OK, sure, but that was decades ago – before the mass migrations into Europe started. These have made passports politically impossible to avoid. The ID card works within Schengen only because the zone is “secured” at its perimeter. Well, “secured” means that the refugee problem has been dumped on the doorstep of a few countries at the perimeter…
In Ireland we do have a “passport card”. It acts as a passport, but is credit card sized. It’s only valid for travel within the EU (and to the UK where no ID is required due to the common travel area…except anything that your airline insists on!).
But of course it’s not compulsory to have one and it’s not compulsory to carry around on you at all times, and it’s not compulsory to show it to a police officer.
Cobalt wrote:
I am pretty sure thar those of my friends getting frequent grief for the offence known as “driving while black” disagree with that notion. To be fair it has improved in the last 20 years. I have no idea why you think it makes sense that the police pays close attention to a partner in a consultancy, or a teacher in particular.But then I (and they) live in a location where the police was quite rightfully branded “institutionally racist”.
It is hard to believe this until you experience it yourself or close friends do – I didn’t at first, either, until it became impossible to ignore.
I can’t comment on individual experiences, other than to say that police work by necessity involves profiling. Those who fit the profile but are innocent of any crime will inevitably bear the brunt of that. The Met has many failings, some so serious that there are reasonable arguments it should be disbanded completely and started from scratch with zero re-employment. Widespread low-level (and sometimes not so low-level) corruption is of far more concern to me than racial disparity in stop-and-search figures. I’m also very concerned every time I see the Police lobbying for what they think the law should be, or what new powers they think they should have.
What I’m really getting at is the way the British system of policing by consent is designed (they work for you) compared to how it appears to be designed in some other countries – they are your ‘boss’ and can exert de facto, perhaps even de jure, authority over you on a whim.
LeSving wrote:
I think one of the largest, if not the largest identity/freedom problem we have is the moving away from cash towards a system that keeps track of every single thing you do while making money while doing it. It certainly is way more practical with electronic payments compared with cash, and therefore it is here to stay.
Fully agree – cash must be preserved.
I’m not keen on the idea of a world where you cannot exchange money for good and services without there being a permanent record of it somewhere, available for inspection by some government official who wants to gather information on you, or for commercial exploitation.
LeSving wrote:
And that is NOT a problem? I think one of the largest, if not the largest identity/freedom problem we have is the moving away from cash towards a system that keeps track of every single thing you do while making money while doing it.
Absolutely, and I still use cash. But Apple Pay is sometimes a lot more convenient (my phone is waterproof, but my cash isn’t – so for example a couple of weeks back when we were dinghy sailing and capsized a couple of times, I didn’t have to leave my wallet unattended so I could buy lunch – I could just pull the phone out of my drysuit pocket). For all the criticism we level at Apple they have a good history of telling the authorities where to stick it when they want to go on a fishing expedition.
Peter wrote:
Not sure any UK ID card would have replaced a passport, given that the UK was never going to join Schengen.
We have both, ID and Passport. Within Europe, also outside Schengen (e.g. Bulgaria) my Swiss ID card is more than adequate. The only place that used to require a passport in Europe was the UK, but that was fixed a couple of years ago in an historical encounter at the WEF in Davos. (Since then, Switzerland also can enter the UK via the EU channels rather than queue up behind Air Bangladesh’s DC10, which was my memory from those times at Gatwick…we used to tell the British Airtours crews to hurry up to land before them!!)
I have not carried my passport anywhere in the last several years safe for some trips to the US, to the Maldives and the Caribbean and I believe Egypt. The ID is much more convenient.
LeSving wrote:
alioth wrote: The only thing I carry habitually these days is my phone – pretty much everywhere takes contactless phone payments these days.And that is NOT a problem? I think one of the largest, if not the largest identity/freedom problem we have is the moving away from cash towards a system that keeps track of every single thing you do while making money while doing it.
I find it simply funny that people get their undies twisted because of ID cards or vaccine certificates, which get shown once in a while, while leaving a totally tracable path behind every day, wherever they go. Yes, I’ve also resorted to Samsung Pay at the beginning of Covid and yes, it is VERY convenient. And while I agree with most you say regarding cash, it is not even the worst: GPS feeds your position, which shops you are in and what else you do into what people call “big data”, with the result, that you get bombarded by commercials profiled after your every day way to work. Mate of mine claims he gets dog food ads all the time because his bus stop is outside a pet store.
That is what worries me at times. Showing my ID or covid certificate and in the latter case being sure that only people who are either vaccined or tested negatively sit in the same room as me doesn’t bother me at all.
dublinpilot wrote:
In Ireland we do have a “passport card”. It acts as a passport, but is credit card sized. It’s only valid for travel within the EU (and to the UK where no ID is required due to the common travel area…except anything that your airline insists on!).
We have those in the US too, if you want one when applying for a passport. Likewise only valid for crossing the border with adjacent counties but handy for those who might commute across the border.
Graham wrote:
I’m not keen on the idea of a world where you cannot exchange money for good and services without there being a permanent record of it somewhere, available for inspection by some government official who wants to gather information on you, or for commercial exploitation.
Absolutely, there has to be a readily available counterbalance to any form of power.
My German wife pretty much refuses to use anything but cash, and for several reasons that works just fine for me.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Showing my ID or covid certificate and in the latter case being sure that only people who are either vaccined or tested negatively sit in the same room as me doesn’t bother me at all.
Endlessly paying attention to other people’s business would be a neurotic waste of my time… and the reason to get immunized is (oddly enough) to make you immune from having to do so.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
And while I agree with most you say regarding cash, it is not even the worst: GPS feeds your position, which shops you are in and what else you do into what people call “big data”, with the result, that you get bombarded by commercials profiled after your every day way to work. Mate of mine claims he gets dog food ads all the time because his bus stop is outside a pet store.
Only if you leave GPS turned on.
And like I said, the smartphone is my choice – I am not required to have one. I wish it didn’t offer opportunities for tracking my movements, but faced with the reality that it does I still have it because I believe the benefits outweigh the negatives.
The problem is not with having an ID card, but with a standing requirement to produce it on demand.
I think perhaps we refer to ‘proving your identity’ from completely opposite perspectives. I am completely cool with proving my identity for my own benefit, when it’s because I want something that isn’t available anonymously – e.g. renting a car – but not with the idea that a government employee can demand it and I must comply.
The issue is with the inability to understand the difference between acting in your own interest, at your own discretion, and complying with authority for its benefit. As you’ve likely noticed, there are groups of people who have been brainwashed into believing they are the same thing, and that distinguishing between them is vaguely immoral. 
It isn’t clear how much of such tracing is due to GPS location data and how much is ip@ related. If I turn on my VPN with a Netherlands server instead of Switzerland, I suddenly start getting ads in Dutch.
