but too little, too
| late:
|
| - Filing taxes has been pretty much digital only (for some
| sorts of taxes, at least) for a couple of years now. It's
| certificate based, where you "order" your certificate via
| snail mail.
|
| - ID cards have a digital authentication function, but I have
| yet to see any service using it.
| YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote:
| I used it in the pandemic for online appointments at
| several agencies like "Burgeramt", "Arbeitsamt" etc.
| newfonewhodis wrote:
| I only ever deal with my irs account twice a year (once to get my
| PIN and once if I need to look up past info). I would rather use
| mail now (printers take 10 seconds to print), and another minute
| to mail.
|
| I'm not going to give my biometric information to this company
| AND wait and unspecified amount of hours to video chat with a
| stranger while holding my PII.
| ramoz wrote:
| I already had to do this a month ago, using the id.me service to
| view my IRS account
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| On Monday one of the developers on my team told me he might have
| to drop out of our meeting. He'd been on hold with ID.me for 3.5
| hours in order to get to his IRS data. Midway through the meeting
| he said that his call had just been disconnected and he was going
| to have to start again from the beginning.
|
| It seems like this "service" may not scale.
| tyingq wrote:
| _" Your estimated wait time is 3 hours and 27 minutes"_
|
| Hmm. Guessing this will get rolled back when they figure out
| people are going to all come in deadline based waves. There's no
| way to staff for a "real person identifies you" process with how
| the IRS currently works.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Absolutely chilling. Can sort of see the use for refund fraud but
| not payments. Almost was not able to pay taxes last time because
| of all the details it demanded and was not happy with my answers.
| Preventing my taxes from being paid is not a "service" I need.
|
| Guess I'm going back to paper checks soon. :-/
| tuckerpo wrote:
| I have a lot of issues with dysmorphia and frankly kind of loathe
| seeing myself through the shitty front facing camera lens of most
| smartphones. I hope this type of auth doesn't catch on.
| syshum wrote:
| I am honestly curious how an administration that is sooo against
| voter ID squares it hypocrisy with things like this, or other ID
| based initiatives designed to secure these institutions but ID
| requirements to secure voting is viewed as racist or other
| "threat to democracy"
|
| If Secure ID is needed to access IRS, or for proof of vaccination
| I fail to see why is not needed for voting...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| On the other hand, the other side is just as cynically
| hypocritical, just in the opposite directions.
| dogleash wrote:
| >I am honestly curious how an administration that is sooo
| against voter ID
|
| They're not against voter ID on principal. They're against it
| as a marketing tactic.
|
| I don't mean to sound cynical or conspiratorial, that's just
| campaigning.
|
| It's the dems in this case, but the following also applies to
| the repubs: neither are against an intrusive or abusive
| government. They're actively for it. The only thing that
| tempers their appetite is remaining electable.
| dhosek wrote:
| The problem is that ID access is far from equitable and the
| burden it raises is way out of proportion to the claimed
| problem (if you think about it, in-person voter fraud has a
| huge risk component and a tiny reward). Voting is the most
| fundamental right in a democracy so restricting that needs to
| be well justified.
|
| Most people on the left would happily accept a free universal
| federal ID program (with appropriate safeguards to ensure
| equity of access) but conservatives oppose this.
| syshum wrote:
| Federal ID program would be opposed on the grounds of
| Federalism. rightly so. ID should be left to the states not
| the Federal government.
|
| We are a federalist nation for a reason, people on the left
| do not support federalism, conservatives do, that is why they
| oppose that.
|
| >The problem is that ID access is far from equitable
|
| But is that not true for everything else as well, thus my
| question, if getting an ID is soo burdensome (which I do not
| believe it is) why is it OK to demand it for all of these
| other requirements the federal government places on people
| (like paying taxes) but not ok for voting.
|
| Simply saying "ID is not equitable" does not resolve the
| question
| joshstrange wrote:
| Make a secure ID free and easily to get access to and voter ID
| concern melts away. Don't pretend that there is no barrier to
| getting an ID.
| syshum wrote:
| Every single state that has a voter ID law, as a Free ID for
| the purposes of voting that can be easily obtained.
|
| It is false to claim other wise
| joshstrange wrote:
| "Easily be obtained"
|
| Doubtful. Not only do they take time (time off from job,
| time for travel) but they require certain documents which
| you may or may not have. Even if said documents are free to
| re-obtain (think SS card or birth certificate) it still
| takes time and energy to track down. Time is not free.
| Voting is a right, barriers to it are not ok. In-person
| voter fraud is practically non-existent and we catch most
| all who do it. It's a solution in search of a problem that
| doesn't exist essentially.
| syshum wrote:
| >In-person voter fraud
|
| Aside from the fact we are moving away from in-person
| voting, and mailin voting is far less secure to the point
| where many other nations do not do it.
|
| The claim the there is no fraud is has many many problems
| and based on a huge amount of assumption. There is very
| little actual transparency, there is the appearance of
| transparency, but any time anyone asks any questions is a
| response of "HOW DARE YOU QUESTION THE ELECTION", the
| election is secure because we said it was secure is not a
| valid position. nor is the position of "well show me the
| fraud" because the average person lacks the legal
| standing to actually investigate anything. Instead we
| have a system of "we investigated ourselves and found we
| did nothing wrong"
|
| The same people that accept this from the election
| boards, do not accept this from the police... which is
| another example of political hypocrisy
| EricDeb wrote:
| Well there's been well documented/discovered issues with
| law enforcement and 0 instances of significant
| documented/discovered issues with voter fraud on a scale
| that could impact anything.
| feoren wrote:
| I'd guess (A) Voter ID laws are transparently intentionally
| designed to inconvenience as many liberal voters and as few
| conservative voters as possible, and (B) there is no other way
| to vote if you can't get a voter ID, but there is another way
| to pay your taxes without this online access. Not defending
| this decision though; this is a bizarre requirement. Is this
| more regulatory capture by Intuit / TurboTax?
| 300bps wrote:
| My favorite video on this topic:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW2LpFkVfYk
|
| They first go to Berkeley, California and ask a bunch of white
| people their thoughts on voter idea laws. "They're racist,
| african americans don't know where the DMV is, don't have
| access to the Internet" type of answers.
|
| Then they go to Harlem and ask people's thoughts on it.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| American here
|
| "perhaps better known as the online identity verification service
| that many states now use to help staunch the loss of billions of
| dollars in unemployment insurance and pandemic assistance stolen
| each year by identity thieves"
|
| In the great State of California, _billions_ in unemployment
| benefits were sent to the wrong people.. because their internal
| systems were designed to delay, deny and deprive, I say. Actual
| people with real jobs were repeatedly refused, while insiders who
| knew how to fill out paperwork, and apparently knew where the
| blind spots were, filed hundreds of claims in the early pandemic
| days. A newly appointed Director (young, tech savvy woman) soon
| stopped making public statements, and the situation nearly two
| years later, is not resolved. This is at a time when California
| has record income to the State.
|
| Now, some people may jump on this and say "well, you see how
| photo ID would have helped that" and, with incomplete knowledge
| and personal opinion, I say no, it would not solve it. You see,
| people with real jobs, with every real paper filed, were _denied_
| benefits, while insiders were pulling checks with both hands,
| using certain kinds of identities that would slip through. How
| would ever more restriction, requirement and verification, have
| helped here?
|
| I am deeply against the collective government making ever more
| demands on citizens for "papers, please" enrollment to massive
| money social services ( _edit e.g. govt unemployment benefits_ ).
| It is not going to have the desired effect, despite superficial
| evidence otherwise. Additionally this represents a slippery slope
| where the ability to interact as an individual will be eroded,
| and opportunity for insider graft will increase.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In the great State of California, billions in unemployment
| benefits were sent to the wrong people.. because their internal
| systems were designed to delay, deny and deprive, I say.
|
| That may be so, but it's at least in part because, irrespective
| of what they are designed for because their internal systems
| were notoriously broken and overwhelmed _before the pandemic_ ,
| and the department is a notorious nightmare hellhole work
| environment that almost everyone whose been around state
| service avoids and almost everyone who can get out of (within
| state service, if they have a reason for remaining there more
| generally) does, leaving mainly the people that can't escape;
| it's the most consistent source of workload and working
| conditions conflicts between employee unions and management,
| and the issues are usually _at best_ temporarily papered over
| rather than resolved.
| [deleted]
| 62951413 wrote:
| Californian here.
|
| Name one thing the state government does for normal people who
| actually finance the largess. Are you really surprised billions
| go unaccounted in a place where train robberies are a thing?
| But don't you worry, a photo ID won't be required in the next
| election though.
| WesternWind wrote:
| bagels wrote:
| Build (some) and maintain (most) roads?
| sokoloff wrote:
| and the aqueducts, sanitation, education, and the wine...
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| ... but then you realize that Florida with zero state tax
| also somehow manages to build and maintain the roads.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Florida has a statewide sales tax. I assume you mean that
| Florida has no income tax.
| shagie wrote:
| https://www.fdot.gov/docs/default-
| source/comptroller/pdf/GAO...
|
| Flrodia's roads are mostly funded from taxes on fuel and
| motor vehicle fees.
|
| Flordia has the 11th highest tax on gas in the nation -
| https://taxfoundation.org/state-gas-tax-rates-2021/
|
| From https://taxfoundation.org/state-infrastructure-
| spending/ State breakdown is 50% from gas taxes, 20% from
| licensing fees, and 30% from toll roads.
|
| Back to the first pdf - 52% of the total funding for the
| road is from the state, 26% is from federal and the other
| sources are use turnpike (15%), local (3%), and bonds
| (4%).
| e4e78a06 wrote:
| I'd rather tax users than have a slush fund that has no
| accountability because state lawmakers can allocate more
| money to it whenever they want without regard for the
| results achieved for the money invested so far. Then if
| you want more money you have to go to the voters and
| convince them more taxes on gas are a good idea.
|
| Somehow Florida still manages to have, as of writing,
| $1.50 cheaper gas per gallon than California, so I think
| they're doing fine with their taxation scheme.
| shagie wrote:
| There's a bit of market forces at play there that
| shouldn't be ignored. Florida is much closer to the
| refineries and oilfields in the south east than
| California is and also doesn't have any smog constraints
| which also means more expensive gas. Then you get into
| the "some cities in California have _other_ constraints
| which gets to micro lots of gas and that ruins economies
| of scale ".
|
| From a state level tax perspective, Florida is $0.4226/g
| and California is $0.6698/g.
| EricDeb wrote:
| Is accountability your main concern or do you just not
| want services like unemployment or welfare to exist in
| the first place?
| zzzeek wrote:
| they have no personal state income tax. there is still a
| corporate income tax, and they still get all their
| revenue from taxes. most if it is from much more
| regressive kinds of taxation like sales tax.
| dahfizz wrote:
| New Hampshire also has no income tax or sales tax, and
| has infinitely better roads than nearby states like
| Massachusetts.
|
| Roads are not particularly hard or costly to build. If
| they are a priority, they can be built and maintained
| without taxing a population to death. If you think its
| reasonable to lose a third or more of your income to pay
| for roads, you are a tremendous sucker.
| trimbo wrote:
| That's ~5% of the state budget, and primarily financed by
| the gas tax, not the income tax. (Large projects funded
| with bonds)
|
| Source: https://dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-
| media/programs/research-innov...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There is no purpose to delineating government revenues
| since money is fungible.
