Fake identities are dime a dozen. It is not exactly hard for an illicit entity to just put some random ID numbers it bought off the dark web on its books. And now you have just made it even harder for the people who had their identities stolen to clear themselves. How do you convince some company drone doing sanction compliance that you didn't actually work for Sanction Circumvention Ltd when your ID number matches the one on their company's payroll files?
Not to mention the sanction list is full of foreigners. The American authorities compiling the list aren't going to know what's the national ID of a random Russian or Iranian guy running an import business. So what is going to happen if your name matches someone who's on the list with a blank ID field? Probably the same thing that happened to the author, I guess.
Verifying identity is a much simpler problem than establishing identity.
They didn't care to figure out if the Sean Byrne of County Sligo actually existed before putting the name on the list. I doubt they would bother verifying an ID number.
Plus, going back to my point about the list being full of foreigners, how do you verify the validity of a foreign ID number and address? Maybe Ireland is going to comply with a US request, but many other countries won't, and you are now back to square one.
Having the full name + national ID was enough to bypass verification and activate various services, and many people weren't tech savvy enough to realize how dangerous it was to share or leak that info
All that these numbers do is uniquely identify people. They aren't private. To actually prove your identity, you present your ID, passport, or a digital signature tied to that identity number.
Also the implication that cultures and countries which have happily accepted id numbers are filled with non individualistic people is it?
Many countries have laws about having to carry an ID on you all the time. Not as bad as a tattoo, but still not acceptable IMO.
> Also the implication that cultures and countries which have happily accepted id numbers are filled with non individualistic people is it?
Are we really gonna keep pretending there are no differences between cultures?
Also, I find the point kind of moot for the US where a driving license is essentially an ID card, you have to carry it to drive, and you have to drive to go anywhere in most places.
The reason is there. It's no big secret. Pick up a history book.
Nazi Germany and occupied forces used census data, municipal population registers, etc., to identify and track down targeted people. The United States, during World War II, used census information to assist in the removal and incarceration of citizens with Japanese, Italian, and German heritage. The Rwanda population database explicitly classified people as Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa. This became the mechanism to target Tutsi during the Rwandan genocide. In China today, these databases are used to surveil and imprison Uyghurs.
Those are examples of official policy turned to dark purposes. It did not even include malfeasance for malfeasance or criminality by individuals or cartels who somehow gain access.
The lack of a comprehensive population database only seems to hinder the actual useful civilian bureaucracy, not law enforcement, intelligence services, or ICE. The latter just grab anyone who looks brown enough.
It's not like you care about all the thing you enumerated, they literally ask you for your "race" when getting a driver's license, which is the defacto ID document anyways. You're installing flock cameras everywhere and gargling palantir's balls while they implement the surveillance state.
Some of the low cost options now a days do not have human in the loop. They often miss obvious red flags or do too much false positives.
Mercury unblocked my accounts because their founder is a very kind man who bothered to verify what the document actually says rather than falling back to, "Computer says no." But everywhere else? De nada. Computer says no.
And it's not even me. It's a fuzzy match with someone in their 50s. Doesn't matter. Computer says no.
And I can't "get off the list" because it's not me who's on the list. The computer will always say no.
In the long run, I'll be fine. I think. But I'll pay $100k+ by the time it's over. These systems are being steadily expanded, as the dumbest incarnations of themselves. We've gone from Thin Thread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinThread to crappy fuzzy matches on shoddy data executed on with 0 diligence. It's the stupidest possible timeline.
I think many, many other people will be sharing our fate soon, which is partly why I've been writing about this slow rolling train wreck in motion in bits and pieces.
Think of how manny John Smiths there are?
How can this be the company started by Wozniak and Jobs ...
It isn’t. The institutions involved simply don’t care whether they are destroying the lives of random people. At all.
And why should they? They are completely unaccountable in practice, sometimes even in theory.
The same Jobs that routinely denied publicly that he was the parent of his daughter, even though he knew? The same Jobs that cheated Wozniak financially? The same Jobs that led to a change in legal legislation on how organ transplants work?
The world needs to move on from this marketing bs that he was somehow a "great" man who is morally solid and must be doing the right thing. Apple is precisely the company founded by Jobs.
The simplest solution is to change my phone number. But
a) why should I have to? it’s my number, dammit!
b) how many accounts have 2FA? if I changed my number, what if I miss updating one that’s important?
c) it could happen again
If I change my number, however, that is the simplest way to solve the problem. It’s just, do I want to?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ted-kennedys-airport-adventure/
Also, sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads, so you gotta be careful.