Interpol Wants a Global Identity Card System

Orome1 writes "The head of INTERPOL has emphasized the need for a globally verifiable electronic identity card (e-ID) system for migrant workers at an international forum on citizen ID projects, e-passports, and border control management. INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said: "At a time when global migration is reaching record levels, there is a need for governments to put in place systems at the national level that would permit the identity of migrants and their documents to be verified internationally via INTERPOL." Issuing migrant workers e-ID cards in a globally verifiable format will also reduce corruption and enable cardholders to be eligible for electronic remittance schemes that will foster greater economic development and prosperity in INTERPOL member countries."

Comments

One world government

[Anonymous Coward]

of commie Nazi fascists!

Re:One world government

[nschubach]

Control is the only reason I can see for something like this.

Why can't we live our lives in a matter of micro-transactions without everyone knowing what you are doing? I mean, do I really need a global ID to buy a loaf of bread or visit the someone (say, a doctor) and pay them in cash?

The only benefit to IDs are to people getting services from governmental bodies. (ie: so people don't cross the border and obtain medical care on the local citizen's bill.) The more I hear about global/national IDs, the more I hate socialized services because that's the only "valid" reason to have them. If people lived their own lives to the extent that they, as an individual, can afford there would be no need for IDs to make sure you are getting your fair ration.

Re:One world government

[Edzilla2000]

"You really can't afford that chemotherapy... Too bad, you die!!"

Re:One world government

[nschubach]

Yeah, and? Sure, it may suck... but if you can't afford something what makes the next guy responsible for you or your mistakes? (Not saying cancer is a mistake... but what if you go jumping off a roof? Do they have to pay for your stupidity?)

I also get tired of the "Oh the humanity!" arguments like the one you just presented. One day you have to realize that people die. You have to be prepared for it. There are simply not enough resources in this world to allow people to be careless with their own health.

Re:One world government

[MightyMartian]

Yeah, and? Sure, it may suck... but if you can't afford something what makes the next guy responsible for you or your mistakes? (Not saying cancer is a mistake... but what if you go jumping off a roof? Do they have to pay for your stupidity?)/blockquote?

Because we're human beings and not vile repugnant inhuman anti-social Libertarian monsters.

Re:One world government

[scot4875]

That's the end of my argument with you.

It's just as well. "Sucks to be them" isn't much of an argument to begin with.

--Jeremy

Re:One world government

[badboy_tw2002]

You didn't answer his question. Let me recap:

You: Socialized/Community medical care sucks
Him: What if you get cancer and can't afford it?
You: Sidestepping cancer, throw up strawman of roof jumping. I shouldn't have to pay for your mistakes.
Him: Bites on strawman.
You: You will die.

But you never answered the cancer situation. If we have the technology and resources (and in a first world country, we DO have the resources) in our society to cure the sick, aren't we morally obligated to do so? Sure, there is that ever present threat of health care sucking roof jumpers, but I feel like that's somewhat in a minority.

Re:One world government

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, like it or not, you are your brother's keeper. You can bellyache all you want but in healthcare alone there are myriad things we do, as a civilization, that benefits the whole far more than an individual (vaccination is a great example of this). This extends, of course further than healthcare, but since that's the typical US libertarian bugaboo I thought I'd use that one. So unless you want to go back to the days of Polio and other horrid diseases that were common, for you and your kids, and go back to that "simpler time" of life expectancy of around 30 years, you can pull your head out and realize you aren't an island.

I swear, people like you have remarkably little sympathy for those who aren't so fortunate. For every time you've "worked hard" to earn what you have you've probably benefitted 10 times simply from good fortune. The thing about social good fortune is it tends to rain over and over on the same folks due to privilege, but people like you, who without exception hold themselves as intelligent, are remarkably blind to something like social good fortune, even though it's fairly obvious.

Re:One world government

[TaoPhoenix]

"Please log into the internet with your global ID. No sites will load without it. "

Re:One world government

[t2t10]

If we have the technology and resources (and in a first world country, we DO have the resources) in our society to cure the sick, aren't we morally obligated to do so?

You have an inflated sense of what medicine can do right now; medicine doesn't reliably "cure the sick". Medicine can cure some simple diseases, improve quality of life for some others, give you a slightly better chance for yet more, and even make you sick or kill you. Medicine is not a very effective way of saving lives.

The problem is really one of resource allocation: every dollar you spend on medical treatments is a dollar you don't spend on education, research, public health, etc. That only makes sense if that dollar spent on medical treatments saves more lives and produces more happiness than if you spent it somewhere else. We're already far beyond that point in our medical treatments in the US.

