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I once hard (here) that people in USA is kind of against having an ID document.
It ended up anyway giving them one of the crappiest IDs in any country: SSNs
to answer your questions: it is super cheap (~5 US dollars), fast, has many security systems, it is quickly verifyable agains government databases, it has a photo, your signature, and, if valid, nobody will question it.
It looks like a mini version of the plastic card in mdern pastports (of the size of a credit card)
The police can stop you and without probable cause ask you for your ID (and car/driving documents if in a car), check it against the national database, and give it back to you. You have to show it (required by law) and it is your responsibility (if you are over 18) to keep it with you. The intention is to catch people with pending charges or arrest orders and stuff. If you are not hiding from the law, it is a simple, civilized interaction that would take you 2~5 mins.
You know, the kind of things that you would expect from a 3rd world country, less developed than USA.
Here in Australia this would be considered a draconian overreach and an invasion of privacy.
You're not required to carry ID generally, and in my state you're not even required to carry your driver's license when driving. They might ask you some details so they can look you up, and they might ask you to bring your id to a police station within 48 hours, but honestly I've never had that happen.
You're describing the requirement to carry ID like its just a basic feature of modern society, but not all societies work that way.
In the SE Asian countries I've visited national IDs are more common because of porous borders. Checkpoints on highways are opportunities to exploit migrant workers, basically.
SSN are not an ID. Well they aren't meant to be an ID. It's just a number assigned to every citizen eligible for an account with the Social Security Administration. It just so happens that this is a convenient, unique number that every citizen has to use to get a job (employees pay into social security with each pay check) so it's been used to identify people by their numbers.
Mine still has that expressly printed on the back, "NOT A VALID FORM OF IDENTIFICATION" or something like that.
Same
It is an ID. A crappy one, but ID, by definition!: it was created to identify people
It is strictly NOT an ID. It is an account number. Your bank account number is not an ID either. This is the same idea, except ID is what it is being used for.
Strange for an id to say its not a valid id. 🤔
https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/ssnversions.html
https://www.ssa.gov/number-card/request-number-first-time
Did you read that article? Its all about fraud and how a scammer could get and use your ssn, not about getting issued duplicate ssn. Also talks about typos from corporate.
Edit typos
SSN isn't proof of anything except eligibility for Social Security benefits. Yes, the system is abused to cover for the lack of a national ID, but it isn't an ID.
exactly. Non-citizens can get a SSN. I had one when I lived in the US a couple decades ago and all I had was a green card. It was one of the first things I got. I was surprised when I got it cause it was literally paper. here in Canada when they used to give them out they were on a plastic card, I don't even think they even give you a card here anymore because it's more of a liability than anything to just have a plastic card with your social insurance number on it.
Well... an ID is whatever can be used to identify you. Whether it was or not initially envisioned for that. And the SSN does that, to some extend
Cool. Doesn't change the fact that it's not valid ID for the purposed "prove you're a citizen" bill, so it's mostly irrelevant to this discussion. It doesn't even prove citizenship.
Being an ID and being proof of citizenship are two orthogonal ideas.
The SSN is the former, but not the latter.
The sentence "an ID to proof your citizenship" is misconstructed.
IDs and Proofs of something are both subclasses of "documents". The correct phrase would be: "a document to prove citizenship".
That document could (in principle) not identify you, but at the same time demonstrate that you are a citizen (for example, you could have a long cryptographic self-validated number that hashes to a "Yes", or "Invalid"). But of course that's not too practical.
Strange for an id to say its not a valid id. 🤔
https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/ssnversions.html