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"A proposition for a standard digital signature in every EU citizen's identity card. .... No extra cards - it will just replace your existing ID card when it ex
by c_plus_minus 12y ago
"A proposition for a standard digital signature in every EU citizen's identity card.
....
No extra cards - it will just replace your existing ID card when it expires"
Well unlike most of the continent, Britain and Ireland have no mandatory I.D. card (thankfully) so this doesn't cover the whole EU...
- xerophtye 12y agoI thought UK wasn't part of EU in the first place.... (Hence it DOES cover all of EU, no?)
- DangerousPie 12y agoThey are (for now). They are just not part of the Euro or Schengen.
- johnchristopher 12y agoNo, they managed to have a say on Schengen without actually being supportive of it. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/;jsessionid=y2tmTWzpMz4Ztc680Rr1RVJ4CTWtqZcyk52qczfDhcptLClbGVN8!1663640074?uri=CELEX:32000D0365 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/;jsessionid=y2... > The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland shall participate in the following provisions of the Schengen acquis: (etc.)
- adamnemecek 12y agoIt's a part of EU, it's not a part of the Eurozone though.
- sdrinf 12y agoIt's... complicated. See The European Union Explained* for how deep that rabbit hole is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O37yJBFRrfg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O37yJBFRrfg
- femto 12y agoIt's part of the EU, but not part of the common currency (Euro).
- c_plus_minus 12y agoAhem, Ireland is also a member of the EU!
- xerophtye 12y agoI thought i covered Ireland under UK when I asked if it wasn't part of EU EDIT: oh not all of Ireland is in UK. I honestly didn't know about "Republic of Ireland" being a standalone country
- c_plus_minus 12y agoAh that's ok. I think I've done my patriotic duty for the day by increasing knowledge of us :)
- CalRobert 12y agooooooh boy. Might want to do some research before your holiday to Belfast (or Derry). Edit - I realize that came off snarky - it was meant lightheartedly. In all seriousness, though - Republic of Ireland - a soverign nation of 26 counties. Split from the UK nearly a century ago. There's some interesting (but very painful) history behind that. Northern Ireland - 6 counties at the northeast of the island Ireland - a geographical entity (the island itself) Ireland (or Eire) - the official name of the Republic Great Britain - the island with England, Scotland, and Wales. Often used to refer to the UK (but this isn't completely accurate, if we're being pedantic it's a geographical, not political, term, and there's still Northern Ireland). United Kingdom - England, Scotland (for now), Wales, and Northern Ireland It would make sense for me to make an error in there, but I think I've got that right. Hope it's helpful!
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- xerophtye 12y ago
- coob 12y agoThe UK has been a member of the EU (or its predecessors) since 1973.
- jon_black 12y agoCorrect. UK is the 51st state of The United States of America.
- xerophtye 12y agoWow. Down votes for not knowing that...
- raphinou 12y agoWhy the "thankfully"? I'm in a country where the ID card is mandatory and don't see any problem with it. Can you enlighten me?
- QuadDamaged 12y agoCase in point: HMRC (UK Taxman) is about to sell 'anonymized' taxpayer data. With enough 'anonymized' data-dumps and CPU power, at some point, it will become trivial to correlate an ID Card ID with datapoints.
- bozho 12y agoNo. Read about anonymous credentials ;)
- pisarzp 12y agoI actually think it's the other way round. I actually think the other way. In countries where you have ID card, you just show it to confirm your identity and you're done. In UK you need to bring your bank statement and utility bills, with your address. Combined with your date of birth, it makes it much easier to match with companies database.
- nutjob2 12y agoYou need to be wearing a tinfoil hat to understand.
- davidvaughan 12y agoI wear a tinfoil hat because governments have a history of abusing their powers. Although we live in steady and somewhat well-governed democracies, there's no guarantee that this will always be the case.
- c_plus_minus 12y agoI don't see the need to have mandatory ID. The thought of being fined for not "showing my papers" while walking down the street is disturbing. Can't speak for the UK, but I think a lot of the resistance to the idea in Ireland is due to a long history of distrust of the authorities.
- xerophtye 12y agoSo the govt really doesn't have records about every citizen? (or you just don't have a physical Card against that record?)
- vertex-four 12y agoIt has tax records, which have a link to my NHS records. My tax number isn't used for anything aside from taxes, though, and only organisations which have to report tax-related information about me to the Government have it.
- xerophtye 12y agoSince I don't really understand the local sentiment of the Irish and the British, I gotta ask, do the people think it's a good think that there isn't a central Primary Key to link all of their records together?
- vertex-four 12y agoYes. It makes it a little more fiddly for our Government to create a PRISM-like database of our offline lives.
- xerophtye 12y agoSo each govt body seems to have it's own persona of you. While I understand that this in some way supports privacy against the govt, but it just makes me wonder how they handle certain issues. off the top of my head: Aren't your passport or driving license connected to your other persona's? If someone gets arrested, wouldn't that be tied to some existing Primary Key? How else would you know past criminal records of a person? Do all the bodies simply work on "Foreign Keys" since there is no central Primary Key? And if all records have each other's foreign keys, doesn't that defeat the purpose?
- vertex-four 12y ago
- nutjob2 12y agoWhat a joke. So you have no DL, no passport, you don't have any bank accounts or credit cards, no internet account or phone account, no national health insurance account, and no address? Thats great! Since you're not required to have an ID card then you can't be identified and your privacy is secure. Also you're homeless, probably destitute and unable to live or participate in society.
- 1ris 12y agoNo, UK citizens are not homeless. Neither are identity papers necessary for anything you listed. Go troll somewhere else.
- EliRivers 12y agoIn the UK, one does not need government approval or permission to live in a house, so it's quite possible not to be homeless and also not to have government ID. Crazy times.
- a-saleh 12y agoI allways wondered about the aversion to id-cards. Doubly when I heard the story about catch-22 style schenigans I heard you need to go through in GB, if you want to open a bank account, and rent a flat at the same time (or so I heard, that most of the time bank accepts as proof of identity utility bills from place where you live, and landlord accepts similarily a proof of existence of a bank account) ... in czech republic I just show them my id card, and everyybody is hapy. I could even pay a little bit extra to have digital signature embedded, which would allow me to fill my taxes via web ...
- bergie 12y agoFinland doesn't have a mandatory ID card either, but you've been able to get an electronic ID like the one described for quite a while if you want one. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7626555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7626555
- antimagic 12y agoU'll join in with the chorus and point out that this point of view is an outdated relic of the national identity card debates of the 80s and 90s. Back then it was possible to imagine a world where we weren't tracked permanently. With the advent of ubiquitous mobile phones, the Web (with cookies!), public transport electronic passes, license plate readers for cars, face recognition linked with CCTV networks, that era has gone. In my opinion, if we can't have privacy, then we should at least get some of the potential benefits that are possible when privacy is removed, and national ID cards give you just that.