Re:One world government

[Edzilla2000]

For some reason, I'd rather save on the money spent on the military than on the money spent on health.

Re:One world government

[Teancum]

There are many problems with socialized medicine, not the least of which is that there isn't a limit to what care can be provided, or that the limit is something dictated by a government bureaucracy.

Back about a hundred years ago, there were hard limits in terms of what a physician could do to help you out if you got sick. Giving you a couple pills, prescribing you some cocktail of chemicals mixed with alcohol, and some rudimentary surgery was about all that could be done, and none of that was really all that expensive.

At the moment, in theory most people's lives could be extended almost indefinitely provided you have the cash to get that accomplished. It isn't really so much a matter of if somebody can be healed, but how much that is going to cost. While not extremely common, I do know of some people who have run up medical bills totally more than a million dollars using modern health care practices. Tens of millions of dollars in care for a single person is certainly not impossible any more.

My point with all of this is in terms of how the decision is made to simply say "enough!" and that somebody who is injured, sick, or cursed with some genetic defect can receive or be denied that medical treatment, especially since not everybody around us is a multi-millionaire that can pay for this level of care. This is why health care expenses are spiraling out of control, because the ability to do this kind of treatment forces a hard examination of how much somebody is actually worth in terms of chewing up scarce resources (whatever that resource might be). Medical care is a limited resource and it is impossible to treat EVERYBODY as if they are all of unlimited worth.

I would dare say that even the very notion of health care and how it is administered needs to really be rethought down to fundamental levels and perhaps whole new systems put into place.

Getting back on topic, the question at had isn't if somebody who needs medical care should or should not be treated, but if the system is one of central planning with a central bureaucracy literally allocating the decision of your life or death, or if perhaps a less centralized system ought to be put into place that preserves personal liberties. For myself, I strongly distrust central planning groups because they almost never have my interests and needs in mind, or for that matter even care if I live or die. If your ability to live and see tomorrow depends strictly on your political connections (or lack thereof), something is seriously wrong and sick with the society as a whole.

The whole reason to force everybody to get these IDs is strictly to know who has better political connections so they can get better treatment over the "proletariat" commoners who lack those connections. Yeah, that is something I want to support.

Re:One world government

[t2t10]

Yes, like it or not, you are your brother's keeper. You can bellyache all you want but in healthcare alone there are myriad things we do, as a civilization, that benefits the whole far more than an individual (vaccination is a great example of this).

Vaccinations are public health, not health care. Public health is clearly underfunded in the US: we should be spending more on vaccinations, health education, statistics and monitoring, and public health research.

Public health may also include some treatments for infectious diseases. All of those should be free and provided by the government. Effectively they are. But even this overlap between public health and health care is negligible.

Almost all US health care spending is on diseases which pose no threat to others: heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer. Most of that spending is wasted: either the disease is preventable, or it is treatable with lifestyle changes, or treatment is nearly ineffective.

For every time you've "worked hard" to earn what you have you've probably benefitted 10 times simply from good fortune

That kind of reasoning is pointless; markets aren't socially fair, but they are still better than the alternatives. Government should do a little bit of work to smooth the excesses that markets sometimes produce, but anything more doesn't really work.

The real question is: what is going to get people off their butts so that they make the changes in their lives that keep our health care spending in check.

Re:One world government

[ArcherB]

If we have the technology and resources (and in a first world country, we DO have the resources) in our society to cure the sick, aren't we morally obligated to do so?

I don't know where you are from, but I'm in the United States. Last month, our government spent eight times what it took in. Our total deficit is larger than our GDP. We're going to have to cut trillions from the budget just to break even and then to tack on another few trillion to pay for socialized medicine, we will need to cut from somewhere else. Currently, the government is about to shut down because one side wants to cut $60 Billion from the budget out of a deficit of about $1.6 Trillion, and the other side is balking saying that it is way too much ("Six million elderly will starve!!!).

Of course, if government starts paying for healthcare, expect the total bill to go up as no one will have any reservations about going to see a doctor for problems that they feel are not worth paying for themselves.

Obviously, we do NOT have the resources and we certainly don't have the will to free up the resources needed to have government pay for the sick. If our debt was paid off and we had a surplus of a few trillion sitting around, I'd say it's a great idea. I don't see that ever happening.

Re:One world government

[t2t10]

Because we're human beings and not vile repugnant inhuman anti-social Libertarian monsters.

I don't endorse the libertarian position, but frankly, people like you often just turn out to be a different kind of monster--the theocratic kind, the socialist kind, the totalitarian kind, etc. You're all out to help me live better, but historically, your track record is lousy.