|
| Even though legislators might label or apportion some
| source of tax to some specific expense, in reality, they
| can always move it elsewhere (since they are the
| legislators). Therefore, it is always a question of which
| expense has political priority.
| kansface wrote:
| I thought the problem with CA was that the state budget
| isn't fungible - 90%+ of the money is allocated via
| ballot measures or the state constitution and can't be
| touched by the legislature.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not know enough about CA budget's mechanics, but
| that would seem like a very inefficient and ineffective
| way to operate a state.
| shagie wrote:
| https://www.budgetchallenge.org/pages/home gets you an
| idea of the challenge that they have.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Why are people honestly against ID requirements for voting?
|
| Pretty much every democracy in the world has this. Europeans
| need to show ID to vote.
| erehweb wrote:
| In the U.S. context, Black people were deliberately
| deprived of the right to vote for most of the country's
| history via seemingly-neutral requirements that were
| designed to stop their participation. Voter ID as proposed
| is an attempt to re-introduce one of these requirements.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| > seemingly-neutral requirements that were designed to
| stop their participation
|
| This is notably the origin of the term "grandfather
| clause", although its current meaning is subtly different
| from the original sense.
|
| The 15th Amendment made it illegal for states to deny the
| right to vote directly on the basis of race, so instead
| they imposed new poll taxes and "literacy tests" (which
| were not designed as true tests, but rather as
| instruments to allow poll workers to arbitrarily "pass"
| and "fail" would-be voters), while exempting those whose
| grandfathers were eligible to vote before a specific
| date.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I always figure the parties hire consultants that tell them
| how changes to election laws will affect turnout. If it
| works in their favor, they'll push for it. You're not going
| to support something that hurts your side, even if the
| change may be a good idea in and of itself.
| tshaddox wrote:
| It's a little disingenuous to paint this as "both parties
| are only motivated by what would help them get more
| votes" if one of those parties advocates policies to
| increase voter participation and the other advocates
| policies to decrease it.
| max49 wrote:
| >one of those parties advocates policies to increase
| voter participation
|
| The argument could be made that they are also
| intentionally making it easier to cheat during the
| election.
|
| These complex issues are never black and white.
| tshaddox wrote:
| That argument _could_ be made, of course, but (like all
| arguments) only by presenting evidence and reasons to
| believe that one side's proposals result in (or would
| result in) election fraud.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Why would anyone try to increase voter participation in
| general unless they knew it would increase the votes for
| their side?
| WesternWind wrote:
| tshaddox wrote:
| The hope would be that there is a strong institutional
| desire for peaceful transitions of power after open
| elections, and institutional opposition to anyone
| advocating otherwise.
|
| Historically some governments have had such institutions
| to various extents.
|
| It's kinda the same answer to the question "why wouldn't
| each side use unrestrained organized violence to attempt
| to hold and increase their power?"
| Aloha wrote:
| Because we make getting an ID cost money, and make it
| difficult for poor people.
|
| If you live in a rural place, or are poor, getting an ID is
| hard, it costs money to get the underlying proof of
| identity, then costs time (which is money) to get the ID
| itself, because you often must travel vast distances to the
| office that issues photo ID's.
|
| If we solved the issuance problem, so everyone could get a
| free copy birth certificate and made passports free (which
| can be obtained via an appointment at most post offices),
| then this problem would be easily solved, and my objections
| to voter ID would pretty much instantly fall away.
|
| That said, as a former polling place worker, the amount of
| voter fraud is.. vastly overstated, its a basically non-
| existent problem, and is mostly an issue of people making
| good faith mistakes.
|
| However, if it makes folks feel better, its a societal good
| to get everyone some form of free and easy photo ID, so for
| me its a two birds with one stone policy, I'll give on this
| issue, to get the other one solved.
|
| The issue is conservatives seem hell bent on passing voter
| ID laws without doing enough (or sometimes anything) to
| solve the (ID) supply side of the equation.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Make IDs free. These are all weasle arguments for not
| attempting to improve and gives ammunition to Republicans
| to question election integrity (even though it didn't
| stand up in the courts).
| jandrese wrote:
| In many cases the ID is free, and available to anybody
| who can spend multiple hours during the workday standing
| in a line in the county seat an hour away from home.
|
| This is how it is used to disenfranchise people. Add a
| small clause to the rule that says "every county has 1
| location" and it is zero burden for rural voters while
| urban voters are locked out of the process because no
| single government office can handle 10 million people.
| Then the legislators will blame the people in the urban
| counties for being "lazy" and not voting. We saw in 2020
| that the voting rate discrepancies are almost entirely
| the effect of longstanding voter restrictions that just
| happened to not work that year, which is why so many
| state governments have worked overtime to double down on
| voting restrictions to avoid making the same mistake of
| allowing people to vote.
| malnourish wrote:
| Make IDs free _and_ do not tie them to an address. The
| address requirement needlessly disenfranchises some 500k
| people from a litany of opportunities.
| Aloha wrote:
| Passports do not require an address.
| Bhilai wrote:
| But they do require some other form of ID.
| Aloha wrote:
| This is changeable, however, passport could be a form of
| primary ID.
| Volundr wrote:
| If that were true surely Republican's would be proposing
| making IDs free themselves no? If the purpose is to
| protect the integrity of our elections and not to
| disenfranchise voters, surely that would be step 1 right?
|
| I'm not aware of any such proposals, are you?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| 32 states already require IDs for voting.
| Aloha wrote:
| I'm 100% with you man, I think its a net social good to
| give everyone a free ID, while I think voter ID not
| needed as a policy, once everyone has an ID it causes
| little if any harm.
|
| I'm generally opposed to anything that smacks of 'papers
| please', thats my personal root of opposition, but its
| very weak, and if someone promised a policy that gave
| everyone a free passport but mandated voter ID
| requirements, I would gladly show up and vote for them.
| WesternWind wrote:
| cavisne wrote:
| No one really is, it has majority support from both sides
| of politics.
|
| Because it would be a change in the system it's used as a
| wedge by politicians. Additionally they know that it's
| harder to get out of the vote among left leaning voters, so
| any extra requirement would be risky in swing states.
| Democrat strongholds (ie Delaware) already have voter ID.
| vmception wrote:
| This reminds me of how my stances on almost anything are
| circumstantial to the government they apply to.
|
| I remember when Mitt Romney got blasted for being against
| Federal involvement in healthcare while having signed state
| level legislation for the same thing when he was Governor
| of Massachusetts. I saw that it was seen as controversial
| politician hypocrisy but I noticed that it matches my
| ability to compartmentalize topics. _(note: I don 't have
| an opinion on the actual issue of that event and don't
| care, only noticed I could just as easily look at the
| circumstances for one jurisdiction and like an outcome,
| while being against the same outcome in another
| jurisdiction)_
|
| That ability was tested when one time I was stopped by
| border police on a train into Germany or Austria. They just
| did a check scan of my passport. Some residents on the
| train thought it was embarrassing for their country that it
| could be "so unwelcoming" to foreigners, but myself and
| some other foreigners from different places were pretty
| enamored.
|
| This doesn't translate to my stance on US checks based on
| appearance, or ID requirements in the US or political
| affiliation or anything.
|
| Only reason I write it is because I wonder if there are
| other people like me, because I can't tell.
| sokoloff wrote:
| There are a great many things that I'm in favor of local
| or state governments having the power/standing to do and
| opposed to the federal government having the same
| power/involvement. It's the entire reason for the Tenth
| Amendment, which for my taste should be interpreted much
| more strictly rather than treating it with the same level
| of function as your appendix.
| Volundr wrote:
| In my case, because the USA does not have a national ID,
| and this disenfranchises anyone who is unwilling to pay to
| get said state ID, or does not have the means to get to an
| office.
|
| I have yet to meet anyone advocating for ID to vote who
| actually wants to address these by both making said ID free
| for all Americans and paying for the programs necessary to
| ensure that every American has _easy_ access to get one.
| This means everything from busing programs to opening new
| offices in areas that don 't have one to putting people on
| the street to collect the necessary forms and make sure the
| homeless get them. Then also making sure you find a way to
| ensure that the disabled, elderly, or just people who can't
| kill two hours standing in line have an easy way to vote.
|
| Most instead seem to treat that disenfranchisement as
| acceptable even desired. Truly address the issue of not
| everyone having an ID and universal access to easy voting
| (I'm not aware of any lawmakers proposing Voter ID laws
| attempting to do so) and my objections go away.
|
| Then you'll only have to deal with the folks who are
| against requiring everyone have ID because they worry about
| turning us into a "Papers Please" kind of society.
| anticensor wrote:
| > In my case, because the USA does not have a national
| ID,
|
| Solution: Make the USA passport card free and compulsory.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > Solution: Make the USA passport card free and
| compulsory.
|
| That would be the ultimate solution, and, as it was
| mentioned, something that has been proven effective in a
| very large chunk of the developed world.
|
| But having spent the last five years in the US, I think
| this will trigger the opposition of most conservative
| pundits, politicians, and attorneys across the country.
| Ironically, these are the same people who advocate for
| stringent voter ID laws.
| Volundr wrote:
| > Solution: Make the USA passport card free and
| compulsory.
|
| Great! All that's left is addressing all the challenges I
| brought up around making obtaining one simple for
| everyone (no, drive 40 minutes to your nearest post-
| office doesn't count), and making voting universally
| _easily_ accessible to everyone and you have my support!
|
| Given that as far as I know not a single lawmaker who has
| been pushing Voter ID has backed your suggestion, much
| less put any effort into addressing my other concerns, I
| don't think I'll be supporting Voter ID anytime soon.
| mike_d wrote:
| You can make it free, but you can't make it compulsory.
| While the constitution allows for a national ID scheme in
| the sense of making a card and issuing it, actually using
| it for anything would be near impossible.
|
| https://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1214&
| con...
| anticensor wrote:
| There is _the Bank ID formula_ to work around that, at
| least for the nation state checks: "The Identity Card
| belongs to the Union, and each Citizen of the Union is
| obligated to use it as specified in this section of the
| Code, as enforced by the President of the Union."
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Why are people honestly against ID requirements for
| voting?
|
| It's mostly a fake issue to cast the administration as pro-
| democracy and the opposition as anti-democracy. There's no
| doubt that poor people sometimes find it very tough to
| obtain ID, and that voter ID laws benefit Republicans by a
| few percentage points, but Republican positions on voter ID
| are less to get those points than to paint _themselves_ as
| the guardians of democracy against an imaginary secret
| cabal who are secretly manipulating elections with armies
| of minorities and illegal immigrants.
|
| They're both playing the same game to different voter
| bases.
|
| If Democrats seriously cared, they could simply create
| facilities with the stroke of a pen that would reach out to
| every voter and help them to obtain ID. Instead they're
| loudly pushing bills they don't have the votes to pass as a
| campaign tactic.
|
| It's astounding that under the same administration that is
| _fighting_ for the right to vote without ID, facial
| recognition is going to be required to file your taxes.
| Taxes you only have to file because of Intuit lobbyists.
|
| What else would you expect from a government that ran on
| being covid rationalists but has taken a year to figure out
| that they should be sending people masks and tests if they
| want people to be wearing masks and taking tests?
