Sunday, October 29, 2017

A national identity system for America

America does not have a national identity card. They claim that it is to protect privacy of their citizens. But they overlook the obvious disadvantages and problems that it posed.

They need to have a separate system to register their voters. These voter have to bring documents to prove their identity. Some of these documents are not available or could be faked.

They need to register their citizens when they apply for a passport to travel anyway.

Without a national identity system, they have to rely on the Social Security number that is given to each resident. However, there is no photo or fingerprint tied in to the SS number. How can a person prove ownership of the SS number?

The lack of a reliable national identity system is the cause of many online fraud involving the use of a social security number.

It is not difficult to implement a national identity system, using their social security number. When a person applies for a bank account or a driver licence, they have to provide documents to prove their identity and link it to their social security number. They can provide a photo or a fingerprint at that time.

This can be registered in a government website. It can be used as a national identity system. They could be some fraudulent practices involved in this system (as no system is fool proof). As each fraudulent of the social security number , the record can be verified and corrected.

More importantly, for the cases that are accepted (which is likely to be more than 99%), the convenience of a verified identity is overwhelming. It outweighs the rise of "invasion of privacy".





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