The United States does not issue a mandatory stnadard ID card to all citizens the way a lot of nations do. The “but gubmint overreach” crowd won’t hear of it. Mostly because Fox News has propagandized against it so they can use voter ID laws to suppress votes.
So we don’t have a standard citizen ID card. We got lots of government agencies that issue photo IDs. By looking at what demographics are likely to have a particular kind of ID, you can cheat your way to victory by allowing this kind of ID but not that kind. Redneck shitheads are more likely to have hunting licenses, educated young people are more likely to have university campus IDs. Accept hunting licenses but not campus IDs as voter ID at the polls and the Republicans are more likely to win.
I used to be in firearm sales, and we obviously had to check ID, and those exact examples were used in gun sales.
The crazy part was the hunting licenses. I could turn you away for not having a valid license (usually an old address on the DL), and you could go to customer service, buy a hunting license where they just put whatever you want on the card, then bring the license back and use it as “proof” of address and buy a gun.
I did not know that the US didn’t have an official ID card.
This is from Wikipedia:
All legislative attempts to create a national identity card have failed due to tenacious opposition from liberal and conservative politicians alike, who regard the national identity card as the mark of a totalitarian society.[1]
This leads to another, unrelated problem. Just because we don’t have a universal ID doesn’t mean we don’t need one…and almost have one.
Social Security. Our government run mandatory pension/welfare system the fascists are going to plunder and destroy. Social Security is paid for essentially by an income tax, there’s a line item deduction from your paycheck. Used to be you’d sign up for Social Security and get issued a Social Security number when you got your first job, because that’s when you become relevant to the Social Security office. Until the government issued a tax deduction for parents of children. Which caused people to file their taxes claiming to have way more children than they did. The solution the government used was to require the children be registered with Social Security to claim the tax deduction. This solved the problem of “paper children” and also meant that with a few exceptions every citizen of America would be issued a Social Security Number shortly after birth. Mine absolutely is not 457-55-5462.
So, we have a situation where America does not issue a mandatory citizen ID card, but you are assigned a badly designed yet permanent account number, and often that is forced to do. They print them on plastic now, but a social security card used to be a slip of paper with your SSN and name printed on it alongside the words NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION. It isn’t periodically re-issued, mine was printed in the late 80’s shortly after I was. It’s both bad and common practice to use the SSN as a personal ID number, especially at banks, the very trailing edge of information security.
It’s used as a method of voter suppression.
The United States does not issue a mandatory stnadard ID card to all citizens the way a lot of nations do. The “but gubmint overreach” crowd won’t hear of it. Mostly because Fox News has propagandized against it so they can use voter ID laws to suppress votes.
So we don’t have a standard citizen ID card. We got lots of government agencies that issue photo IDs. By looking at what demographics are likely to have a particular kind of ID, you can cheat your way to victory by allowing this kind of ID but not that kind. Redneck shitheads are more likely to have hunting licenses, educated young people are more likely to have university campus IDs. Accept hunting licenses but not campus IDs as voter ID at the polls and the Republicans are more likely to win.
Oh wow… That sucks. It should definitely be standardized and national :/
I think we’re going to need a war to get it done at this point. I’m kind of hoping to die in it.
deleted by creator
And that’s not hyperbole.
I used to be in firearm sales, and we obviously had to check ID, and those exact examples were used in gun sales.
The crazy part was the hunting licenses. I could turn you away for not having a valid license (usually an old address on the DL), and you could go to customer service, buy a hunting license where they just put whatever you want on the card, then bring the license back and use it as “proof” of address and buy a gun.
I did not know that the US didn’t have an official ID card.
This is from Wikipedia:
This leads to another, unrelated problem. Just because we don’t have a universal ID doesn’t mean we don’t need one…and almost have one.
Social Security. Our government run mandatory pension/welfare system the fascists are going to plunder and destroy. Social Security is paid for essentially by an income tax, there’s a line item deduction from your paycheck. Used to be you’d sign up for Social Security and get issued a Social Security number when you got your first job, because that’s when you become relevant to the Social Security office. Until the government issued a tax deduction for parents of children. Which caused people to file their taxes claiming to have way more children than they did. The solution the government used was to require the children be registered with Social Security to claim the tax deduction. This solved the problem of “paper children” and also meant that with a few exceptions every citizen of America would be issued a Social Security Number shortly after birth. Mine absolutely is not 457-55-5462.
So, we have a situation where America does not issue a mandatory citizen ID card, but you are assigned a badly designed yet permanent account number, and often that is forced to do. They print them on plastic now, but a social security card used to be a slip of paper with your SSN and name printed on it alongside the words NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION. It isn’t periodically re-issued, mine was printed in the late 80’s shortly after I was. It’s both bad and common practice to use the SSN as a personal ID number, especially at banks, the very trailing edge of information security.