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > There's no doubt that poor people sometimes find it
| very tough to obtain ID
|
| Perhaps this is the case, and perhaps not, but I'd like
| to examine this premise closer.
|
| Has anybody provided even a single example of a US
| Citizen who was trying to figure out how to obtain some
| ID and couldn't figure out the process?
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > Has anybody provided even a single example of a US
| Citizen who was trying to figure out how to obtain some
| ID and couldn't figure out the process?
|
| Not an US citizen, but a Texas resident.
|
| It's not only that the process is painfully complex. For
| instance, homeless people who don't legally own a gun or
| can drive a car, are effectively excluded. Same goes for
| students whose bills are still attached to their
| families, would have a hard time proving their residence
| status.
|
| If one can go pass this step, providing proof of identity
| is equally complicated [1]. It's amusing that some of the
| accepted documents are even harder and way more expensive
| to obtain, like a passport.
|
| Not having a social security number makes the whole
| process almost impossible to complete.
|
| Point is, this shouldn't be this complicated and time
| consuming. Someone with low income and working two or
| more jobs, would have a hard time going through the
| process.
|
| [1] https://www.dps.texas.gov/section/driver-
| license/identificat...
| logicalmonster wrote:
| I appreciate that insight, but with respect, that didn't
| answer the question that was asked. I'm not asking for a
| theoretical explanation of the difficulties involved with
| procuring an ID, I'm asking for a real world example of
| just one person who couldn't manage to get one.
|
| Certainly with such interest in this topic, there's been
| a journalistic expose that went into the unfortunate
| story of even one US citizen who was wrongly prevented
| from getting some kind of ID? If I had even 1 name of
| somebody who was wrongly deprived of an ID, it would be a
| lot easier to understand that there's a real issue here.
| mbg721 wrote:
| No one wants illiterate voters either, but literacy tests
| are unlawful for historical reasons. It's a metagame about
| voter eligibility and fraud.
| erehweb wrote:
| Illiterate people deserve the right to vote too.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Because there is no mandated form of ID in the USA (and it
| was fought against for decades by conservatives claiming it
| represented unwarranted overreach by the state).
|
| As a result, actually obtaining some form of ID that might
| be acceptable (the forms vary mostly depending on the
| political party that writes the rules) can present a
| significant challenge to _some_ voters, and for some of us,
| that is an anathema (the right to vote being sacred,
| certainly compared with the right to drive for example).
|
| Introduced a national ID that the government is OBLIGATED
| TO PROVIDE for every person, and many of the arguments
| against it would go away. Currently, no state in the US,
| nor the federal government, has such a form of ID.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Voting is a state concern. It doesn't matter that there
| is no Federal standard. Every state that has Voter ID
| will have some form of acceptable ID card that you can
| get, even if you don't drive.
| acdha wrote:
| And getting that will cost money, often requires
| traveling non-trivial distances (note the demographics of
| the areas where state offices are opened or closed, and
| viability of public transit), and requires proof of
| residency / identity which can be hard for some people to
| satisfy (there are plenty of people who've hit issues
| about things like maiden names, being able to prove
| continuous proof of residence when they e.g. weren't on a
| lease or other legal document, etc.).
|
| I still think ID is good but it really needs to be paired
| with a robust improvement in making the system of getting
| ID work better. If we're requiring it, the government
| should be required to provide it for free and meet a
| legal standard of proof for denial.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I said "government" and mentioned both state and federal.
| The point is that there is no ID required in any state.
| Voter ID cards are not the obligation of the government
| to provide - voters much take the steps to procure them.
| The right to vote precedes and predates such a
| requirement - if the state wants to impose it, that's
| fine but it should come with the obligation upon the
| state government to provide the ID, not a requirement to
| procure it.
| ars wrote:
| Elections are local not national, so why would you need a
| national ID? You can use a State ID for a local election,
| and each election can have their own requirements about
| it, matching whatever the local ID in use there is.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| There is no mandated form of ID in any state. How can you
| require people to have something to vote that is not
| required for any other purpose, at least if the
| government is not required to provide it?
| simplestats wrote:
| Isn't that effectively the same argument though? In
| practice states provide ID's to everyone who can prove
| residency. Forcing states to grant ID's to everyone who
| asks for it is the same as forcing them to allow anyone
| to vote without ID's, just with an extra step.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You don't "force states to grant IDs to everyone who asks
| for it". You force states to issue IDs to all legal
| voters. States do not "provide IDs" to anyone - you are
| required to fill out paperwork, potentially travel and
| more.
|
| In nations that do in fact have a national ID, everyone
| gets one, with little or no effort (certainly no need to
| travel), and if you wanted to mark the card "non-voting"
| that wouldn't be a big step.
|
| Your right to vote is established by the US Constitution.
| A state can't burden that right. If a state wants to add
| an ID requirement, that's fine, but getting the ID must
| present no burden to any voter.
|
| In reality, the conundrum here is entirely of
| conservatives' own making. On the one hand, they (non-
| exclusively) are adamantly against automatically issued
| national or even state IDs. On the other, they want to
| require ID for voting (ascribe whatever reason to this
| you want). You can't fulfill both these desires without
| violating the constitutional right to vote.
| simplestats wrote:
| The standard is no _undue_ burden. That does not cover
| minor hassles like paperwork. Unless you 're claiming
| it's some kind of language issue.
| johncessna wrote:
| > Why are people honestly against ID requirements for
| voting?
|
| I think a better question is why folks are against ID
| requirements but are for vaccine passports and photo ids to
| buy cigarettes, booze, get into rated R movies, drive, or
| fly.
| Aloha wrote:
| I mean, I'm opposed to ID's to buy some of those things
| too. But thats my libertarianism speaking. Generally we
| have no strict ID requirements for those items, its up to
| the seller to verify age, which that can do by obvious
| appearance, or by carding the person. It's why you dont
| get carded all the time.
|
| Driving requires a specific credential and is not
| relevant for this discussion.
|
| Flying is another case, you do not need an ID to fly,
| there are provisions to fly without photo ID if you do
| not have one, they're just more time consuming and meant
| to be somewhat punitive.
| johncessna wrote:
| My point is that it's incongruent. The reasons brought
| forth supporting an id-free voting system are absent when
| any policy that requires more government papers and over
| sight are put in place.
| Aloha wrote:
| Generally, if you saw conservatives proposing policies
| that made ID available to everyone for no cost (like a
| free copy of their birth certificate and free passport
| card for every citizen), their opposition would look
| silly on this.
|
| Instead, conservatives focus on the ID mandate, ahead of
| fixing the inherent supply issues. Indeed, while I still
| have objections after this issue is fixed, they're
| largely irrelevant to the political mainstream.
|
| Generally I'm opposed to anything that smacks of 'papers
| place', and the government has a higher bar to need to
| confirm and _record_ identity than John Q. Public (also I
| 'd note, the examples you cited, generally do not record
| anything, they just verify age of purchaser).
|
| It all boils down to some form of absurd partisanship.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Generally, if you saw conservatives proposing policies
| that made ID available to everyone for no cost (like a
| free copy of their birth certificate and free passport
| card for every citizen), their opposition would look
| silly on this.
|
| Or imagine if you saw Democrats proposing this?
| Aloha wrote:
| Any group raising their money from small dollar donations
| has an incentive to do nothing. As soon as they
| accomplish something, their funding dries up.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Both are raising their money from large dollar donations.
| They also both accomplish plenty - bipartisan votes pass
| things in wealthy donors' interests.
|
| The things that they do nothing on are "wedge" issues.
| The filibuster guarantees that those are the only things
| that can't get passed if Congress stays vaguely equally
| divided. Passing material improvements to average lives
| is no benefit to either side.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Everything you just described is a privilege, not a civic
| duty.
| distrill wrote:
| really? you can't imagine how buying booze is any
| different from voting?
| abakker wrote:
| I can't tell if you are suggesting that the standards for
| alcohol be higher than for voting or not? Because
| currently they are.
| distrill wrote:
| they're not higher. the federal government doesn't even
| care how old you are, let alone where you live or whether
| you are who you say you are. those standards are all
| locally mandated and locally enforced.
| schumpeter wrote:
| Sort of... The federal government passed the National
| Minimum Drinking Age Act[1], showing they did care.
| Although they don't directly enforce drinking age mins,
| the carrot and the stick approach was used.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinkin
| g_Age_...
| distrill wrote:
| i'm aware of this and you're talking past the point i
| made. federal restrictions are stricter on voting than
| they are on alcohol.
| kansface wrote:
| I'd wager voting (federal elections) kill way more people
| than Americans who die downstream of booze. Its just a
| question of locality, really.
| distrill wrote:
| Literally everything is a partisan issue including the
| voting ID. The general argument against it is that proposed
| valid IDs are not free to obtain, and this would equate to
| a voting tax which is forbidden in the constitution.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Definitely a partisan issue, but if we look through the
| fog - why not find the root cause of this argument and
| make IDs free? It can be done by the states. We can send
| COVID tests to every American. I am sure issueing IDs (in
| control of States) would be possible.
|
| This way, you can strike down the arguments about the
| entire Democracy hinging on fake voting and "lost the
| election" BS. Give Republicans what they want. I don't
| see any issue with it.
|
| Also Democrats need to calm down and realize that it is
| not that unreasonable to ask people for IDs to avoid
| duplicate voting. It is not anti-democratic and
| definitely not doing anything helpful by calling people
| that want IDs fascists. Election integrity should be so
| good that it shouldn't have gaping holes like not having
| a fricking ID.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| 33 States offer ID card fee waivers. There are 10 States
| that don't offer waivers but also require photo ID to
| vote.
| pstuart wrote:
| Voting fraud and election fraud are distinctly different
| things; the former gets all the attention despite the
| latter being the real concern: https://www.brennancenter.
| org/sites/default/files/analysis/B...
|
| One of the 2 parties is more incentivized to discourage
| voting, and that's worthy of discussion.
|
| I am strongly anti-partisan but am compelled to vote in
| alignment with what I consider to be the least-worst
| option.
|
| It's beyond frustrating to try to discuss these issues
| without it becoming a tribal war, even here on HN where
| one would hope for a higher level of discourse.
| Aloha wrote:
| Rational arguments get lost in the partisan noise. For
| what its worth, the federal government could make
| passports (or passport cards) free for every citizen,
| which would solve the ID requirement. It's something that
| can be done by presidential fiat even, no laws required,
| that doesnt solve the issue that the underlying document
| needed to get any ID cost money, but its a start.
| Karunamon wrote:
| They are either completely or almost completely free to
| get in states already. The usual argument then swaps to
| how much of a pain in the ass it is to source ID
| documents and show up in person at the DMV or similar.
| Bhilai wrote:
| I moved to a new state last year and to get an ID/DL the
| first available appointment was 90 days away. The amount
| of documentation required for the said ID was also less
| than whats needed for a US passport. Even after an
| appointment for a specific time, I waited 1.5 hours in
| the line for my turn. The fee was nominal (for me, $25.)
| But I can totally see how it can be hard for some people
| to go through the whole process.
| simplestats wrote:
| I don't know that the US is especially worse than other
| countries when it comes to time and paperwork needed to
| receive govt services. I have waited in long lines all
| over the world.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| This isn't for government services, this is for voting.
