Uhh.<\/p>\n
Yeah, no…<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not interested. In the year that I\u2019ve had the California digital ID I\u2019ve not had one single situation that it was useful.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nada, Zero, None.<\/p>\n
Aside from the slow rollout of digital ID on a state level, it appears there\u2019s an even slower adoption rate among vendors. I wan\u2019t expecting it to be used in every liquor store or anything.<\/p>\n
But it would be really useful in medical situations, where the paradigm is you hand your ID to some medical clerk who then makes a photo copy of your physical ID then stick that in a file someplace. Although now medical providers want you ro scan your ID and upload it to them yearly.<\/p>\n
Or in situations like a cellular provider who wants you to scan and upload your ID to their website.<\/p>\n
You\u2019d think that at least in those situations, the security aspects would be obvious and quickly adopted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There is the capacity for their website to get the information directly from your phone in a secure tokenized format that only provides the necessary information for their purposes and nothing else.<\/p>\n
In the glitch I had with my watch, I lost the California ID that could be presented via the watch. California apparently has no provision to correct that. Instead they keep directing me to a verification web site page that\u2019s not complete. The page says something like \u201cWe\u2019re working to get this page operational please check back later.”<\/p>\n
I just deleted the mobile license from my watch, because the notification to go to a dead California web page appearing 2 or 3 times a day annoyed me.<\/p>\n
The ID is still available on my phone for what it’s worth but since it\u2019s a pointless bit of data, I\u2019m seriously considering deleting it.<\/p>\n
Why bother?<\/p>\n
Now you can put your passport information in your phone too. But that information is only useful at few TSA checkpoints at scattered airports across the nation. It can\u2019t be used at border checkpoints to enter the country.<\/p>\n
So really what good is it?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an interesting little novelty widget, nothing more.<\/p>\n
Digital ID has so much potential. It\u2019s a pity it\u2019s not received enough adoption to make it worthwhile.<\/p>\n
I fully acknowledge the darker side of digital ID. One only need look at China to understand the dystopian down side.<\/p>\n
I appreciate the idealism of digital ID. I\u2019d be very excited if it was widely used in voting, medicine, medical insurance, and as we have recently come to understand EBT\/Snap welfare benefits. I think that it could make a hell of a dent in fraud. With the biometric aspect it\u2019s a no brainer in these situations.<\/p>\n
However, it\u2019s pretty obvious that the political party that consistently votes against any form of ID being required to access these services would fight tooth and nail against it. They\u2019d make the case that not all the \u201cPoor\u201d have access to phones with the capability. Just as they now say not all the \u201cPoor\u201d have the intellectual ability to get an ID.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even though, those people, that party, claims are intellectually deficient, typically have the latest and greatest phone technology which they use constantly to post their TicTok and instagram videos of criminal behavior including threats, or looting & rioting.<\/p>\n
It should be noted that in order to get those phones and phone service, they have to provide ID. That\u2019s interesting too because it was that Political Party that voted for IDs to be required if someone chose to purchase a phone with a prepaid plan. Also known as a \u201cBurner\u201d phone.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve come to suspect that the Digital ID thing will slowly fade away at least in this country.<\/p>\n
I think this for a number of reasons:<\/p>\n
1) There are a lot of people that do not trust our government. For someone like myself who genuinely believed that all the technology I helped to create would benefit humanity this is a depressing turn of events.<\/p>\n The potential for good, is so appealing. Back in my youth, I naively thought that people would choose good over the dark side. “History be damned,<\/em>\u201d I thought. \u201cSurely we\u2019d learned from our mistakes and wouldn\u2019t choose that dark path again.<\/em>“<\/p>\n As I said, I was idealistic and naive.\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m even doubting that I\u2019ll renew my passport when it\u2019s due. There\u2019s no place I want to go to visit anymore. That could change, and I have time.<\/p>\n If however, I chose to expatriate I\u2019d not need a passport. All I need do is illegally enter another county claiming political, or economic asylum, with no ID. That seems to be all the rage these days. One need only look at the piles of ID\u2019s floating in the Mediterranean, or stacked next to the Rio Grande.<\/p>\n For someone like myself, who\u2019s actively trying to reduce my digital footprint and minimize my financial entanglements, digital ID has become a non-starter. I want to fade away, drop off the grid and live free.<\/p>\n The way we\u2019re hooked into the system, has in the past week been underscored by my health insurance provider. I used an app (of course) to try to renew a 90 day prescription. Several hours later the app informed me that the prescription was delayed. Several hours after that, I got a call from the insurance provider.<\/p>\n Stupidly, I answered the call, thinking there was some issue on their part about the prescription. I\u2019d just pulled a rare, hot lunch out of the toaster oven and thought the call would resolve the prescription problem and I\u2019d go on with the rest of my day.<\/p>\n Instead what I got was some girl from some organization that was loosely associated with my insurance provider being quite insistent that I needed to set an appointment with someone else to answer questions for the insurance provider.<\/p>\n I explained that I was just sitting down to lunch and wasn\u2019t interested. I asked if my answering questions was mandatory. She was unable to clearly tell me that, nor was she able to tell me what kinds of questions I needed to answer. Nope! She was badgering and demanding about my setting some appointment with a nurse practitioner, wherein there would be a video conference.<\/p>\n FUCK!<\/p>\n I just wanted to eat my now rapidly cooling meal in peace. On and on, circle within circle this girl annoyed me until I finally said, \u201cFINE! Just set the damn appointment! I don\u2019t give a shit when, just do it.”<\/p>\n 40 minutes later I finally hung up the fucking phone. I gave the now cold, meal to the dog because I was so pissed off at that point I didn\u2019t feel like eating.