What seems to work fairly well is a democracy with a loosely regulated free market and a limited set of public services. The government should build roads, prevent monopolies, and make sure everybody is vaccinated and gets treated for communicable diseases.

Whether it should make sure you have insurance coverage for diabetes, cancer, and bypass operations is open to debate. Often, those diseases are preventable and do fall under personal responsibility. And the amount of treatment people want may also differ.

In different words, I am happy to pay for the consequences of your bad luck, but I'm not happy to pay for the consequences of bad choices you have made when you should have known better, and I'm not happy to waste money because you have an irrational fear of death.

Re:One world government

[Edzilla2000]

Right, because most of the money spent on the military ends up defending me... Sure.
I mean, my country is currently engaged in wars in three countries, none of which were started to defend it
And let's not even start talking about the US military spending...

Re:One world government

[unixfan]

Haha, not quite so. As the end of the war (WWII) there was the growing concern amongst various war criminals in Germany that they might end up in big trouble. The idea was formed to start an organization that would be looking for criminals, but manned by them, which would hold them above suspicion (plus they had new identities). At least that was the idea. That organization was named Interpol. It certainly was a private organization without any powers which is often given all sorts of powers in movies, but alas that is in movies.

Their current status does not have any war criminals as they are all dead, but one can only wonder what is up with an organization started by war criminals to help them hide.

For all the young ones I'd like to point out the classic PR number that people so easily fell for in the early days of gas stations. Back in the days when you went to fill up your car with gas you were often doing the filling yourself. The criminal would fill up his car partly, turn off the pump and the restart it. Then completing the filling. Of course the meter only showed the last fill and so you got away with paying less than you took. To raise themselves above suspicion they would simply pop in every now and then and announce that they took gas the day before but forgot to pay. Thus making the gas attendant think that the criminal was one honest fella.

There's two ways to hide, one is in the open. In the most obvious place...

As far as TLD, that ship sailed a long time ago as everyone simply stopped verifying the correctness, and the steps in place is easy to sail around. Since most people don't verify much I would be surprised if someone questioned Interpol's status. Which mind you I've not done for some time myself. By now anything is possible, I just don't look at a TLD to determine what they are.

Re:One world government

[ArcherB]

Yeah, and? Sure, it may suck... but if you can't afford something what makes the next guy responsible for you or your mistakes? (Not saying cancer is a mistake... but what if you go jumping off a roof? Do they have to pay for your stupidity?)/blockquote?

Because we're human beings and not vile repugnant inhuman anti-social Libertarian monsters.

Then I suppose you are donating at least 45% of your after tax income to pay for the treatment of others, correct?

Re:One world government

[Kral_Blbec]

In history, who has proven to be the biggest monsters? Marx and Engels (the fathers of both socialism and communism) or George Washington and Thomas Jefferson?

Re:One world government

[layabout]

We're going to have to cut trillions from the budget just to break even and then to tack on another few trillion to pay for socialized medicine, we will need to cut from somewhere else.

we are already spending twice the most expensive single payer system to service fewer people why do you think we would need to add to out tax burden? take what we are spending today on health insurance, eliminate all but 10% admin overhead and we could have a gold plated health coverage for everybody. starting up means rearranging what we spend on health, not adding to it.

Re:One world government

[imric]

A. Promote the General Welfare _IS_ mentioned in the preamble. It may not be a duty, but it IS a goal.

B. Really. So having a military that outspends all other militaries in the world _combined_ is all about peace, eh?

C. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Non-Military-Industrial-Complex funded citation requested, please.

Re:One world government

[cayenne8]

No, but I bet your parent's had kids who went to school on the state's dime. THAT is what you are paying for.

That brings up one question I can never reconcile. Should people that have kids (or lots of kids) not pay more in taxes than those with few kids or none...since they do in fact use more resources?

I mean, if I drive a larger gas guzzling car/truck, I pay more fuel taxes....

And no....I don't buy that it is to encourage people to have kids (future tax payers). People will naturally fuck, and naturally have kids.

I cannot even imagine a scenario where the couple was vacillating about using a rubber or not, and realized they'd get tax deduction...and ripped off the rubber to fuck bareback.

Re:One world government

[layabout]

It's not clear that that makes sense for health care, and for health care, you pay the same whether the costs arise as a consequence of your choice or by accident.