| The kind of people that are prime targets for
| disenfranchisement are exactly the same people who can
| least afford to spend a long time in line to vote. And
| they won't, because the relative value of that vote to
| them is pretty low, but in aggregate pretty high to the
| folks who'd like to disenfranchise them to win elections.
| Aloha wrote:
| http://sharedprosperityphila.org/documents/Revised-ID-
| Waiver...
|
| While this is from 2015, this does not appear to be true.
|
| Those who do have a free ID, require a time consuming
| waiver process.
|
| Free needs to mean free, "not fill out this stack of
| paperwork and we'll send it off to the state capitol and
| see if it'll get approved"
|
| Means testing is expensive and time consuming.
| Volundr wrote:
| I don't believe that they are free in most states. $25 is
| a lot for some people. Three hours to take the bus to the
| DMV, wait in line, and take the bus home is both a
| reality and time they don't have for some people.
|
| Until the voter ID proposals address these issues, they
| aren't "securing our elections", they are putting
| arbitrary barriers in place of American's inalienable
| right to vote. Many of us will never support
| disenfranchising anyone.
| moises_silva wrote:
| Make the ids free? I've been out of Mexico for >10yrs but
| when I became 18 I easily got my voting id in Mexico,
| free of charge.
| vkou wrote:
| > Make the ids free?
|
| That would be the 'logical' solution, but the party that
| wants voter ID is not trying to do something logical.
|
| It wants to prevent people who don't currently have it
| from voting. So they demand ID, without making it
| possible/easier to get. (And when they _do_ make it
| possible /easier to get, its only in their political
| strongholds - or they explicitly disqualify particular
| kinds of state-issued ID from being used to vote.)
|
| Selective disenfranchisement is the whole point of the
| policy, not an unfortunate, unforeseen, unpredictable
| side effect. If you'd like to learn more about the
| history of this, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim
| Crow are a good primer on the motivations behind it.
| Those motivations haven't gone anywhere, because the
| cultural struggle in question has never actually been
| resolved.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > they demand ID, without making it possible/easier to
| get
|
| Wouldn't this be the responsibility of the government in
| power, and not require any participation from the
| opposition?
| Volundr wrote:
| A nationally required ID is constitutionally
| questionable, meaning this would need handled at the
| State level. It would require involvement from all
| parties.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > but the party that wants voter ID is not trying to do
| something logical.
|
| If the opposing party wanted to be logical, _they_ would
| just make IDs free and easy. Especially while they are
| running the government.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| Note that voter ID laws are being passed at the _state_
| level. Doing what you say above is fine, but getting
| states to recognize those IDs is not. This is not some
| trivial problem in America (like it may be in other
| countries).
| vkou wrote:
| 1. They don't really get to run the government in the
| states where this is an issue.
|
| 2. Once in a blue moon, they do. But anything they build
| to enable this requires constant funding and maintenance.
| Their opponents either dismantle it when they take power,
| or retroactively disqualify existing IDs from being
| eligible for voting.
|
| It's not, and has never been about IDs. It's about
| disenfranchisement.
| dahfizz wrote:
| I agree that the current Republican approach is about
| disenfranchisement.
|
| However, voter ID itself is a completely reasonable
| thing. This issue will never go away. The most logical
| thing for Democrats to do is to enact voter ID _the right
| way_ so as to remove this as a tool from the Republicans
| ' arsenal.
|
| "Republicans may implement voter ID improperly, so we
| must never ever verify that the people casting votes are
| doing so legally" is an insane position, honestly.
|
| An obvious first step would be to make getting a passport
| easier and free, though I am not sure if the federal
| government can compel states to accept a passport as
| identification.
| josephh wrote:
| > So they demand ID, without making it possible/easier to
| get.
|
| Great, have congress legislate laws to make it
| easier/free to obtain passports. Instead of requiring
| folks to travel to DMV/Post office/etc., why not have
| federal public servants visit them door-to-door and
| assist in issuing it? We do it for census, so what's
| preventing them from doing it for passports?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Charitably, the democrats don't care to take any action
| because there's never been evidence that voter fraud is
| an actual issue. It happens, in minuscule amounts, in
| most elections and is statistically meaningless. Most
| cases of voting fraud in the US are mistakes, because
| sometimes people don't realize when they've lost the
| right to vote, or didn't know they were taken off the
| voter rolls due to inactivity, or being incorrectly
| listed as dead or similar.
|
| How much are we willing to spend on non-issues?
|
| This is not my opinion however, as I think the US could
| do with a guaranteed, everyone has it, national ID card.
| Republicans however definitely don't want that, as it
| could be evidence that a government can actually do
| something right, and that's anathema to them, and also
| because a not-small group of evangelicals think that a
| government issued ID is a sign of the devil or something.
| rascul wrote:
| > Make the ids free?
|
| Voter ID laws are all over the place. Very wide
| deviations from one state to the next, and every state
| has different ideas about what counts as an acceptable
| form of identification (they don't always have to be
| government issued photo identification cards). Of the
| states that require ID for voting, the following also
| provide a method to get a free ID to use for voting
| (although it's possible I missed one or two):
|
| Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana,
| Mississippi, Missouri, Rhode Island, South Carolina,
| Tennessee, and Wisconsin.
|
| https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_stat
| e
| distrill wrote:
| yep, that would solve this problem entirely
| zzzeek wrote:
| because the IDs themselves are only issued by states and
| are intentionally withheld from demographic groups that the
| states would like to prevent from voting in large numbers.
| daveoc64 wrote:
| The UK government has proposed making photo ID mandatory
| for voting (currently it's only needed in Northern
| Ireland), and it's been controversial for similar reasons
| to the USA. The legislation is currently progressing
| through parliament.
|
| The Government's research shows that 2% of the UK
| population doesn't have any form of photo ID, and up to 9%
| of the population don't have a valid photo ID (i.e. one
| that would be recognised for voting purposes and has not
| expired). [0]
|
| The idea that 9% of the population would need to go through
| additional processes and costs to retain the right to vote
| is concerning to many.
|
| There's no ID card scheme in the UK, so people typically
| rely on a driving licence or passport in day to day life.
| These both have requirements people may not be able to meet
| (e.g. health conditions may prohibit a driving licence
| being obtained), and can be expensive.
|
| Fortunately, the UK government has announced plans for a
| free voter ID card to be made available to anyone without
| another form of ID.
|
| It then comes down to a cost/risk analysis. The UK
| government estimates it could cost something like PS18
| million per year to implement the photo ID requirement.
|
| If the types of fraud that would be prevented by asking for
| ID are miniscule (33 allegations of voter impersonation
| were made in 2019 out of 50 million votes cast) and so many
| people don't have ID - is it worth that cost?
|
| [0] - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/u
| ploads/...
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > Why are people honestly against ID requirements for
| voting?
|
| Whether this idea is accurate or not is up for the reader
| to judge, but there's a perception in America that one of
| the major parties (not naming names) needs to have as many
| mechanisms in place to be able to cheat as possible in
| order to win elections.
|
| Personally, all I'd like to know at this time is if there's
| any legal citizens out there who who cannot find out how to
| procure identification.
| malnourish wrote:
| There are many people who do not have a stable address,
| something which is needed to apply for and receive an ID.
|
| Why should those citizens be deprived their right to vote?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| An address determines which district you are eligible to
| vote in. The citizen still has a right to vote but
| _where_ is a legitimate question because it determines
| which ballot they receive.
| malnourish wrote:
| Address verification is orthogonal to identity
| verification.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| But both are needed to cast a vote, no?
| Justin_K wrote:
| I'm sure they'll run a single payer healthcare system just
| fine.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Our expectations are so low that they'll manage to meet
| them.
| iso1210 wrote:
| You'd have to be very good to run a system worse than the
| US
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Excuse me, can I see your vaccine card so you can enter this
| store/restaurant/theater/polling place/etc.?
|
| Minorities, Blacks in particular, have lower vaccination
| rates than whites. Ever heard of the Tuskegee experiment? Who
| can blame them? Given vaccine rates by demographic, it seems
| like many places are hell bent on introducing racist vaccine
| passport policies. I thought we weren't supposed to do stuff
| like that anymore.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| I dont agree with vaccine passports at all. But, if vaccine
| passports are required, minorities having a lower
| vaccination rate by choice does not make vaccine passports
| racist. Enough with the disparate impact BS when the policy
| is the same for all people across the board.
|
| The only thing that vaccine passport requirements are
| discriminating against are unvaccinated people. Skin color
| has nothing to do with it.
| wldcordeiro wrote:
| All of American social services seem designed to delay, deny
| and deprive from some fear of "welfare queens."
| nickff wrote:
| > _" All of American social services seem designed to delay,
| deny and deprive from some fear of "welfare queens." "_
|
| There's also a massive amount of fraud against the social
| services. Just look at the auditors' reports on the COVID
| relief money, and you can see the patterns.
| pessimizer wrote:
| An amount of fraud that would be _reduced_ by simplifying
| the processes or making them universal. Currently
| everything is so complicated that fraud is undetectable. A
| good part of fraud is bad actors with expertise in these
| processes leaping in front of victims who find those
| processes unintelligible so have no idea that programs
| exist or if they 're qualified for them.
|
| edit: the best part is when somebody manages to fill out
| all of the forms, navigate the administration, get approval
| and help finally, then get another letter that says that
| they were retroactively denied benefits and have to pay
| them back. It's a minefield.
| suifbwish wrote:
| Where is some data on these people who knew how to file things
| like you are saying? Perhaps an examination of this and
| bringing it to public light will bring some real change?
| trimbo wrote:
| One example: EDD employee using serving-life-in-prison
| boyfriend to sign up other prisoners (none of whom are
| eligible), and kick back money to them.[1]
|
| (Edit) Oh, here's another good one. EDD employee claimed to
| be Senator Feinstein.[2]
|
| [1] - https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/california-
| employment-d...
|
| [2] - https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-17/cal
| iforn...
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Are there other solutions to prevent the billions in stolen
| identity claims and returns filed each year? The IRS isn't
| doing this just to be a pain in the ass or make it more
| difficult for people to file but because there is an actual
| problem that costs tens of billions every year.
| syshum wrote:
| American Here... I have a major problem with calling the IRS a
| "social service", taxing authority is not a social service.
| whakim wrote:
| The IRS is a _massive_ social service, because much of US
| fiscal policy gets done through the tax code via ever-more-
| complicated tax credits and deductions.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Some of us might consider this round-about policy
| implementation a disservice.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I meant the unemployment benefits are a social service.
