Tech Notes

I cannot understand the resistance in the USA against a National ID card. The USA already has it, they cannot seem to accept that.

I’d like to start by pointing out that Foreigners to the USA get fingerprinted and photographed — like an accelerated Booking Procedure at the local police station — upon entry to the country. Did you know they have to check-in when they leave? Americans are often surprised to hear that — the US-VISIT program is more invasive than they think. Visitors get tracked.

In Canada, it’s actually illegal (common-knowledge, I should verify) to use the Social Insurance Number for anything other than Salary/tax, and Retirement. Due to this, the Military needed to get new numbers — like the USA still does, the Canadian Military used to use this national tax number (NTN) as the unique ID for a soldier as well. They had to change, and actually adopted a format that fits the same spaces, involves a checksum digit (like credit cards and ISBNs do) and is unique to the military. My Service Number makes no sense outside the military.

India recently announced that the issues they’re having providing healthcare will be addressed by a National ID card. Done correctly, this could very well be an isolated “this is my national health number” (NHN) that is useless outside the providing of healthcare.

Updating a “has healthcare until XXX date” via a bonded notable entity onto the NHN would isolate the NHN from the bearer’s credit and financial data. That would allow a healthcare giver to immediate gauge the healthcare status of a patient while in the ambulance, allowing the “busy: next hospital” issue that some hospitals are accused of doing. I don’t agree with that — Canada’s healthcare is geared to “how do I fix the patient?” before “what’s the patient’s healthcare provider, and credit card?” — but resistance to any such plans has to address the hidden agenda, even if the long-term goal may support eliminating such.

The USA has adopted standard such as FIPS-201 (wikipedia) for federal employees, yielding a Common Access Card for any government employee; this is a Smartcard which acts as both a physical access card that is digitally read as well as a military ID satisfying Geneva Conventions.

The USA already has a National ID Card, but only for government employees. The Social Security Number was originally intended for taxation, and is mis-used. Even though the employment status may affect the Commercial Healthcare Status of a patient, adopting a NTN separation from NHN would allow for streamlined healthcare in the USA, while protecting the bearer’s privacy for non-healthcare topics.