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Governmental ID System in Japan
Kaan writes: "Japan just launched a mandatory, nationwide ID system whereby every citizen is assigned an 11-digit identification number. The database stores personal data (name, address, date of birth, gender, possibly more data) for each person. At least five municipalities are refusing to join the system, which accounts for ~4 million of the 127 million total. While some Japanese folks are refusing to cooperate, most are going along with it. Is this the beginning of the end of privacy in Japan? How much longer until we see something like that in the U.S.?"
"How much longer until we see something like that in the U.S.?"
What do you mean, "when"? It's called the Social Security Number, or more accurately these days, "Taxpayer Identification Number". And besides just name, address, date of birth and gender, it's tied to your employment history (in governemnt databases), credit history, medical history, and tons more (in "private" databases).
Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.
Our CPR (Central Person Registry) stores your CPR-number. Mine looks like this:
130477-1235 (no, this is not my real CPR-number)
This indicates that my birthdate is the 13th day of the 04th month of the 77th year.
1235 is the "checksum" and gender-marker; even numbers for women, uneven for men. I think they use X for women and Y for men without a permanet citizen ship (refugees and the like).
Also, the entire number has to pass some kind of test, but I can't remember how it's used.
The CPR also has the current address of each person along with an opt out feature for commercial mail targeted at you, which is nice, because all companies in Denmark have to comply by that setting, but they only have access to the address through CPR.
You can read a lot more about the system here.
I am a proponent of personal privacy, and I don't have a problem with this system - probably because I can't think of a single intrusion into my privacy caused by it.
I think it comes down to "trust", and so far I haven't had a reason not to trust the CPR.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
True. Having worked for a while in a company having access to this database, I can tell you it's not that easy to abuse. There are quite strict laws restricting the usage of consumer data
you have to state the intended purpose of any database with customer personal data to the data protection agency, and the data you intend to store
you can't use the data for anything else, or the data protection official will have your ass.
It takes only one enlightened customer to wonder "WTF they got that from?" to file a report with said official. And if the official doesn't take the request seriously, you can file a complaint about HIM to the ombudsman. There's nothing a government official fears more than a neglicence suit.
Having an open administrative culture and a population of five million does make it difficult to have major corruption or abuses in the system ;)
Function full well without a SSN? Not even close. The only thing you may be able to do is live in a cabin in the woods in Montana, without electricity.
You need a SS# for the following (and this is no way a complete listing):
1. work
2. get a driver's licence (in my state anyway)
3. rent an apartment/house (or get a mortgage to buy one)
4. open bank account or credit card accounts
5. get electrical/phone/gas/etc service
So, when you say "full well", maybe this needs to be qualified a bit...
There's no law requiring children be born in a hospital. It just seems that way, in America at least. (In Holland being pregnant isn't a disease, so most women give birth at home.)
You do need to have a SSN for your children in order to claim them as dependents on your taxes. When this change was introduced, there ended up being a lot less children, meaning a lot of people where cheating on their taxes.
Firstly, we have a National Insurance (NI) Number which is equivalent to the US SSN and is used to track your income tax and NI (payroll tax) payments. You don't need one to work, but it makes employed life a lot easier.
Getting an NI number if you're not born here can be difficult. My girlfriend is an EU citizen living in the UK (nearly 2 years) now and stil can't persaude the social security people to give her one. She recently had a letter from the Inland Revenue (IRS-equiv) asking her for her NI number so they can make sure her income tax and NI is correctly accounted for.
<sigh> well at least it shows that Big Brother will always be defeated by good old fashioned British incompetence.
The other ID number we have is the National Health Service (NHS) number. This you get at birth or, if you're not British-born but legally resident, on registration with your local doctor. My girlfriend had no trouble at all getting one - she just presented her EU passport at the surgery and stated that she was living in the area and wanted to register with a doctor, they wrote down the passport details and her new NHS card turned up with mine (you get a new one whenever you change doctor).
Originally a continuation of the old wartime ID card number scheme (ID cards were abolished in 1952) they appear to have changed the NHS numbers recently to a new series - when we moved to London two years ago I got a brand new NHS number in a new format. It appears to bear no relation to my NI number and the govt doesn't, yet, officially do data matching between the two.