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| Why not? It's part of the system of providing services (some
| direct, like EBT; some indirect, like roads and pollution
| regulation) that we elect governments to do behalf.
| yongjik wrote:
| > I say no, [photo IDs] would not solve it. (...) How would
| ever more restriction, requirement and verification, have
| helped here?
|
| This almost starts to sound like an Onion article: "No way this
| can possibly work," Americans saying about yet another system
| implemented by virtually every nation in the Western World(TM).
|
| The whole point of a national photo ID system is that it's the
| _government 's_ responsibility to _provide_ its every citizen a
| functional ID. Which has its shortcomings, but it 's miles
| better than everyone implementing their own ID system anyway in
| incompatible ways and then all citizens trying to figure out
| which one to use where.
|
| There's a strong parallel with a national healthcare system,
| which is also objected by a lot of Americans on the ground that
| the mythical government will never get it right.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| The article doesn't mention creating a national
| identification card in the USA nor does it talk about
| implementing any kind of nationwide identifier. Instead the
| on-boarding process for ID.me is described.
|
| In my opinion the poster is correct: uploading one of the
| many state issued identification cards, all which vary quite
| a lot, is not going to solve this problem.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I'd say that there's a pretty significant gap between "we've
| given you a federal ID for free, and you're obligated to use
| it" and "you must provide your own photo ID to access
| government services, and we may or may not accept it".
|
| The former is about the government fixing its own mess, the
| latter foists responsibility for dysfunctional government
| systems onto individuals who may or may not do the correct
| song and dance to please whichever agency they're dealing
| with. If we're going to demand photo ID everywhere, the
| government should fix its own crap first before demanding
| more of the citizens.
|
| I'd be fine with getting a federal ID and using it for my
| taxes. I'm deeply opposed to having to provide my own photo
| to fill out my taxes, especially since if they're unhappy
| with my photo for whatever inscrutable reason, they can throw
| me in jail for not doing my taxes right.
| fartcannon wrote:
| We're already at the point where I can deepfake a person from
| a single photo, I'm not convinced biometric data is useful at
| all.
| dragontamer wrote:
| There's this old idea (~10 years old) of having the USPS
| become a PKI-token agency, especially because USPS already
| has the infrastructure to physically deliver items to every
| house in the USA.
|
| These physical tokens can be as simple as a randomly-
| generated QR-code, or a full and proper PKI physical token
| / smartcard system (or anything in between).
|
| Furthermore, USPS needs more traffic / package deliveries
| (especially since its lost Amazon as a customer).
| Increasing the amount of goods flowing around physically in
| the USPS system is definitely a benefit, especially if its
| for ensuring the physical security of these hypothetical
| security tokens.
|
| ----
|
| IE: The USPS is uniquely situated to become a premier ID of
| the US government. Certainly more situated than the current
| standard, the Social Security Administration. Or the loose
| confederation of ~48 "RealID" state drivers license.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| > especially because USPS already has the infrastructure
| to physically deliver items to every house in the USA.
|
| Not accurate. I live very close to San Francisco, but I
| have to get my mail at a Post Office because the USPS
| doesn't deliver to my door.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| While you're technically correct, that's the worst kind.
| Surely you aren't arguing against their real point that
| the USPS is the most equipped federal agency for getting
| items to people, and for having the physical real estate
| proximity to people to be convenient?
| bo1024 wrote:
| I think there's a confusion happening here between photo ID
| (an identification the government issues to citizens) and
| being required to submit photos of oneself and other
| documents to access government services.
| pempem wrote:
| Generally I agree with you however
|
| It _doesnt_ work here. As a progressive we keep chasing these
| goals and somehow they simply get perverted to be even worse
| for the taxpayer in the end. i.e. you must have RealID
| however you must also pay for RealID. You can get paid time
| off from work to vote or benefits if you have a job, but only
| if you 're a full time employee. Womp! a ton of people are no
| longer full time employees
|
| How do we find our way out?
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| We Europeans pay for id cards as well? It's part of being a
| society, getting these things fixed every 6 years or what
| not, having vaccines etc, it's not discrimination but
| Americans swear by their so called personal freedoms so you
| never get nowhere.
| slg wrote:
| I think a big part of the problem is worrying about all
| these edge cases and how people will take advantage of
| these services. Means testing is a prime example. We should
| be making more services free and open to everyone. Jeff
| Bezos, a homeless person, and I all have equal right to use
| government services. None of us should have to pay for our
| ID. Just give it to us all for free and if necessary raise
| the taxes on the people who would have paid for these
| services out of pocket. That improves buy in as now
| everyone is receiving the same level of benefit and it
| allows us to remove a lot of bureaucratic bloat that has
| built up over all these programs trying to assess an
| individual's eligibility.
| cwkoss wrote:
| > You see, people with real jobs, with every real paper filed,
| were denied benefits, while insiders were pulling checks with
| both hands, using certain kinds of identities that would slip
| through.
|
| What are the 'certain kinds of identities that would slip
| through'?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > because their internal systems were designed to delay, deny
| and deprive, I say.
|
| Definitely. I know someone in NJ who has not received
| unemployed benefits for 14 months. They call every month, and
| are told to keep waiting. No one returns their calls, snail
| mail, or emails.
|
| There is zero justification the government cannot respond via
| email, or give you a call back, other than they would like you
| to waste so much of your time and effort on hold that you give
| up.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > There is zero justification the government cannot respond
| via email, or give you a call back, other than ...
|
| ... that we collectively refuse to pay enough taxes to staff
| government agencies at sufficient levels to allow them to
| provide the service we believe we deserve.
| _jal wrote:
| No.
|
| The problem is that systems are deliberately designed to be
| difficult to navigate in order to discourage use.
|
| It isn't money. It is a belief that recipients are not
| deserving, and so should be made to "pay" for it or denied
| altogether.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Well, sure, that's also a factor when it comes to
| specific government functions such as an unemployment
| benefit division. But it's overlaid on top of the general
| lack of adequate staffing, which in turn reflects
| taxation policy.
| lostapathy wrote:
| That's not even broadly true.
|
| I worked for a state agency that make workforce services
| software for several states. Not unemployment, but the
| other programs to help people find jobs and/or get
| retrained.
|
| The management overwhelmingly wanted to find ways to help
| people and spend the money (that's how they get bigger
| grants, after all, by spending all of the last one and
| "coming up short"). The majority of the staff wanted to
| help people and spend the state's money as well.
|
| But the rules are arcane and the agencies are perpetually
| understaffed and the software systems are terrible
| (federal programs often allow too small of a fraction of
| the allocated money to be spent on administration). So
| it's still a hell of a thing to get the money spent
| helping people, even if everybody's heart is in the right
| place.
|
| The problems are myriad, but I'd say the biggest issue is
| state legislators that are unwilling to invest in
| modernization in "good times" when the benefits programs
| aren't over-taxed, and then wonder why the systems (both
| technical and people) can't scale when society needs the
| help.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > But the rules are arcane and the agencies are
| perpetually understaffed and the software systems are
| terrible
|
| This is not accidental.
| _jal wrote:
| > But the rules are arcane and the agencies are
| perpetually understaffed
|
| Exactly, and this is by design. Here is how it was
| designed to not work in Florida:
|
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/florida-
| unemployment...
|
| But the general outline is the same most everywhere.
|
| > management overwhelmingly wanted to find ways to help
|
| They don't matter, they don't set the rules or the
| budget.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"pay enough taxes to staff government agencies at
| sufficient levels"
|
| Our government already runs at a tremendous deficit. They
| can keep borrowing longer than we can remain on the run
| from the law.
|
| Edit: I had actually _completely_ misread the GP 's
| comment. I had somehow thought they meant that we should do
| a tax-strike in order to force the government to reform. My
| cynical counterargument was that they would just borrow to
| make up for the missed revenue until the protestors gave-in
| or were arrested.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Our government already runs at a tremendous deficit.
|
| Because we pay less in taxes than we (as the people who
| elect our governments) choose to spend. Sure, we could
| spend less, but we could also tax more (a LOT more), and
| have done so in the past.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I completely misread your comment. I had somehow thought
| you meant that we should do a tax-strike in order to
| force the government to reform. My cynical
| counterargument was that they would just borrow to make
| up for the missed revenue until the protestors gave-in or
| were arrested.
| iso1210 wrote:
| US tax revenue is broadly about 25% of GDP, significantly
| lower than the 33% that's average in the OECD
|
| It reached it's lowest since 1965, 22.9%, in 2009.
| Highest recently was 2017 (27%), and in 2000 it reached
| 28.3%
|
| The Clinton years were probably what you're looking for,
| where tax revenues increased linearly from 25.6% to
| 28.3%, but through the 70s and 80s it varied from 24 to
| 26%, same as now.
|
| Not sure if an extra 1% of GDP would fall in your "LOT
| more" category, but it seems far less than normal
| countries raise.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Not emailing back is a classic plausible deniability
| strategy. No one is asking for a response right now. Or
| even later today. Or even a week or even a month from now.
|
| But if the NJ government's budget does not allow them to
| respond to a single email after multiple months, that is a
| sign of intentional negligence, or a failed state.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Or a lack of effective metrics tracking and performance
| management. Maybe those metrics would show the offices
| were operating at tip-top efficiency and were deserving
| of additional budget to better serve their constituents.
| Or maybe it would show something else entirely, but
| either way the data would be useful.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If you call NJ unemployment offices anytime after 8:05AM,
| you get a message saying to call back the next day. 22
| months after the pandemic started.
|
| All the leaders know what is happening. It has been in
| the news many times.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Ok. Is that enough evidence to conclude that "they need
| more budget and then things would be fixed"?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| No, my initial comment was the system was designed to in
| such a way as to inconvenience people and hope they get
| tired of trying to collect the money.
| EricDeb wrote:
| That is the problem it is so difficult to determine
| whether the negligence is intentional or not.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| ... or a massively underfunded government, which is
| precisely what the policies of one of our two major
| political parties for the last 40 years (at least) have
| sought to create (they are quite open about this). But
| hey, maybe that fits under the "intentional negligence"
| category...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That would make sense on a federal level. But not in NJ
| which is solid Democrat, and definitely not with their
| among the highest in the nation taxes.
|
| Again, I am giving quite a bit of leeway. At 14 months
| with no response, that is not understaffing. That is
| deliberate sabotage by leaders to prevent people from
| getting benefits.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You understand that even NJ taxes are low by comparsion
| with most western European nations, yes? And that even in
| those nations, people still find publically-facing
| government agencies frustrating to deal with?
|
| Still, I'm inclined to agree with you that some of what
| you describe in your 2nd para is likely happening too.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >And that even in those nations, people still find
| publically-facing government agencies frustrating to deal
| with?
|
| That seems to contradict your assertion that the
| government would have given him better service had more
| taxes been directed at them.
|
| Having worked in this space my cynical observation is
| that you don't get the budget to run a big appeals
| process and a quality watchdog team, etc, etc, if you
| don't suck bad enough to need those things in the first
| place.
| revscat wrote:
| Collectively the American people support efforts like what
| you describe. Their voices do not affect policy, though.
| Only those of billionaires and corporate lobbyists do.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| I have a *fat* stack of false claims sent into my company in
| NJ, that the burden was left on me to dispute. Finally the
| state paid one of these fictitious claims out to someone I
| have never met in NYC. I contacted my legislators about the
| situation, tried to get investigators to work the case,
| contacted the courts who sympathized but were unable to
| provide assistance. it is impossible to get in contact with
| someone anywhere to combat fraud. I ended up having to rename
| the company and change the structure so I would not have to
| pay into unemployment in the future.
|
| Fast forward to COVID when we were requested to close for a
| few months and unemployment benefits were supposedly extended
| to freelancers, I filed for that time we were closed and it
| was stuck in pending status since April 2020.
|
| I am of the opinion that unemployment insurance as it is in
| my state is an outright scam and should be abolished (and
| replaced if need be). New York and Pennsylvania had some
| delays, but nothing like the shit NJ has been.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| That sucks, I'm sorry to hear about that. For future
| reference, the best way to get a politician's attention is
| to get on FOX News and talk shit about their pet program.
