Okay, this just struck me. Maybe im a bit slow on things. Maybe the US or Europe has something like this but i have had an impulsive idea.

What if, right? Your country has a National Identity System. A system where all you need is a "Smart-Card" with your proof of ID and you can use it....well.... for anything.

You can use it to get a credit-agreement, join a gym, pay your bills, pay the bus-fare.

The possibilities are endless. There can be a National Central Computer Database with all of your details. Your emplyment history, your residency history even your biometric data.

This all sounds pretty sci-fi but imagine the phenominal reduction in bureaucracy.

The thought has been kicked around here for a few years. There are 2 major problems.

1. Loss of privacy. The government could track everything you did.

2. Vulnerability. You are putting all your eggs in one basket. It would become the principle target of every hacker. Hack one software, and you have unlimited access to every aspect of every citizen's life. There is nothing a human can design that another human can't find a way around. There is nothing hacker proof, and you'd be giving them the biggest incentive in the world.

The idea is very cool, but I don't know how they are going to get around these 2 very important problems.

Yeah i must agree with Pig here, for instance by cracking it you can take over the identity of another person. Now that opens a lot of oppurtunities for criminal activities i'd think.

So yes the possibilities are endless, but each good possibility might have a bad side.

I think your problem #1 is not a problem.

So what? I dont care if the government knows where i am, what ive done. And anyone who hasnt broken the law should feel the same.

Infact, another idea would be to track criminals using GPS. The government can look up a location of a person within seconds.

Concerning problem #2, this is just a tehnological problem. I think one day the danger of hacker will be severlely nullified, also, sophisticated biometric identity methods will prevent any thuggery on the streets, and just say if someone picks ups someone elses card, they still haveto guess the password or PIN or process needed to bypass any purchases on-line.

Point #1 very much concerns me. For one, we've all committed crimes at some point. They may be minor so you don't really think about it, but with 100% government presence, there wouldn't be a single crime they wouldn't know about.

Also, it's not much of a jump from being a helping system to being something to watch 'political dissidents' (like libertarians) or 'religious dissidents' (like atheists). I'm both, and I don't want to be tracked.

And for #2....nothing is ever safe. Anything and everything is hackable. The most unhackable system ever conceived is still hackable. Allow me to enumerate 2 reason why.

1. Every system requires some level of human operation, even if it's just someone to replace broken components. Humans are not 100% dependable.

2. Any system like this needs to allow input from the outside world, and output to the outside world. Input produces output. If a bank can produce a certain input to query a customer's information, someone else can fake that exact same input and steal the same data.

Anyway, a big no to big brother from this corner.

Concerning privacy



well...uhm



This is more of a nightmare than a reassuring thought, imho. Besides, you've been speaking about some sort of card you carry on you so far, so if a criminal is in fear of being tracked he'd just throw his card in a bin somewhere. The only way that kinda control is realized is by implanting a chip or something akin in ppl, which sounds even more of a bad dream. Cos as Satis pointed out, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I read something on this some time ago, mebbe i'll dig it up sometime later. The time this kind of identification methods become matter of principal i'll be moving to another country.

Concerning safety



Like i just said; the crime-control doesn't work unless we're entering some Brave New World, so you could just as well beat the password out of somebody, just as you would have done with their card.

And maybe they could implant the chips from the cards in our arms or our heads.... 666 THE MARK OF THE BEAST! AAAAAAAAAAA

Serious, as time goes on and technology gets better its going to come to smart cards.

Related Link 1

[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A52300-2001Dec16¬Found=true]Related Link 2[/url]

Related Link 3

11b, wtf are you linking us to? To quote:

"The Antichrist will do all of this for 42 months... it is coming!, warns us the Bible... but Christ is more powerful than 1,000 Anti-Christs!... "

Yay, go religion. Show me a religious zealot than can understands fuckin' grammar and I'll show you an anomaly. I swear, the Christian religion has brought the human race nothing but morons for 2000 years.

err....anyway....fuck being tracked. Anyone remember the Clipper chip? How about Echelon? Hell goddamned no. They'll put a microchip in me when I'm laying on a morgue table.

