Schneier on the security of our election systems

Christopher Allan Webber at 2016-07-30T14:02:42Z

AJ Jordan, Stephen Michael Kellat, Kevin Everets shared this.

I'm going to quibble on one point. Securing the back-end is one thing. As to the front-end, we disarm ourselves pretty easily by not registering voters properly or striking down voter ID laws. If we have no way to authenticate who presents themselves to vote at a single precinct, making sure things are fine on the back-end kinda doesn't matter. As a former precinct elections official, these quite insane judicial rulings over the past few days striking down photo ID have been hilarious as they tear down any hope of security on the front-end in terms of ensuring that one qualified and eligible person gets one vote in the correct precinct. As to the inability to gain photo ID due to the lack of required underlying documents being touted as the reason for voiding these laws...how are these people surviving in a society that requires positive photo ID for an awfully large number of transactions beyond just voting these days?

Stephen Michael Kellat at 2016-07-30T18:46:58Z

Not having ID is normal enough. I'm an American citizen and I live in Japan. When I visit the U.S., the only U.S.-issued ID I have is my passport. But my passport should be for entering and leaving the country, not for anything else. Also, it's just one document which I could lose, if I were careless or unlucky. And the more I carry it around, the more I risk losing it, which would be a total disaster. If I want to renew my long-since expired drivers license, I either need to go back to North Dakota (which is far, so I don't often go there) or somehow prove that I live in a place where I'm just visiting. We're not legally required to have or carry photo ID in the U.S. Just because lots of places would prefer we did doesn't change that fact.

Just for lulz I try presenting my Japanese ID whenever visiting the U.S. and people ask. One time I went to a karaoke bar in NYC, and the bartender was Japanese-American who had lived in the U.S. for a long long time, and he didn't know the Japanese year scheme (it's currently the Heisei era), so he couldn't figure out if I was 21 or not.

Douglas Perkins at 2016-07-31T01:24:18Z

Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠), jasonriedy@fmrl.me likes this.

> We're not legally required to have or carry photo ID in the U.S.

I don't know whether he was just blowing smoke, but I did have a discussion with an off-duty cop who told me that California does in fact require one to carry currently-valid government-issued photo ID at all times.

My actual beef was and is the expiration date. Do I stop being myself if some identification document expires?

lnxwalt@microca.st at 2016-07-31T02:29:30Z

@lnxwalt@microca.st I think you have been misled. AFAIK there are no generic legal requirements to possess or carry a photo ID in the U.S. in any state. (Practically speaking it would make many things difficult if you didn't have one at all, but that's a separate issue.)

In California, I know some cities require you carry ID if you're driving a car or (more notably) riding a bicycle on a public road. If there were a generic "must-carry-ID" state statute, the city statute would probably not exist, because it would be pointless.

Douglas Perkins at 2016-07-31T07:06:40Z

Sarah Elkins likes this.