| It's like how people post on HN when they can't get support
| from FAANG.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| I mean I threw the stack down in the my one assemblyman's
| office and spoke about it for over an hour to him in
| person, he was my neighbor in the same building I worked
| in. But being that he's of the party that's not in power
| in the state, there's very little he can do.
|
| I also requested that he co-sponsor one of the bills that
| greatly increases penalties for defrauding the system
| (it's currently pretty much a slap on the wrist).
|
| The vast majority of Americans are entirely unaware that
| most of the day-to-day laws and systems are implemented
| at state level (aside from griping about governor's
| office executive orders). There's one news network that
| reports on our state's government affairs and hardly
| anyone watches it. But everyone knows the second a
| federal politician does something.
| exhilaration wrote:
| You should let them know to contact their state legislator.
| From what I read on various state subreddits that's the only
| way to get a response from your overwhelmed state
| unemployment office. This is the equivalent to escalating
| your issue to a manager.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > You should let them know to contact their state
| legislator. [...] This is the equivalent to escalating your
| issue to a manager.
|
| No, it's the equivalent of escalating it to a member of the
| Board of Directors.
| giantg2 wrote:
| AKA don't expect any response because "the board" is too
| high up to deal with a nobody like you or me.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > AKA don't expect any response because "the board" is
| too high up to deal with a nobody like you or me.
|
| Well, maybe. Legislators are really variable on
| constitutent service, but many will (or rather, will
| allow their office staff to; direct, even by something
| going out under their name rather than a staff contact,
| is less common) at least gently probe on behalf of
| constituents on state service issues, and if a high
| enough volume is involved are more likely to get
| personally involved.
|
| But any response that does happen is likely to involve
| butt covering and blame redirection from virtually every
| step of the management chain, just like when an issue
| hits the news media, so on issues where you haven't
| exhausted other avenues short of lawsuits, it's probably
| not the step to reach for the way escalating to a manager
| would be. I've definitely been involved in issues where
| premature escalation to a legislator delayed and/or made
| the resolution less favorable than it probably otherwise
| would have been because of the degree of attention from
| management, legal, public and legislative affairs, etc.,
| that the escalation triggered.
|
| It makes sense in the particular circumstances described,
| though, it's just the analogy that was flawed in a way
| which might be misleading as to how that generalizes to
| other situations.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I got no response at all from multiple letters to
| multiple reps/senators on an issue I had.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| They have, the legislator also has a canned response. And
| the pandemic started Mar 2020, it is now 22 months later.
|
| That is far sufficient time to get a response, even if they
| were initially overwhelmed.
|
| Families and businesses get overwhelmed too, but they are
| expected to file NJ tax returns on time. Try not responding
| to NJ for 14 months after NJ is owed money and see what
| happens. Rules for thee but not for me is the motto of many
| governments.
| rhizome wrote:
| Each person in the US is a constituent of multiple
| regional legislators, from city council (or local
| versions) to Representatives and Senators (and President,
| sure).
|
| I've found luck in starting with emailing the office of
| my lowest (closest) representative at the smallest unit
| of government, telling them my problem, _and asking them
| who I can talk to about it._ "Who's responsible for
| pothole repairs on (street that might be state or county
| controlled instead of the city)?" This puts the ambitions
| of the office to work. Oftentimes they will rather get
| credit for solving your problem and do work for you than
| just give you a phone number or email address, and in the
| event of a roadblock you can go back to them for more
| help. "Hey, I tried X but Y happened, got any other
| ideas?" Your state rep's communications intern doesn't
| just sit back alphabetizing checks from Walmart
| executives and police unions.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Ha. I'm my case my representatives _completely ignored_ my
| letters about rights violations and misconduct by the state
| police. On other issues, I only receive unhelpful form
| letters, some of which don 't even address the correct
| issue. Don't expect any real help from your representatives
| unless it somehow benefits them.
| rhizome wrote:
| Law enforcement is different.
| giantg2 wrote:
| How so? I should be able to ask my representative's
| stance on justice reform and get a response. I did not
| ask them to get involved with a specific case.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| OK, now you're talking about asking for a policy
| position, rather than what they call "constituent
| services". "Constituent services" is "I am personally
| having a problem with some aspect of government in my
| personal life and I am contacting you as my elected
| representative to help me."
|
| In every place I've lived, elected officials are good at
| constituent services, and that's how they get re-elected.
| I'm surprised to hear of elected reps just ignoring
| constituent services requests.
|
| I also sometimes contact my reps with lobbying/policy
| stuff -- what is your position on X? I urge you to vote
| No on Bill Whatever and would like to know if you will.
| Can you commit to supporting legislation to reform Y?
| Etc. And it can indeed often take months to get a form
| letter response that may not really respond to my query
| at all, or not get a response at all. It's true.
|
| If you want to go on to say that they _shouldn 't_ be
| different, or that the policy issues really do effect you
| personally so _should_ be considered or treated the
| same... that 's fine, you may be right, but it's not how
| the offices of elected officials usually operate.
|
| Also, while I'm surprised to hear of reps totally
| ignoring constituent services requests with no
| response... if your constituent services request was
| about police misconduct, and they aren't known as a far-
| left politician, I'm less surprised, because that's such
| a hot button "political" issue. (I'm not saying it's "ok"
| or I like it, just based on my understanding of how
| politicians operate i'm less surprised).
| vkou wrote:
| In my case, two state congressional reps ignored me,
| state senator did not.
|
| He wasn't very helpful, but he at least responded... And
| not in a canned letter.
| ryanianian wrote:
| 100% this. I had an issue with the NJ DMV, and the
| senator's office was able to get my issue resolved like
| same-day and told the DMV to eat glass. I even got a formal
| apology letter from the DMV.
|
| Not all congresscritters will have the same effectiveness,
| but that is the first place to start if the trail to
| getting results turns to a dead-end.
| philistine wrote:
| The correct term would be a government ombudsman. And
| legislators totally fulfill that job for a significant part
| of their day.
| Loughla wrote:
| Due to COVID, my representatives no longer take visitors,
| and no longer take phone calls to their office, nor do they
| provide a contact e-mail. They have a form you can fill out
| on their websites.
|
| That way you get a response (thank you for completing the
| form) and then zero way to track the communication. In my
| case, I have never received anything after that from any of
| my representatives.
|
| You can't call to check on it, because, again, they're no
| longer taking phone calls. And even if they did, you have
| no reference number.
|
| They took advantage of the pandemic to just completely cut
| ties with their constituents outside of THEIR approved
| avenues.
|
| Super cool. Very representative.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| Without representation, we simply shouldn't pay taxes.
|
| Right?
| vkou wrote:
| It sounds like their opponents should easily be able to
| trounce them in an election. If you don't like your
| current reps, you may want to tip the other campaign (or
| internal challengers in the primaries) on this.
|
| If you otherwise like your current reps, I'm sorry.
| smsm42 wrote:
| You assume it's a place where there are competitive
| elections which compete on satisfying the voters. In many
| places, it's not the case - it's either uni-party
| location where whoever the party appoints wins, or a
| location where the competition is between different
| groups of special-interest players that couldn't care
| less about the voters that do not align with them. If you
| find yourself in that environment - nobody is trouncing
| anything, however incompetent the actual management of
| affairs becomes. People stay in their positions until
| they either die or decide to move on by their own
| volition.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Can confirm, I know somebody in CA who had the rights to the
| benefits (not me), and actually getting them was a nightmare.
| Yet, somehow criminals managed to steal billions. I am torn
| between gross incompetence (always a good first guess when CA
| government is involved) and actual collusion with the
| criminals.
|
| And no, different auth system wouldn't help it. Probably would
| make it worse - the system would inevitably be buggy, deny
| entry for people who don't look like their out-of-date photo,
| glitch on hundreds of systems that are different from whatever
| the designers assumed, and would require a lot of manual
| adjustment - while the support workforce will be reduced,
| because we've got this shiny new expensive automated system,
| why should we keep paying for human support?
| max_ wrote:
| > I am torn between gross incompetence (always a good first
| guess when CA government is involved) and actual collusion
| with the criminals.
|
| Believe none of what you hear, half of what you read, and
| everything that you see.
| numpad0 wrote:
| > Actual people with real jobs were repeatedly refused, while
| insiders who knew how to fill out paperwork, and apparently
| knew where the blind spots were, filed hundreds of claims in
| the early pandemic days.
|
| This is simply how every bureaucracy works at all levels. And
| Unix systems as well :/ Your system comes with cron and tar,
| you just have to know they exist and how can they be used. And
| to know that, you just have to read up relevant man pages, and
| to pull up man pages, you just...
|
| ... well I guess you can also hand couple grands to that dude
| over there mixing a peanut butter jar with fingers who
| apparently knows how to write a backup scripts and how to run
| it as a cron job.
|
| I guess it's some sort of unsolved hard problem to make systems
| that are self sustaining, fair, and easy, that works reliably.
| chrisoverzero wrote:
| > In the great State of California, billions in unemployment
| benefits were sent to the wrong people [...]
|
| > Actual people with real jobs were repeatedly refused [...]
|
| I would also refuse unemployment benefits to people with jobs,
| real or otherwise. Which one of us is confused, here?
| logifail wrote:
| > [..] government making ever more demands on citizens for
| "papers, please"
|
| Our 12 year old was refused service in a local stationery shop
| last week because he didn't have proof of vaccination or a
| negative test with him. He'd been tested three times in school
| that same week, but had left "his papers" at home.
|
| He was attempting to buy stuff for school. He was furious.
|
| Oh, and in not so many years from now, he'll be old enough to
| vote.
| ledauphin wrote:
| I completely understand the frustration, and I think I agree
| that there likely aren't simple solutions. But can I ask - do
| you have any positive suggestions for what could be done
| differently that would lead to a better overall result? Is your
| assertion that it would be better to make it easier for both
| legitimate claims and fraudsters? What sort of legit/fraud
| claims ratio should we agree upon as a society, and is there
| any way for us to influence that number, or is this just an
| impossibly hard problem?
|
| I know that's a lot of questions, but all of them are sincere.
| I'm legitimately unsure what I should think about this, as well
| as unsure what you would specifically propose.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| thank you for asking, sorry for the rant-like structure.
| Whatever is to be done, needs to back off from "surveillance
| capitalism". In my own experience, failure in government
| programs is tolerated because everyone involved is on
| permanent salary.
| ledauphin wrote:
| having experienced some Kafka-esque systems myself, I
| understand the rant.
|
| My presumably unreasonable imaginary proposal for these
| sorts of problems is that we would build off of real-life
| social networks. I think my mail carrier, for instance,
| would be able to verify that I am the same person who has
| lived at my address for the past N years.
|
| Which really boils down to one human being seeing another
| human being's face. It's pretty low-tech.
|
| That said, I feel like using video chats to do this is
| arguably a reasonable next-best alternative to IRL
| verification for people who for one reason or another can't
| ever meet their mail carrier.
|
| I guess what I'm getting at is - it _seems_ like there
| could be a good version of this system that is roughly the
| right solution in a mostly unobjectionable, non-
| surveillance-state way. I don't really know what boxes it
| would have to check to move from the bad category into the
| good category. But I'd love to hear more from you or others
| on what options we might have.