The first six digits tell your birthday in DDMMYY form. The next digit can be "+" if your born in 18XX, "-" if your born in 19XX or "A" if born in 20XX. The next three digits contain a consecutive number to uniquely identify people born who were born in the same day. This number is even for female and odd for male.
The last digit is a checksum calculated from the first 9 numbers of the ID. This 9 digit number is divided by 31 and the remainder of this division determines the last digit of the ID.
e.g. in this case:
040463395 / 31 = 1305270, remainder 25.
For remainder of 25 the checksum digit is T, not F. (remainder = 0-9, checksum digit = 0-9. Remainder = 10, checksum digit = A, 11 = B, 12 = C, etc.)
[snip about the Danish CPR -ID system]
/county are tied to the CPR. Fortunately, a lot of the information is compartmentalized, meaning that one cannot (easily) make a centralized query of all the information regarding a citizen.
/county).
/county officials /bank tellers /insurence agents are convinced about your identity, nothing can be done, since you are not in the CPR.
There are some security concerns and there is a very strict legislation about how to handle this system, but the economical benefits are huge and it does benefit society a lot.
The security around the CPR ID database system wasn't really that good some years ago; an internal audit made them tighten up the security a lot.
And usually, the control around any public database system in Denmark is a joke; all most all cops use the KR (criminal register) to snoop on their neighbours. The register is never cleaned for old records, even though the law requires it. A combination of these two vices, were demonstrated, when nosey police officers, leaked the criminal record of a well known conservative politician; he had a "drinking & driving" offence when he was around 18, in the 1950'ies. This costed him his post as a leader of the conservative party.
As usually, the police was unable to even discover which policy officer had leaked the information.
For what I know, your conviction that your data is safe in the states database systems, is pretty much nothing more than a conviction.
Besides, there are a major problem with centralized ID systems, besides the states tendency to abuse the system, namely, that such a system is a benefit for the Bad Guys too.
Eg. In Denmark the CPR ID number is slabbed around the newborn babies wrist, even before it is handed over to its mother. Everybody has a CPR id number. A huge amount of data is tied around that number, since all transactions with the state
But since the CPR system is so convenient and omnipresent, even the lowliest, unmotivated, underpaid county clerk has access to it. (the open terminals that are so convenient when dealing with the state
So getting access to all that real time information on people, is staggering easy.
One case to illustrate the point. During the 80'ies, the KGB just bribed such a county clerk, to tag all russian dissidents living here in Denmark.
So the KGB had instant updates on them, even if they changed their name and address constantly.
All those queries on russian dissidents (who weren't even living in this small county) were never discovered by an internal audit.
Another case: "Blekingegade banden" was a violent extremist group, that supplied extremist palestinian terror groups with weapons and money, stemming from violent robberies.
They were not stupid as many criminals actually are; they were intelligent and educated, and planted a man inside the institution that was running not only the CPR, but also the KR (criminal register), and countless other databases.
So this small "terrorist" group had an excellent tab on, how much the police new about them and their crimes.
I am sure, that both the KGB, Stasi, CIA etc, all had tremendous benefit of the Danish centralized register. Just as a lot of countries intelligence services will benefit from eg. a central US, or Japanese citizen ID database. Eg. Agent [ID] just moved to an area where [fascilitate] is located. He also got a raise, putting him in the same income bracket as known agents performing [function].
The ending of this rant:
Identity theft is just as easy with a centralized ID database as without, and probably more convenient for the thief.
And finally don't even think about the mess of troubles if one ever is deleted by the Danish CPR register (happens sometimes). Even with a valid ID as a passport, two hundred witnesses and your birth certificate, you are denied everything, like wage, a bank account, pension, etc. Even if the state
Read the comments. The Europeans say, "we've had this for years, what's the problem?" We Americans say, fuck this! I'm not going to let the government track me like sheep."
We Americans tend to be distrustful of governments. I think this is a good thing. When you start trusting the government too much, you let them get away with too much.
Look at the U.K. They trusted too much. Now they have cameras everywhere, a complete ban on guns (although the criminals have no problem finding them), and it is virtually illegal to defend yourself. As a result, violent crime is spiraling out of control. Of course, their solution is even more control of the subjects, further erosion of rights, and another step (or two) to the perfectly controlled society.
Meanwhile, we paranoid Yanks get pissed every time the government suggests national I.D.s or tries to implement gun control. The violent crime rate has been falling for several decades.
-- Will program for bandwidth