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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."
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.
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?
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.
On behalf of humanity; "fuck off"!
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.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
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.
"Please log into the internet with your global ID. No sites will load without it. "
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
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.
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.
For some reason, I'd rather save on the money spent on the military than on the money spent on health.
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.
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.
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.
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.
signature is pants
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.