| jorvi wrote:
| In general, for social services the fraudster problem is
| extremely overblown. Here in The Netherlands in 2016 we had
| 120-150 million euros of fraud on 77 billion euros of social
| service spending. That's less than 0.2%. Divided by the
| amount of social service recipients, it amounts to 17 euros
| of fraud per person.
|
| https://www-rtlnieuws-
| nl.translate.goog/economie/column/4140...
| kansface wrote:
| In California alone, at least 20 Billion dollars (over 10%)
| in pandemic relief funds were fraudulently given away.
| Quite a bit of it went to felons in jail! This is surely an
| underestimate. The Netherlands are not comparable to the
| US. Americans don't trust our institutions because by and
| large, they aren't trust worthy.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| In absolute terms, 120-150 million Euros is still a vast
| sum of money. It's still worth trying to crack down on.
| ledauphin wrote:
| If someone 'steals my identity' and gets my tax return
| money before I do, it could be quite a lot of work for me
| to prove to the IRS that it was stolen and that I should
| get the money. Which shifts the burden of dealing with
| identity theft onto legitimate claimants.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if this same thing could happen
| with social services, but I don't have much experience with
| the system.
|
| In other words, I'm not sure if the overall problem we're
| trying to solve is simply "avoid waste" - it might be more
| like "prevent the average person from having their identity
| stolen and their time/money wasted". Which seems like a
| problem worth trying to solve even if the incidence is
| relatively low?
| someguydave wrote:
| Keeping the average business owner from being harassed by
| fake/false/dubious unemployment claims would also be
| good.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| > while insiders were pulling checks with both hands, using
| certain kinds of identities that would slip through
|
| How can you slip through public key cryptography?
|
| * not american here
| [deleted]
| netr0ute wrote:
| What public key cryptography?
| franciscop wrote:
| I guess OP, like me, is from a country where we have a
| digital signature installed in our computers or a physical
| smart card+reader with which you can make many official
| legal procedures on our local governments. I just got mine
| from Spain, and I was "late" (but very necessary since I
| don't live there anymore) and I'm applying literally today
| for my card in Japan.
| netr0ute wrote:
| There isn't anything like that in the US.
| dharmab wrote:
| Americans have no national identity card. The closest thing
| is a Social Security number, which has no security or
| biometric features.
|
| https://youtu.be/Erp8IAUouus
| csdvrx wrote:
| And it's a good thing, and personally I would love it if we
| could stop having even SSNs.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| 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.
| csdvrx wrote:
| 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.
| giantg2 wrote:
| 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.
| tangjurine wrote:
| 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?
| csdvrx wrote:
| Yes, yes, no.
|
| See my other comment: people should be in charge of their
| identity, NOT the government.
| messe wrote:
| > I would love it if we could stop having even SSNs
|
| Why?
| gumby wrote:
| 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"
| jdmichal wrote:
| 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.
| Lammy wrote:
| "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)
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| 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.
| mindslight wrote:
| 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.
| Spellman wrote:
| I'm taking a leap of logic here and guessing you're
| suggesting a blockchain solution to national identity would
| have solved this problem?
| Isamu wrote:
| Thanks for brightening my day! Honestly- I can use the
| laughs today.
| csdvrx wrote:
| Yes it would.
|
| Repost of my comment from yesterday:
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29982395)
|
| As technically interesting as using a card to sign stuff
| may be, I don't want that to be the government
| responsibility, as it then opens the door for it to be used
| in ways that limit our freedoms: a system that's too
| perfect can uniquely identify you, in ways that prevent
| disassociation (ex: the place of birth on the passport is
| of great interest to some totalitarian places, while only
| citizenship should matter..) So for me, the ideal ID system
| is decentralized, self-declarative, and the weight of the
| proof depends on the length of history, not on "who" says
| it's true: there should be many such services where you
| could declare a name and an address and anything else you
| wish (phone, email...)
|
| The value after a few weeks would be close to nil, so you
| could decide to "increase it" by having several people
| vouch for you (strength in numbers) instead of relying on a
| "who" (public notary).
|
| Or you could totally decide that you care about your
| freedom/independence/whatever and NOT ask for any vouching.
| It may be hard, but after a few years of reliably receiving
| mail and orders at that address, it would acquire some
| serious weight - a bit like you tend to trust online
| accounts that have been open for some year.
|
| Among many other things, this would also allow anyone the
| opportunity to "change" easily: want a new name/move to a
| new address/etc: create a revocation certificate for the
| old, sign it with the new, boom you inherit the credential
| history!
|
| It's just a quick idea, but it shows how IDs could be more
| like URLs (multiple competing services, and you could have
| a few at the same time, why not!) by moving away from the
| current system that's a direct descendant of the census
| (give the lord a list of people to tax them) and the
| passport (limit freedom of movement during the war)
|
| At the core, I believe people should be in control of their
| identity, not governments or states.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > a system that's too perfect can uniquely identify you,
|
| Isn't this a basic requirement of any ID system?
| csdvrx wrote:
| > Isn't this a basic requirement of any ID system?
|
| And now you understand my core opposition to government
| run ID system.
|
| Think of it like SSH keys: you want them to allow access,
| and therefore one-way verification. You don't want a
| bijective system that would allow you to be uniquely
| identified. So you can have 1 key per system you access.
|
| Most uses of ID are compatible with that usecase: one ID
| to allow you to pay taxes, one ID to allow you to travel,
| one ID to prove you have a license to drive, etc.
|
| There's absolutely no need to merge them - except for the
| convenience of tracking you and adding new usecases
| easily, without the government shouldering the burden of
| rolling a new ID _AND_ having people use it.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| If you had an ID system that allowed you to get multiple
| unconnected IDs, what would prevent someone from getting
| 10 million of them and casting 10 million votes in an
| election? Or even just having 2 or 3 and claiming
| stimulus checks or welfare or disability or whatever?
|
| Doesn't the government _have_ to be able to uniquely
| identify you to even have a chance at providing services
| equally to everyone?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| If there was no cost having an ID that could serve for
| the sort of purposes you mention, I might agree with you.
|
| But I have no desire to see a society in which zero-cost
| (or effectively zero-cost) ID systems are the legal
| requirement for those purposes. As a result, issuing and
| maintaining the records associated with physical world
| forms of ID have real costs associated with them, and I
| would question the benefits to society (even with
| "privacy" in mind) of replicating that per-potential-ID-
| category.
|
| [ EDIT : Also, I would think that the way browser
| fingerprinting works would dissuade you from believing
| that one-ID-for-X and one-ID-for-Y is going to stop you
| from being uniquely identified. ]
| epicide wrote:
| While I have long dreamt of public-key cryptography in
| place of a SSN, I don't think blockchain adds any value
| on top of that (except filling out a buzzword bingo
| square).
|
| (Among other issues) I really don't want my identity to
| become someone else's speculation device and would
| strongly prefer preventing that if at all possible.
| Companies selling personal data back and forth as a
| commodity is already bad enough.
|
| > a system that's too perfect can uniquely identify you,
| in ways that prevent disassociation (ex: the place of
| birth on the passport is of great interest to some
| totalitarian places, while only citizenship should
| matter..)
|
| Isn't this all information they already have (and would
| presumably keep)? Ultimately, it's the governing body
| that's dealing out these keys to access data they already
| have about you. _What_ data is stored is completely
| separate from _how_ that data is stored.
|
| If you don't want birthplace on the passport, that's
| totally separate from SSN vs public keys vs blockchain.
|
| > the ideal ID system is decentralized, self-declarative,
| and the weight of the proof depends on the length of
| history, not on "who" says it's true
|
| It would need to also be public, no? Otherwise, it boils
| back down to "who says it's true".
|
| > moving away from the current system that's a direct
| descendant of the census (give the lord a list of people
| to tax them)
|
| If you don't want to be taxed, that's also a separate
| issue.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > If you don't want birthplace on the passport, that's
| totally separate from SSN vs public keys vs blockchain.
|
| Not really. If you don't put it there, it can't be
| collected. A blockchain solution should _NOT_ have
| provision for fields you don 't want out there, like say
| religion.
|
| > Isn't this all information they already have (and would
| presumably keep)? Ultimately, it's the governing body
| that's dealing out these keys to access data they already
| have about you. What data is stored is completely
| separate from how that data is stored.
|
| Information gets stale, so what's already out there
| become less relevant as time goes.
|
| Also, if you don't put everything in a nice convenient
| form inside a all-in-one document that's ripe for
| harvesting, you're making the job harder. That's the
| goal.
|
| > It would need to also be public, no? Otherwise, it
| boils back down to "who says it's true".
|
| Hence, blockchain
|
| > If you don't want to be taxed, that's also a separate
| issue.
|
| I tried to explain the origin of the current systems. I'm
| all for taxes at the point of origin (ex: wage, capital
| gains) without exposing more information than what's
| strictly required to do the job.
| dharmab wrote:
| Many European countries have public key encryption
| integrated into their national ID card system. No
| blockchain needed.
| coffeecat wrote:
| Having used ID.me before, I thought their email was a phishing
| attempt at first, before I looked into the situation and found
| that it was legit. Government services should never ask users
| to provide personal information to third parties which lack
| .gov TLDs; it's very problematic from the perspective of a
| cautious user.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| lack of understanding of new technologies and internet in general
| from governments is scary
|
| where do they seek help to think about developing such useless
| systems?
| netfortius wrote:
| IRS advertises a web site for document uploads, as first message,
| even before getting to the main menu, of one of their 800
| numbers, but when called to verify receipt no one knows how this
| system works, so they ask to have documents faxed. When asked
| where the uploaded documents could be, one gets this very strong
| feeling of documents going who knows where, for use... or abuse.
| Adding another system like id.me now with pictures and videos of
| tax payers sounds extremely reassuring, to complete the package
| of things in possession of no one knows where things are, at IRS.
| diblasio wrote:
| As an expat American I was originally super pleased to see
| something like this was finally happening, however, this was
| quickly diminished once I tried signing up. It requires documents
| like a phone bill in English to verify my identity, which I
| simply cannot provide.
| vidarh wrote:
| Norway has an electronic id system, and when I went back over
| christmas, before I had verified that I could "pretend to be a
| foreigner" when filling in covid entry documentation, I figured
| I'd try getting one of those id's finally, since you can use
| them all over the place for Norwegian based services. I moved
| to the UK before they became common, so I've never had one.
|
| Cue catch-22: To get one I needed to be able to receive mail at
| the address held by Norwegian tax authorities. They require you
| to file _one_ notification when you move out of the country
| giving your new address, but not only don 't require you to
| file notifications when you move again, but actively tell you
| not to. You _can_ however tell them your new postal address
| which will be registered separately.
|
| Except I'd never bothered before because I had no reason to,
| and now, to register a new postal address online or in fact to
| even get to the page that tells you how to file one, you need
| to log in with the an electronic id.
|
| Fun times. I sent them an e-mail before christmas asking how
| exactly they expected me to be able to inform them of my new
| postal address - I'm sure they do have a fallback - but they've
| not yet answered.
