This resurrected effort at alien registration seems like it could be used as a doorway to Universal Digital ID. As registering only non-citizens would be illegal, this could be used as an excuse to register everyone. In China the digital ‘social credit’ system has been weaponized against undesirable citizens like those that want their money back from a failing bank or speak out against the government. A programable ID system in this country could be flagged for anyone found voting for the wrong party or exceeding their designated carbon allotment. This is an issue I will be paying close attention to in the coming months as it really effects everyone including immigrants
Your comment points up what's most important about immigration today - if we violate the Constitution for "undesirables," it gets easier to violate it for everyone. Justice Jackson said this really well in his dissent in Korematsu, the Japanese internment case. Military expediency is one thing, he said, but once the courts declare due process abridgements to be consistent with the Constitution, "the principle then lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."
I never thought about that. Does Universal Digital ID track all of a person's digital activities and make them reviewable by the government? If there's a move toward social support like Universal Basic Income in the AI era, would that require a universal digital ID?
Your guess is as good as mine as to what the government might do with access to every transaction we make, every website we visit, even every conversation we have. Much of that access is in place now, it seems, but AI will likely make it easier to collate and use that data. Even worse would be the government outsourcing that activity to a private company that isn’t required to act within the constitution. The main thing is to see how the immigration issue can be used to put everyone in a digital cage.
This resurrected effort at alien registration seems like it could be used as a doorway to Universal Digital ID. As registering only non-citizens would be illegal, this could be used as an excuse to register everyone. In China the digital ‘social credit’ system has been weaponized against undesirable citizens like those that want their money back from a failing bank or speak out against the government. A programable ID system in this country could be flagged for anyone found voting for the wrong party or exceeding their designated carbon allotment. This is an issue I will be paying close attention to in the coming months as it really effects everyone including immigrants
Your comment points up what's most important about immigration today - if we violate the Constitution for "undesirables," it gets easier to violate it for everyone. Justice Jackson said this really well in his dissent in Korematsu, the Japanese internment case. Military expediency is one thing, he said, but once the courts declare due process abridgements to be consistent with the Constitution, "the principle then lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."
I never thought about that. Does Universal Digital ID track all of a person's digital activities and make them reviewable by the government? If there's a move toward social support like Universal Basic Income in the AI era, would that require a universal digital ID?
Your guess is as good as mine as to what the government might do with access to every transaction we make, every website we visit, even every conversation we have. Much of that access is in place now, it seems, but AI will likely make it easier to collate and use that data. Even worse would be the government outsourcing that activity to a private company that isn’t required to act within the constitution. The main thing is to see how the immigration issue can be used to put everyone in a digital cage.