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Russia Moves To Universal ID Card
prostoalex writes "On January 1st 2012, the Russian government will start issuing universal ID cards (Russian original) that will replace current national identification system (Russia has a system of internal passports), medical insurance cards, student IDs, public transport passes, and debit cards. The smart card contains unique personal identifiers and allows for multiple levels of authentication. The Russian government is pushing for local government agencies, transportation providers, banks and retail operators to adopt the government-issued ID to streamline their operations."
Estonia has used ID cards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_ID_card) for some time and I am seriously surprised that more governments are not following the same footsteps. While the cards may introduce new security concerns, imagine the amount of bureaucracy that can be reduced if citizens can pay everything from traffic tickets to taxes using a simple card.
In Soviet Russia, card identifies you!
Meanwhile, back in the States: "Yes Mr. Bank Teller, that is my card. Oh, you need a second form of identification? My wife says that card is mine, too!"
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
One Card to rule them all, One Party to find them, One System to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
(Apologies to JRRT)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Were there any advantages to the Russian people of the fall of the Soviet Union? Ignore the half a dozen oligarchs whose limits on greedy and corrupt behaviour were lifted. Consider the other 141 million people.
I was just thinking that this is a privacy nightmare. However, if you make it so that each entity that needs to query the card gets its own id unique to the pair of queryer and card, instead of having one id for everything, then it can be just like having lots of different cards that just happen to inhabit the same physical space. So e.g. a hotel you check into can scan your card to know that they can track you down if you don't pay them. However, until they can show that you didn't pay, the government would not have to tell them who owns the card that was scanned. It could even be made so that you could check in twice with the same card and the hotel would get two different ids and so couldn't tell that you were the same person. Also, if the code the card gave was a once-off thing that was just generated from the card itself, the government also would not know that you checked into the hotel using your government id until the hotel comes asking for your identity because you didn't pay the bill. The same system could be used to prevent different government agencies from comparing notes on you, since they'd be working with different ids that can only be matched up if they can make a case to a judge or similar that this is necessary. That's much better privacy that you could potentially get with a card like that than you currently do with a credit card. Not that I have any illusion that this is what is happening in Russia.
Double sided tape. Forehead. Problem solved.
which is totally what she said
... but if you read the title it clearly says it is an ID card, not a debit/credit payment card.
There is a PIN to use it, of course, but there is supposed to be a "decoy" PIN, so if you are forced to enter your PIN by the bad guys, it, apparently, looks like it was successful ("buys you some time") but (in theory) alerts someone and triggers police response.
Paul B.
They'll just be assigned to your unique ID. Like showing your license to get a checking account. All your account link back to you.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"The data is stored in the cloud, but it's under the supervision of the state, and don't worry, if you lose your card they won't lose your data!" LOL!! Yeah, data being in the "cloud" under the supervision of the state takes away ALL worry I could possibly have.
To be honest, there is no country that I know of where identity theft is a problem as big as it is in the US. I have a national ID card here in Poland, and you know what? It's a HUGE bitch to fake, I suspect it would be easier to steal my identity by faking my passport and driver's license. That still wouldn't do you much good, since I could have any of those three documents invalidated - when you sign any sort of contract here, you put down both your ID/Tax number and your ID number. The corporate equivalent of identity theft is much more prevalent over here.
First, this is NOT an ID card (at least at first), it's just a government-mandated standard card. Second, Russia _already_ has a universal ID system - internal passports, which have nice unique ID numbers and every citizen by law must get a passport. A lot of things (bank accounts, phone numbers) are already linked to passport serial numbers, so it's not like it's hard to correlate these data.
Interestingly enough, it's not used for oppression of political opposition. Mostly because it's not of much use to know where your political opponent is.
In my opinion, ID cards are better than paper passports - they are physically smaller and easier to carry and do not fray around the edges as easily as paper documents. A major boon of ID cards should be the ease of cancellation. A stolen paper passport is a disaster, a stolen ID card should just be a nuisance.
However, though internal passports are a legacy of the USSR, they have some advantages too - they can contain more "naked-eye visible" information than a credit-card-sized ID card, like marital status, information about children, blood type, etc.
A little more depth. There is a talk about deprecating internal passports and replacing them with ID cards, however as far as I understand this card will not yet be the national ID card.
I'm reading specifications for this card, and so far it seems that government is just mandating a single standard for micropayments and ID transmission info. Which certainly makes sense (I hate buying subway passes every time I visit Moscow).
Internal passports are interesting in themselves. They were first invented during the USSR era as means of migration control. In order to get a job each citizen of the USSR had to have a local registration ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propiska ), it's a stamp on a passport page. And to get a propiska one had to have a local job - a nice Catch-22 scenario. And living without registration in the USSR was actually a crime that could get you behind the bars. With the fall of the USSR, both of the requirements for propiska were lifted, even though the requirement for the mandatory local registration remained in place (though now punishment for living without the local registration is trivial, about $15, AFAIR).
But local registration has been transformed from a barrier into a bureaucratic nuisance (or hell). It's now a classical Brazilia situation - state can't nominally refuse you to register, but it can make it thoroughly unpleasant.
The proposed ID card will _finally_ kill off the propiska for good. As a citizen of Russia, for me it's much much much better than nebulous additional threats to privacy.
I mean, the universe is pretty big.
Plenty of people have studied it. The rough answer is that 40% of Russians are much much better off, and 60% of Russians are worse off financially. Overall, this amounts to a net gain, but it isn't evenly spread. Crime is higher today than it was in the Soviet Union. There is more freedom of speech today than there was before. You don't have to look very hard to find these numbers - don't take my word for it, do the research.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Senator Edward "Teddy" Kennedy was hassled at the airports because "T Kennedy" was on one of those no-fly lists. It was the wrong Kennedy, of course, but better safe than sorry.
Don't assume that the government won't act on the basis of incomplete information. A cudgel can be as effective as a scalpel, in the wrong hands.
In Germany, he would have to have the number, the card itself, AND he would need to live at your place and look like you.
Any company that wants to make sure you are really you and it's impractical for them to request that you come in in person with your ID card can send a "PostID" form to your residential address. The mail men then checks if the address on your ID card matches, writes the check number of the ID into the form, and returns it. (If your not home he puts a card in the letterbox, and you can go to the post office to have it done)
I know I'm making myself look a little naively retro by saying this, but just how do you define "basic needs"?
Is it reasonable for a government to refuse to recognize the fundamental freedom of the individual, when the people in power are using their own inherent freedoms to give themselves a false sense of security at the expense of the other individuals?
The present case in the US, where the government officially recognizes freedoms, but the people in power are lining their nests at the expense of the "little people" or whatever they call us, is not exactly wonderful, but will US citizens be better off if (when?) the people in power generally refuse to admit that individuals can make responsible choices?
That is the core question:
Can the people in general be allowed to act responsibly?
Is it not a basic need to be allowed to assume responsibility for oneself?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
It's easy to talk like that when you've got a warm house and a full belly.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."