This is one of the obvious consequences of not having a national identity number assigned to everyone at birth, which exist in most developed countries, except for anglosphere, for some reason.
This is one of the obvious consequences of not having a national identity number assigned to everyone at birth, which exist in most developed countries, except for anglosphere, for some reason.
How so? The article is talking about a fictitious person that's listed by name only on a sanctions list despite the government knowing the person doesn't exist. There is no possibility of the real Sean Byrne presenting a government number that is a negative match against the list because the fake Sean Byrne has no known ID to match against. The essence of the entry is just "here's a name to avoid".
The real Sean Byrne can produce a government-issued passport number, but that's clearly not enough for Apple.
I think it's more of a problem of all these "hyperscale" platforms where the cost of not being zealous enough is long litigation and devastating fines, while the cost of losing a single customer (or a thousand) is basically nil. This leads to all kinds of opaque, customer-hostile outcomes like this, also if you trip some filters not related to sanctions / mistaken identities. There's a recurring theme of HN posts along the lines of "an automated process at Google cut my business off, HN plz help".
In this particular case, it would be harder to produce a fake signature from a non-existent person if the signatures in questions were digital and backed by a national identity number. The kind of that I'm submitting when signing documents at work.
Objection to ID numbers as a concept aside, I don't think it actually solves the problem this author faced.
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.
If they put an ID on a sanction list, there’s a possibility to verify it. They could verify that it actually belongs to the person they want to sanction before putting it on the list. Failing that, the actual person can prove that they don’t belong on the list by verifying their identity.
Verifying identity is a much simpler problem than establishing identity.
> If they put an ID on a sanction list, there’s a possibility to verify it
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.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. As you said, Ireland might comply, which would’ve solved this particular issue.
Ireland has a PPS number which everyone who’s ever had a job or claimed government benefits has. The union of those sets is basically everyone. Clearly that hasn’t helped.
Well.. yea, because it's the US that creates the list, and they don't know or understand that systems like ID numbers exists.
Americans use their social security numbers like id numbers in all sorts of systems. This problem has nothing to do with id numbers.
in Egypt, every person is born with a universal national ID number , which is standardized everywhere here, but it created some problems, it became extremely valuable to attackers. If leaked, it can be reused across completely different services ( and you can never change it under anycase )
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
Clearly it was the services that weren't tech-savvy using a non-changeable non-secret ID as some kind of authentication. Can't blame the users here.
This is the SSN in the US too though.
America has social security numbers. U.K. has national Insurance numbers, Ireland had a PPS and Canada has an SIN
Its not as if it even helps since the numbers can be leaked and stolen and then abused & the situation ends up even worse since it is so centralised.
Identity numbers being abused is a consequence of them being misused. And as far as I can tell, this happens more often with american SSNs than anywhere with actual national identity numbers.
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.
The abuse only happens because US courts deemed a third party liable for a lender’s error/cost cutting in attempting to verify a borrower’s identity.
You’re talking about different things. Sweden has personal identity numbers and they’re public information. It protects you from being mixed up with someone with the same name. Not from identity theft though.
In most countries you cant do anything with a single number id of a person. Except ironically the US so youre doubly so off.
It helps. Period.
He has a passport with a number on it. Why isn't that sufficient? There are also multiple countries involved in this story.
When you renew your passport, the new one will have a new serial. Not matching a passport serial doesn't mean anything. Not matching a national identity number does.
National ID numbers will not help with cross border situations like this.
Don't worry, I don't doubt it will be turned into an international system like phone numbers.
Isn’t that already the case?
for some reason.
The reason is there. It's no big secret. Pick up a history book.
Care to be a little less vague? Maybe a little more helpful?
A government may have entirely benign reasons for creating a comprehensive population database, but you cannot guarantee who will control that database later. You have to trust the people who control it, not only now, but at all times in the future, but history does not support that.
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.
A government won't give up on malicious acts just because it lacks accurate census. The United States does a lot more surveillance and oppression than EU countries that have national ID and mandatory ID documents.
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.
In the US, where race is entirely defined by skin pigmentation and there's heavy segregation ("redlining") of living quarters, sure: databases aren't necessary. But in places where race is defined by heritage or culture, things which can be disguised by the targets of a regime, these databases are a vital part of any serious ethnic cleansing operation. I don't remember the statistic in IBM and the Holocaust that compares Jew survival rates in occupied countries with versus without digitised censuses, but the difference was stark.
Are you aware that pretty much every developed country has such database? Even the US, its guaranteed US 3 letters agencies have such comprehensive population databases
Uh? The reason is that the constitution doesn't explicitly allow the federal gov to do it, so it's a state power.
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.
Yeah and that's exactly what shouldn't happen. Government's should not have a power to ask a private company for data under any circumstances and they should not make "race" a compulsory data to submit, so that you could exercise your rights.
Attaching numbers to people is unbelievably creepy. My identity is not a number. We recoil at the idea of having assigned and tattooed numbers on our bodies and I don't feel it's okay to do it, just so you could maybe avoid misidentification.
You are the one somehow conflating an identity card with your actual identity as a self, which seems extremely strange and spurious.
The one conflating the two isn't the author, but the state. A fixation on the state sanctioned representation of someone's identity instead of the actual, living person himself is exactly what caused TFA's author troubles.
Why did it need to go to tattooed numbers?
Also the implication that cultures and countries which have happily accepted id numbers are filled with non individualistic people is it?
> Why did it need to go to tattooed numbers
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?
Very few countries require you to carry an ID. Many countries require you to own one and keep it up to date, but don't care whether you carry it outside.
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.
So that you could not impersonate some other identity. Same in the spirit of carrying a plastic card, just without somebody touching you by force.
Either way you are branded forever.
Is your identity a string of letters? Don't be ridiculous.
Yes, if there is a set of strings that can uniquely identify you, and you can't have it removed, nor act like somebody else, it's your identity.
Even GDPR admits it
So, your name is also this sort of identifier. But an “identifier” is not an “identity” in the way you mean it. Sometimes words are used in multiple ways.