<\/p>\n (Note to self\u2026 Next time don\u2019t answer or when the annoyance level reaches “pissed off” just hang up.)<\/p>\n Within minutes, my phone was blowing up with multiple text messages asking how I felt about that phone call, confirming the appointment, and telling me that there was going to be other confirming phone calls, about the appointment, and that I must go to their web site to verify that my technology would accommodate their video conferencing standard.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t take orders or demands very well. I never have. The more insistent or demanding someone is, the less likely I\u2019m going to comply. This is particularly true if I see no direct benefit to me.<\/p>\n In this instance I don\u2019t see any direct benefit and have come to believe this whole thing is nothing more that these folks finding a way to bill for services that I not only did not ask for, and that I don’t want.<\/p>\n The other possibility is that the insurance provider is attempting to get information about my health records that they didn\u2019t get from the useless doctor I saw a month or so ago. I\u2019m wondering if they\u2019re wanting to plug my data into some actuarial table for probability analysis to figure out my risk to them, so they can up the billing or demand that I submit to the merry go round of tests, more tests, and yet more tests, then follow up appointments, all of which are designed to drag me into the medical industrial complex so that I spend my retirement years running like a hamster on a wheel for their benefit, not mine<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n Last night I got a call from the nurse practitioner reminding me of an appointment today. I thought\u2026 why don\u2019t you just ask your questions now lady? Why are you wasting your time and mine? You obviously have time to call me now, why wait till tomorrow?<\/p>\n I know what it\u2019s all about. It\u2019s about racking up check marks in some form on some computer that all translate to billing somehow.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll play along tonight when she calls and I\u2019m not likely to be particularly cooperative or compliant.\u00a0<\/p>\n The nurse practitioner was barking orders at me during the confirmation call.<\/p>\n Then I got another two text messages, along with a demand that I sign into their conferencing system 10 minutes prior to the scheduled time.<\/p>\n Uh excuse me? When did I start working for them?<\/p>\n All of this is related to the complexities of systems. Digital ID simply takes a previously working simple system and makes it more difficult to manage.\u00a0<\/p>\n Imagine what happens when every single aspect of our lives are bounded by mandatory compliance and demands in service to any corporation or government entity that has access to our information.<\/p>\n How long until everyone must provide hours of their day, (translating to hours of their lives,) dedicated to nothing more than managing who, how, and what, has access to their lives. Imagine a situation wherein any misstep could mean that you don\u2019t get something you need whether you\u2019ve paid for it or not.<\/p>\n This insurance thing is one single aspect. Multiply it by 10 services, all attached to a digital ID and you\u2019ve probably increased the points of failure by 1000.<\/p>\n I still don\u2019t know what the status of my prescription is, and am researching safe ways to get off the drug entirely.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not that I\u2019m not interested in my health. It\u2019s that I have zero trust in government, healthcare, or the common decency of people anymore.<\/p>\n That being said, I see no reason to participate in digital IDs. With the intrusive nature of text messages, cell phones, email, and all the rest of the modern world. I\u2019m wondering if I can ween myself off technology entirely.<\/p>\n I rather like the concept put forward in the Jack Reacher<\/em> series of books. In those, the main character has, his paper ID, a pension account he accesses via Western Union, and is not tied to any place or system.<\/p>\n He lives a simple unencumbered unconnected life.<\/p>\n That sounds really nice.<\/p>\n Now I\u2019m off to deal with mandatory licensing for the dog, then updating payment methods on accounts for services, then I\u2019ll spend some time on the phone with Apple to sort out some other screwups on my phone created by one of their software updates. Then I\u2019ll have to make sure at least one of my devices has a full charge to be able to join this dumb shit conference call later today. [Honestly, I kind of liked it better when I had no health insurance it was one less thing to deal with.<\/em>]<\/p>\n But all of this \u201cOnly takes a few minutes\u2026”<\/p>\n Minutes that I\u2019ll never get back!<\/p>\n See how that works?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Uhh. Yeah, no… I\u2019m not interested. In the year that I\u2019ve had the California digital ID I\u2019ve not had one single situation that it was useful.\u00a0 Nada, Zero, None. Aside from the slow rollout of digital ID on a state level, it appears there\u2019s an even slower adoption rate among vendors. I wan\u2019t expecting it … <\/p>\n
2) I think the digital ID thing is seen as an impediment to getting a new phone. Do you have to re-register the ID\u2019s with the issuing authority every time you change devices? [You don\u2019t as a rule, but the issuing authorities would love that for tracking purposes<\/em>]
3) Without wide acceptance and use on the part of vendors it\u2019s a nothing burger.
4) Since even Law Enforcement isn\u2019t using the system, requiring the user to carry the physical ID what\u2019s the point?
5) Unless you travel weekly for business you\u2019ll never encounter any situation that the digital ID is used at all. Since even the TSA can\u2019t guarantee that their kiosks are operational at an airport on any given day, a physical ID is still necessary.
6) China\u2019s example of social credit scores, where they use digital ID to absolutely destroy individuals because they said or did something the Chinese government didn\u2019t like.
7) The UK is implementing digital ID and following China\u2019s lead. The people in the UK, while generally compliant to their government\u2019s commands have begun to fight because they see that misuse of the ID abridges their freedoms. The UK is even trying to implement digital IDs for visitors. Though they seem to have a rather large blind spot when it comes to \u201cAsylum Seekers\u201d.
8) There\u2019s the religious overtone about everyone having \u201cThe Mark\u201d and being unable to buy or sell unless one has \u201cThe Mark\u201d. (As China has demonstrated.)
9) There\u2019s the conspiracy theorist angle that encompasses all of the above and suggests compliance is enslavement. One could argue that we\u2019re already enslaved, but digital IDs simply make the fact of enslavement \u201cIn your face\u201d.<\/p>\n