If I choose to ride a car, motorcycle, subway, do I pay different costs of I get hurt because of who is at fault? If I choose to take a shortcut home through an "unsafe" neighborhood and get hurt in a mugging do I pay more? I cut code, I develop rsi, I can no longer work. is it my fault for choosing programming as a career? you take a dr prescribed drug that puts on 60 lb and will not come off because of non-reversible biochemical changes? are you at fault for being fat? .you live in a city, poor and can't afford or find off working hours, food that isn't cheap carbs and become diabetic? are you at fault because your living environment and income won't pay for food that doesn't make you sick? today, each of those very real examples has a "and then you sue" component to determine fault. big waste of time and money when the goal should be restoring the person injured to health asap? chasing all of these corner cases would probably cost more than just paying without question.

Re:One world government

[Gordonjcp]

Well, its tough, but am I truly my brothers keeper? Should that not be my choice rather than forced on me by the government?

Well, what do you suggest? I don't want to live in a country full of sick beggars. It's cheaper to spend a small amount of money on socialised heathcare to stop people getting sick than it is to deal with the rampant spread of disease that having expensive private healthcare causes. What would you do when the sickly beggars die on the streets? Leave them there to rot and spread more disease, because you can't bear the thought of your precious pennies being spent on burying them?

Forget all that Ayn Rand shit and live in the real world.

Re:One world government

[Imrik]

Protect it from whom? The only people I currently see potentially taking away that right are the people in charge of the military.

Re:One world government

[Imrik]

Since Marx and Engels didn't really have anything to do with the later corruption of their works, I'd have to say the two that lead a revolution against their government would be the bigger monsters. That said, I wouldn't really classify any of them as being particularly monsterous. A better comparison would be to Lenin and Stalin, the fathers of what most people think of when you talk about communism.

Re:One world government

[novium]

Actually, there's an easier way to cut the budget, one that involves little pain to the needy nor endangers the fragile economy. It's called "cut defense spending". We could cut it enough to save a hell of a lot more money than scrimping here and there on the services side of government, and still be spending more on our military than the next five biggest (in military spending) countries combined. Or we could just let the "temporary" bush tax cuts actually expire.

I think I heard of this somewhere before...

[Anonymous Coward]

And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.

Re:I think I heard of this somewhere before...

[Catbeller]

Revelations was a political tract railing against Emperor Nero. It was a capital crime to dis the emperor, so they wrote in code - seven hills, three heads, yadda yadda. The "Beast" was Nero. The "Whore of Babylon" was Rome. It was a political/religious pamphlet.

Any sufficiently nebulous set of metaphors can "predict" anything, if you want it to. What would impress me? St. John of Patmos saying, "In 2011, Interpol sets up an international ID card system." If you can see the future, there is no reason to obfuscate.

Re:I think I heard of this somewhere before...

[cobrausn]

The problem with broadcasting how the bad guy will behave before the bad guy does it is that when the bad guy gets around to doing it, he just does something slightly different from what you previously said and suddenly it's not the same thing and all is well.

I think Peter should probably have taken Time Travel 101 before writing Revelations and been a bit more vague.

Re:I think I heard of this somewhere before...

[Schadrach]

Metaphorically it is. Most are right handed, so most will present this card with their right hand, and certainly much like SS, most will remember the damn number because of frequent use, thus having it in their head.

I honestly expect the genuine mark of the beast to be something like "CC companies merge, create global electronic currency system accepted as legal tender worldwide." You know, something like what "cred" was in Shadowrun.

If you think about it credit/debit cards already have the traits of the "mark" except for not being *required* to buy or sell just yet. Carried in the hand, card number memorized, carries a name of the beast (issuer) and the number of his name (phone # for the issuer).

And INTERPOL wants to be in charge of it.

[khallow]

This sounds like a bad case of mission creep to me. INTERPOL doesn't need global ID capabilities for its job. So why should we put them in charge?

Criminal Activity is IMPORTANT!!!

[mlwmohawk]

Sure, theft and murder are bad, but a mass global ID means that anonymous existence will become impossible. Just think what access to such a system will mean to governments that run by dictators. Even the oh so sweet and trustworthy "democracies" will abuse this. Sometimes, it is important for the good of mankind to disappear into a crowd.

Re:Criminal Activity is IMPORTANT!!!

[Catbeller]

The usual majority laugh at privacy and point at illegal immigrants and drug traffickers. "You have nothing to worry about unless you're doing something wrong", they giggle. They watch as the world police state clicks on. We're all safe behind the police walls, they agree.

Then the masks drop and our real bosses appear, and they ain't governments. And there is no where to hide. Forever.

Re:Criminal Activity is IMPORTANT!!!

[tukang]

If you do nothing wrong you won't have a police record.

Police records are created the moment a person is charged with a crime. There are plenty of people who were found not guilty but still have police records.