|
| Thankfully the department responsible for the covid entry forms
| answered my e-mails within an hour or two and told me it was
| fine to just fill in the form intended for foreign citizens so
| figuring out the electronic id it is now only a slightly
| amusing exercise in questioning the workings of bureaucracy
| (there workarounds I'm fairly certain would work involving
| showing up at the embassy or arranging to get a Norwegian bank
| account opened via the London office of a Norwegian bank, but
| since I don't actually need one, I haven't bothered exploring
| those)
| kats wrote:
| That is awesome! Seems like it will help a lot of old people who
| have the most risk both from covid and scam calls. If your social
| security number and taxes are going to be online, definitely need
| some kind of additional security beyond the usual signup process.
| If it requires a live video feed that should make it quite a bit
| harder for scammers.
| novok wrote:
| I tried id.me and it was a pain in the ass to use and failed on
| one part. I'm guessing with their anti-fraud style fail closed
| system this will effectively lock out a lot of old people from
| using their online services.
| kats wrote:
| It's hard to have additional security and still have things
| work for everyone. But it's a numbers game. Covid is over
| 100x more deadly for people over 75 versus below age 35.
| Anything that keeps old people out of crowded Social Security
| buildings is a good thing. And it will block a lot of scams
| as well.
| motbob wrote:
| To be clear, there is currently no good alternative to this. The
| way I see it, the IRS can switch to an invasive "selfie + utility
| bill" system, or it can remove self-service from their website
| altogether. It's important to keep tax information secure in
| order to protect the elderly and disadvantaged. After all, the
| victims of ID theft in tax are primarily taxpayers who are not
| regularly filing returns (like elderly and zero-income folks),
| since two "competing" returns will quickly alert the IRS to a
| problem.
|
| The legacy IRS identity protection measures are both cumbersome
| _and_ insecure, so getting rid of the latter problem is a big
| improvement.
| friendlydog wrote:
| jl2718 wrote:
| Do you think a company should be able to opt out of UI by
| offering unconditional severance?
| FloatArtifact wrote:
| Is anyone else disturbed by this?
| mindcrime wrote:
| Yes. I won't be using it, that's for damn sure.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I understand the need e.g. to ensure that the proper person is
| getting tax refunds or benefits, but I am bothered by it. I am
| not sure, however, how to have at the same time a strong method
| to identify people that isn't also ripe for abuse.
|
| I guess just doing away with government benefits and individual
| taxes is another way to go. I'd be all on board with that.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I'm disturbed, but it started a long time ago.
|
| If you have a drivers license or a passport your face is
| already in a whole host of photo recognition databases. If
| you've ever applied for a credit card, bought insurance or made
| an insurance claim, paid a utility bill, received a
| professional license, been party to a lawsuit, bought a house
| or car, rented an apartment, it's in a database like LexisNexis
| (You can order yours free, mine was >100 pages). And for the
| record, these private companies turn it over to law enforcement
| for a monthly subscription fee without a warrant and at the
| click of a button.
|
| The reality is, privacy is dead. All aspects of our lives are
| tracked and recorded. The only question is what comes next.
| digisign wrote:
| Agreed, although I don't know what "paying a utility bill"
| means in this context.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| It's just more information that can be pieced together via
| parallel construction to nail you without a warrant. Every
| time you pay a bill it has your address, service address,
| account information, and so on associated with it. Your
| local law enforcement will pull this up as easily as you do
| a Google Search. It's legal because they volunteer this
| information to consumer reporting agencies that make a
| profit selling it to the government. Welcome to the
| capitalistic public-private spy state.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| The joke is, congress won't consider fixing the identity
| situation, as it upsets conspiracy types that are paranoid about
| the government collecting information on them (but somehow states
| doing it is fine?). So instead multiple private corporations are
| doing it for the government.
|
| It's one of those nice "worst of all possible options" solutions.
| yupyup54133 wrote:
| What happens if you don't have a smart phone? Can you just not
| log in?
| sudobash1 wrote:
| You can also use a computer with a webcam. But I don't know how
| one would do it without access to a smartphone or webcam.
| ghaff wrote:
| You apparently can use a webcam although I assume most people
| who don't have a smartphone don't have a webcam either.
|
| The reality is that not having a smartphone means it's
| increasingly difficult to access any number of services.
| cruelty2 wrote:
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Which is differentially harmful to the poor and the elderly.
|
| You _have_ to provide old-fashioned alternatives to all the
| new whiz-bang high-tech shinyness.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > IRS Will Soon Require Selfies for *Online Access*
|
| Surely the subset of people who want "Online" access and
| don't have a mobile phone and don't have a webcam is tiny.
| Those people can use the "Offline" access, whatever that is
| but I assume there is some system that predates the
| internet that allows people to get access to their IRS
| info.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm in the US and I don't have an online IRS account. I
| assume many/most don't.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > I'm in the US and I don't have an online IRS account.
|
| Then this change doesn't affect you? What am I missing?
| olyjohn wrote:
| It kinda does. It means that if we don't want someone to
| go in and use our accounts for tax fraud, we have to go
| in and sign up now to prevent someone from else from
| signing up as us.
|
| From the sound of it, we just need to find a good 4-8
| hours where we can do nothing but verify our identity.
| Then when that fails, we can spend a bunch of time
| finding other documents, then show those and hope they
| work. Hopefully the IRS is open on weekends...
| throwawayboise wrote:
| There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of IRS offices
| across the nation where you can go and deal with them in
| person. Most towns of any significant size have one. You
| probably need to make an appointment, etc. but it is
| still possible to deal with them face-to-face, and once
| you get in there you are talking to someone who has back-
| office access not available to the public and are able to
| deal with a lot of problems (e.g. a mistake on some form,
| or a missing document) immediately.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Fair point. That pretty much moots my objection.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| The IRS will just have to get used to dealing with me though mail
| again, there is absolutely no way I'm going through all that
| hassle to log into a web site.
|
| Bills are absolutely worthless as a form of identity anyway,
| there are no security features on those, most of them are printed
| on standard paper by common laser printers, there is no way one
| of their call center people in Stinkwater, Florida is going to
| know what a utility bill from Bloom County, Illinois looks like
| and be able to determine from a picture if its original or not.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| American living abroad in the EU here.
|
| I've spent over 6 hours over multiple attempts to try and sign up
| for the IRS online through ID.me. I did the whole facial scan
| nonsense and sent pictures of all the IDs it asked. I'm stuck on
| the verification of my home address. I've sent them at least 4
| different documents, one of which I even provided a translation
| for, but so far I've only failed.
|
| They only seem to accept American documents, and they don't
| accept anything not in English. It's fecking stupid and
| aggravating. Especially since the IRS already knows where I live
| and regularly sends me letters in the mail.
|
| How am I supposed to produce an American, or even English
| language, document showing my home address? I don't have any
| American utilities because I don't live in the USA!
|
| But I want to sign up for the IRS online because the US Postal
| system is so fecked it takes 5 weeks to receive anything from the
| IRS. A recent letter I got from them letting me know that I had a
| payment to make arrived after the deadline for payment. I then
| had to mail a check to them, likely to take another 5 weeks. I
| haven't received their notice informing me of my penalty for late
| payment. It's likely in transit. I'm sure I'll be late paying
| that as well. But WTF am I supposed to do?
|
| I listen to Americans living in the USA complain about the IRS
| and just laugh. You guys have it easy.
| transfire wrote:
| End mandatory income tax. Replace with usury tax.
| varelse wrote:
| Cue the emergence of "This taxpayer does not exist."
| feoren wrote:
| I'm wondering if this is more regulatory capture by Intuit? We
| already know that our tax filing system is largely designed to
| sell more copies of TurboTax. This sounds like yet more of the
| same kind of friction Intuit has been lobbying to have set up for
| years. Does anyone know if TurboTax also has this requirement?
| (Not that I'd buy it anyway -- boycott Intuit!)
| voiper1 wrote:
| Americans abroad don't have a USA verifiable cell phone/landline
| so they're stuck...
| nickjj wrote:
| I'm one of those weirdos who still uses checks to submit
| quarterly taxes. I'd rather pay the $20 every few years for new
| basic checks instead of digitally integrating with the IRS. I'm
| not doing anything bad or sketchy either, I just feel more
| comfortable doing it by check.
|
| I've thought about converting to digital next year but with this
| new policy, there's no chance of that.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| I guess you're not in California? Which requires online
| payment. Note that paying estimated tax doesn't today require a
| login, so I am pretty sure this won't change that. It's just
| like signing up for a service -- super one click easy. It's the
| cancelling that's hard.
| nickjj wrote:
| Ah, yep I'm in NY where state taxes are encouraged to be done
| digitally but it's not a hard requirement. My accountant
| sends the vouchers every quarter.
|
| I didn't realize estimated taxes didn't require a login.
| That's promising. Thanks for the tip. Although I just checked
| online on the official irs.gov site and it looks like they
| charge you additional fees for paying electronically. It
| would be cheaper for me to buy checks and stamps than to pay
| their $2.50 debit transaction fee 8 times per year (1 state +
| 1 fed x 4).
| jiveturkey wrote:
| no there's no charge. there's a credit fee if you use a
| credit card, and i guess you're saying there's a debit fee
| for a debit card, but since you pay by check today anyway
| just pay by e-check instead.
| sudobash1 wrote:
| I tried going through this procedure a few days ago. The "selfie
| scan" felt very invasive, and I really wonder how effective it
| is. I renewed my expired driver's license online, so I didn't get
| a new photo. The picture from the license that the selfie scan
| was going off of was a highschool-era photo of me with no beard.
| It said it was a match though.
|
| I had to use my laptop for the scan since when I was trying it on
| my phone, it kept telling me that it couldn't find any face.
|
| In the end, I couldn't get verified because I just moved, and all
| my identification has my old address.
| dhosek wrote:
| The face identification software in the Apple Photo software
| was able to correctly identify pictures of my cousins when they
| were 5 & 7 years old even though all the other photos I have of
| them in Photos are in their 50s or later. I have no doubt that
| there are some failed matches (false negatives/positives), but
| it generally does pretty well, even with my identical-twin
| brothers. Given that this is consumer-grade stuff and Apple
| isn't usually considered best of class, presumably the system
| run for the IRS is better.
| novok wrote:
| Big tech is probably best in class due to total engineering
| effort and data sets devoted to it compared to something
| relatively small like id.me . FB, Google & Apple are probably
| some of the best of the world outside of stuff by the Chinese
| gov't and their contractors.
| steelframe wrote:
| I'm skeptical that this "video ID" thing is going to be as
| effective as the vendor is promising it will be, but government
| needs to be doing _something_ more effective to authenticate tax
| filers.
|
| At the start of the pandemic fraudsters used my PII to collect
| unemployment benefits through Washington State ESD. As I
| understood it, all the fraudsters had to do was fill in my name,
| SSN, and address into a web form and click the "give me moneys
| now plz" button. Then to add insult to injury ESD shared my
| fraudulently-provided PII with Accellion, who promptly re-leaked
| it.
|
| My PII has been leaked in at least 4 separate breaches that I'm
| aware off, the culprits ranging from health insurance providers
| to cell phone companies. Whatever collections of PII are
| circulating among groups of criminals, my info has been in them
| for years now.
|
| This means that every year I have to worry about whether a
| fraudster is going to submit an IRS return in my name before I
| have a chance to get all the documents I need to file, and then
| I'll have to deal with that massive PITA on top of all the
| typical bullshit that is paying taxes in the United States.
| [deleted]
| boredumb wrote:
| I'm excited for them to meet my local CPA.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-01-19 23:01 UTC)