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Main article: Privacy, identity and fraud in the ratings system
Last time we decided that communities would want to solve the identity problem especially in the case where they were handing out precious goods to their members. We wouldn’t want to allow individuals to pose as fake people to increase their handout.
What kinds of goods would these be? Well, one might be a freely distributed basket of basic goods/services that every citizen is entitled to. A community might decide to do this as a form of universal basic income (UBI), for example. Another would be special goods that the community hands out on the basis of need. A handicapped person might qualify for home health care services, physical-aid devices, etc. A fake identity could claim a disability and gain access to these goods and proceed to sell them, for instance. Any number of examples along these lines can be conceived of. Modern governments hand out checks and provide services to citizens for all sorts of reasons.
This does not mean that if we did not have some sort of economic goods distribution, we wouldn’t have a problem with fake identities. A community might decide how much identity fraud to allow, regardless of the economic distribution mechanism, or whether an economic distribution mechanism exists at all. It would do this consistent with its system of basic liberties, of course. But it seems unlikely that creating a fake identity would be protected under a basic liberty since it doesn’t appear to advance the cause of freedom in any important way, either at an individual or collective level.
Assuming that is the case, then a community could invoke any number of reasons why unique identification would be required: it might want to keep accurate statistics on its population; it might place a high value on personal honesty and regard identity fakery, even if benign, to be corrosive to this property; it might anticipate some type of goods distribution in the future; it might be afraid of nefarious actors somehow using their fake identity to subsequently commit crimes, etc. For whatever reason, the notion of faking an identity might be antithetical to the community’s values and be prohibited.
Along these lines, we might compare creating a fake identity with lying. Is lying a basic liberty? It depends a lot on context and background. In many instances, lying is benign. It may amount to a face-saving coverup, a method of maintaining smooth social relations, etc. But in general, we view lying negatively and in many cases we think of it as downright wrong. We generally only view it as a basic liberty within the context of free speech, which is itself a basic liberty. But we tend to constrain free speech in various ways. If free speech is not an absolute right, then lying certainly isn’t either.
None of this precludes pseudonymous identities, where it is clear that someone is masking their true identity for some specific purpose (online game, discussion group, etc) but it is clear that they are a real person behind the mask. We are only talking here about those who are pretending to be a completely new person.
Let’s take it as a given, then, that communities may want some way to uniquely identify all their members. How would they do this? Well, the community decides, of course. We generally endorse the principle that government intrusiveness be proportional to the threat. If many community members are double-claiming economic benefits, we might counter this with a government ID and requirement to meet the government in person in order to obtain the ID (eg show up at the DMV). The disbursement of benefits would then entail presenting the ID in some fashion. Those found guilty of forging an ID or disguising themselves to appear as two different people could face stiff sanctions, like jail. If few people are doing this we might use an honor system which gives people some leeway on how they wish to identify themselves, but still have jail time for those found clearly cheating. If no one is cheating for economic gain but we still want an accurate population count, for instance, we might ask people to identify themselves through some online mechanism and rely primarily on an honor system. Those found in violation could be punished through some type of minor sanction, like a fine.
Many different schemes are available but let’s emphasize again two basic principles: 1) the “proportionality principle” where the community’s ID scheme is in proportion to the societal problem not having it is causing, and 2) the “minimum intrusiveness principle” where the community, in response to a problem, starts at the lowest level of intrusiveness and builds on this only as necessary. We might add a third principle, valid for all kinds of government intervention: that rights generally exist by default. That is, unless we can identify a problem, people have the right to do whatever they want (up to the point where they infringe on other people’s basic rights).
We should further emphasize that ID schemes will be continuously rated. If it appears that the community is overstepping in mandating some ID requirement, the ratings system should quickly bring this out. The ratings system, in this sense, functions as a sort of online continuous direct democracy. Obviously, the ratings system is a basic component of our envisioned democracy anyway but in cases where government can easily abuse its powers (or just overstep by accident) we will probably want continuous monitoring. In general, since privacy is fundamental to thought and communication, it is essential to guard it jealously.