[ExI] Immaculate Election

[Omar Rahman]

> Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2021 06:35:09 -0800
> From: <spike at rainier66.com <mailto:spike at rainier66.com>>
> 
> ...
> 
> The main argument against the USA issuing national ID is that Americans have
> the right to privacy encoded in the constitution, article 4.  The Estonians
> do not.  Estonians must do whatever their government orders.  It is a former
> Soviet bloc country. 


Spike, are you joking? First, I went and read Article 4 of the constitution, nothing about privacy….maybe you meant another Article?

Secondly, Estonians have a strong democracy, and as an EU member state citizens have their personal information protected by the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations).

The GDPR enables you to request that a company reveal what information they have collected on you, and you can order them to delete it. And they actually have to!

The EU has ‘the right to be forgotten’ as well. Google LOST a test case on this issue and they cannot show data that people have requested to be deleted in the EU.

The EU also has the eIDAS regulations which setup frameworks for Electronic IDs and digital signatures as well.

The EU also has VIES VAT number online validation so that you can check if the company you are doing business with is an actual registered company.


As a personal example (from nearby Poland): I filled in an application, then legally signed, and received Covid relief/stimulus funds completely online.


From a philosophical perspective reliable ID makes a lot os sense if you think of things in terms of "The Prisoners’ Dilemma”.  If you meet a constant stream of new/anonymous strangers a successful strategy is to continually ‘betray’. That’s exactly what we see in the anonymous forums; people spew their lies/hate/threats at max volume and as often as they can because there are no repercussions and some successes. As soon as you have good ID laws, people develop reputations, and betrayal is no longer a profitable strategy in “Prisoners’ Dilemma”.


Regards,

Omar Rahman
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