I'm not justifying either of them, I'm pointing out that the government is just as capable of abusing citizens rights as private companies are. I still believe the government is capable of acting in a positive and responsible way, but we have be honest and forthright about their transgressions or else history repeats itself. I don't believe in perpetuating a false dichotomy here, one is not better than the other.
> Specifically, the other half of the subject of your comment is that there would have been no troves of data for the NSA to take from web businesses had web businesses not collected it in the first place.
This is an oversimplification as well, since NSA wasn't just collecting internet data. The initial scandal was around phone metadata collection, which was conducted at the behest of the government and had been alleged by whistleblowers for years before Snowden leaked his documents.
> I don't think the bona fide government is particularly abusing citizen identification right now, regardless of what it could end up doing in the future.
Part of this comes down to your political preferences and whether or not you believe that immigrants should be treating differently by government, as they have been for a few years now. There are numerous reports that stimulus checks aren't going out to immigrant families as consistently as they are for others. Profiling is very much in the conscience of this administration, and that comes back to identification.
> I'm pointing out that the government is just as capable of abusing citizens rights as private companies are
Your comment that I initially replied to was downplaying the possibility of governmental abuse of stronger identification. I replied pointing out that apart from direct government abuse, the current identification system is already rife with abuse by private actors.
In response, you switched to pointing out how the government does indeed commit abuse (which you had been downplaying), and invoking the dichotomy by saying "not private companies". This is detracting from discussing corporate abuse, by pushing the topic right back to focusing on government abuse.
> Part of this comes down to your political preferences and whether or not you believe that immigrants should be treating differently by government, as they have been for a few years now
I'm willing to entertain whatever perspective your argument requires.
> There are numerous reports that stimulus checks aren't going out to immigrant families as consistently as they are for others
You're going to have to be specific about what you mean technically. I feel like we have an inversion here, because stimulus checks are only going to people who can be identified to begin with. So yes, the profiling relies on having an identity - but the identity is already necessary for the bona fide government function, to prevent someone filing multiple claims (Sybil attack). It's not the same situation as say a hypothetical bread line where being a person who has waited for hours is good enough proof, but now ID is being requested solely so you can be profiled. It's also not like a situation where someone with a green card claiming a stimulus check has that fact used against them when applying for citizenship (at least I hope not).
There's an abstract argument to be made that identification in general is a cornerstone of the ever-growing government (legibility of humans), but I think that ship has mostly sailed, especially in a thread about unemployment compensation.
> Specifically, the other half of the subject of your comment is that there would have been no troves of data for the NSA to take from web businesses had web businesses not collected it in the first place.
This is an oversimplification as well, since NSA wasn't just collecting internet data. The initial scandal was around phone metadata collection, which was conducted at the behest of the government and had been alleged by whistleblowers for years before Snowden leaked his documents.
> I don't think the bona fide government is particularly abusing citizen identification right now, regardless of what it could end up doing in the future.
Part of this comes down to your political preferences and whether or not you believe that immigrants should be treating differently by government, as they have been for a few years now. There are numerous reports that stimulus checks aren't going out to immigrant families as consistently as they are for others. Profiling is very much in the conscience of this administration, and that comes back to identification.