Re:Criminal Activity is IMPORTANT!!!

[BasilBrush]

Is peaceful protest "wrong"?

Re:Criminal Activity is IMPORTANT!!!

[corbettw]

I really hope you're being sarcastic. But just in case you're not, or someone else thinks you're serious and that this is a great idea, here're the problems with this:

1) You're suggesting a capital punishment for a civil offense. That is blatantly unconstitutional.
2) Where do you propose we put these snipers and mines? The border is pretty much all private property, and large sections of it are range land for cattle. Something tells me ranchers won't be too hot about having bombs put out where their property walks around unfettered.
3) This won't stop people from trying to get into the country, it will just funnel them into even more dangerous and desperate situations, leading to even more people ended up dying in horrible conditions (seriously, look into how many people die in the desert every year, it's already incredibly dangerous and yet people still do it, that should tell you something of their desperation).
4) Remember the Berlin Wall? Remember people being horrified at the idea of guards shooting people because they wanted a better life? How is your plan any different from what they did (beyond the superficial one of keeping people in instead of keeping them out).
5) Do you have any idea how much it costs to train and equip a sniper? Do you have any idea of how many you'd need to man the entire border?

Not to mention, all of this would go away if we created a new visa type for migrant and unskilled workers, and then allowed everyone from Central and South America (who can prove their citizenship and law-abiding status in their own country, to keep out undesirables) to get one automatically. There is currently NO LEGAL WAY for migrants from Mexico on south to come into the US.

That bears repeating: THERE IS NO LEGAL WAY for them to do what they're doing. If we were serious about immigration reform, we would at least provide these people a way to comply with the law, before getting all upset that they don't.

Re:Criminal Activity is IMPORTANT!!!

[maxume]

I was lampooning your nationalism.

Clearly you think that historical accidents like borders and constitutions carry with them a great deal of moral weight. I don't particularly agree.

Dear Interpol,

[Anonymous Coward]

On behalf of humanity; "fuck off"!

Ummm...

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

But all of the pastor's I've listened to told me the Beast was going to come from the USA!

Hmm - never gonna happen

[Stormthirst]

This reads like Interpol want more funding. Global ID cards will not effect illegal immigrants - they'll still be brought over to wherever in container ships etc.

If anything it will create a market for illegal ID cards in countries with less scruples - INCREASING the level of corruption.

What's wrong with the passport system we have already?

Re:Cue Mark of beast comments

[Abstrackt]

"Be good to each other" takes one sentence. The rest is rubbish.

Personally, I think Bill and Ted said it best: "be excellent to each other".

Re:it's not the card, stupid...

[mdielmann]

Did we miss the part about "migrants" and "border control"? If you don't want to be in someone's database, you probably don't want to travel to another country where they control their borders anyway because they'll be keeping a record of you entering, and that border is where you'd need this card.

But, as you said, these issues are already provided for with a passport. So why do we need a global repository to manage this? And why does <Country 1> need to know that I travelled to <Country 2> three years ago? Especially if my homeland is <Country 3>? Because that's the big difference I see in this.

Only one word for this, but it's a big word.

[Jane Q. Public]

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Even the United States, with its big-government push toward national IDs, has failed completely in that effort. The States won't comply, nor do they have any reason to. Interpol will never get anything like it in my lifetime. And for good reasons.

Electronic IDs are an illusion of security at the cost of real security. People put faith in them but they are hackable. The end result is that they go unquestioned, so those with hacked IDs can get away with murder, so to speak.

Every time somebody has said they have come out with an "un-hackable" ID system, somebody else has hacked it within a very short period of time. I do not see that changing any time soon.

Re:Police seeking ID is an unreasonable search

[Fritz T. Coyote]

Bullshit. you are a criminal. look hard enough, you have broken some law, somewhere, sometime. Or you will.
There are too many laws to avoid this.

And since your DNA is conveniently on file they will be able to match it up and find you.

Bottom line... Interpol represents police interests, and police would love universal fingerprint and dna databases, automated torture devices, the elimination of defense attorneys and no complex 'rules of evidence'.

Because who doesn't like cutting corners to make their job easier?

Now if we can implant these Identichips and include gps and transponders ... even better.

Add a remote-triggered stunner / agonizer and it is a Jackbooted Thug's wet dream.

Re:At birth

[jgtg32a]

A beowulf cluster of kidneys?

Re:Join the opposite

[master5o1]

P.S. Metagovernment is an open community. If you have a problem with how it is being implemented, you can change it!

That's what they said about democracy, but I tend to see little change.