Dude, go see Enemy of the State, and you see what they are talking about.

It concerns me that you don't have a problem with the lack of privacy. Think of all the little shit you have done in your life that you are not supposed to do by the law. You are not allowed to drink here until 21, in Texas you are not alllowed to have sex until 17 legally, not allowed to have oral lovins, etc.

Besides, if you really think this is a good idea go read such books as brave new world, 1984, THX1138, This perfect day, Logan's run. Watch Equilibrium. This is a bad idea, if people of our past were smart enough to realize this is bad, surely with all of the issues we already have expressing our freedoms, you would be intelligent enough to see this.

You can look back onto history and see the naturalists and their perfect society which crashed.

Plus there are always going to be people like me who lead people to their opinions by conscious thought or not, and the people who only wish to follow people like me. And people like me like power. Power is a dangerous drug, which if not checked would ruin all of your lives.

I understand where yuo guys are coming from, because essentially it is bad for a government to know everything about us and force us to do everything it wants us to do. After all, this would restrict our very liberty in politial will and free-thniking.

However, i think that if the system is used purely to make the country more efficient, it would be great. But efficient, not in the sense of Equilibrium, that film is just about 5% of what i wish for in reality.

Whats the shame with keeping minor crimes on the database, after all, everyone will end up having them, so there will be no descrimination.

I could write a shit load of this stuff, so ill leave it to you and see how you repond.

True, you could maintain that the idea An Sich is good, but what I (and other ppl in this thread) am basically saying is that when its execution depends on the ppl involved it's bound to end in trouble.

Depending on human nature in terms of being extremely "good" (as well as extremely "bad", but not to the same extent) is the biggest mistake one could make. Just look at your personal life: there's bound to be ppl in your direct family/friends' circle that have changed substantially because they have been put in a certain situation. And I mean even small changes; someone who became arrogant because they got praise from this or that person, or that landed in a certain social group and started acting totally different in order to adapt themselves there. These are very ordinary examples, bordering to banality and are not very much dramatic. But they are the small-time reflection of what happens to ppl put in extraordinary positions. I'm sure you've heard about the Stanford Prison Experiment ; this is an excellent example of what we're on about. Make sure to read it and/or look up more about it, it's very interesting, and nowadays you'd have major trouble passing this kinda experiment by an ethics commision lol.


Bottom line: never, not even in the slightest, depend on "general" Humanity's kindness in extreme situations. Communism, at it's base, depends on the "good" in Humanity as well; and it's a good system, theoretically speaking. But in practice it turns into a nightmare in no time. With the State in control of everything, and the State-controlling organ consisting of humans. Humanity is built and lives on a quid-pro-quo basis, utilitarian rather than anything else. This is no reason to feel bad about the world, in fact it makes things very dramatically funny, in a way. If you're lucky enough to be on a side that has the time and opportunity to laugh.


P.S. http://www.prisonexp.org/links.htm official site

I believe this isnt the case. I still dont understand how you people are thinking this way. I understand that eventually, if people are left to decide for themselves they will somewhat "do evil things". But htis is only if rules are not applied.



I see the problem here. In the context of political opression i see a real danger. After all, before we achieve perfect implementation, we should achieve perfect government

Perfect government is a contradiction in terms. There will never be a perfect government before there are perfect people, and other than myself and Ox, there are no perfect people and never will be.

Err, anyway... a society like the one that you envision grants far too much power to anyone that could access this mega-database. Though it's possible that the system-administrator/service tech/emperor would be a very nice and happy person for several generations, eventually someone with a lost for power and control will assume the position, and at that point we're screwed.

Personally, I doubt it would take several generations. A position of ultimate power like that would attract every nut on the planet. A few quiet assassinations, bribes and alot of promises would net me..errr...someone that position of power, and the world would be sunk.

not read most of this but i've read some of the topic and i agree with the whole 'no privacy' thing. if we were to have smart cards as id things, about the only good thing would be the chance to have stuff like CV's on there, so at an interview your potential new employer could stick it in their comp and view your old jobs/references straight away. but of course the problem with that is somehow the info would have to get on there, and like Satis said, someone somewhere is going to be able to hack/fake that kind of stuff.