Surveillance and exclusion: The dangers of the state monopoly on identity
The state’s monopoly on identity excludes vulnerable people from jobs, housing, healthcare and more.
This article originally began as a response to The Reboot’s article, which discusses the dangers of perpetual tracking by Google, Facebook and Microsoft. [1]
While the tracking by Google, Facebook and Microsoft is certainly disturbing and can put people in danger, the state’s data economy is even worse, with far-reaching consequences. Few people talk about this, even though it affects millions of people’s daily lives.
Via the government ID system, the state exerts a monopoly on identity and an obsession with tracking people from “birth certificate” to “death certificate”. Disproportionate KYC regulations actively exclude people without access to government-issued ID from society, from necessities like jobs, housing and healthcare to everyday activities like online shopping, receiving mail, buying a sim card, doing volunteer work, taking classes, or visiting the gym or library.
Government ID is not universal. Millions of people worldwide don’t have access to government ID (the state refuses to print it for them) or can’t show ID for safety reasons (e.g. they are a victim of abuse and don’t want to be tracked down by the abuser). These people are often already in vulnerable situations (for example: stateless, undocumented or homeless people; activists, dissidents or refugees; victims of domestic abuse or adult victims of child abuse; or adults whose birth was not registered) and exclusion from basic needs makes it even more difficult to survive.
If the state refuses to print a passport, national ID card or birth certificate for someone, it is often impossible to appeal, get help from NGOs or lawyers, or find an alternative way to get ID. [2]
For example, if an individual wasn’t registered at birth or if their country of birth is dangerous to them, there is no procedure to register themselves in a state’s database or self-declare their identity. They are indefinitely shut out due to the actions of third parties, such as birth parents or the government of their birth country. There are no steps to take — no appeals, checklists, regularization, special circumstances, friendly jurisdictions, nor identity issuer of last resort. It is not possible to earn access to ID via merit, vouches, oaths, good behavior, probation, community service, nor any other form of effort or compassion. Even if the individual would otherwise qualify for a skilled work, marriage or humanitarian visa and could provide a biometric photo and fingerprints, this is not enough. If you weren’t entered at birth, there is no way to join society as an adult.
Some states claim to offer asylum procedures, stateless determination procedures, delayed registration of birth, child protective services or witness protection programs. However, in practice, these often cannot help, as the victim is often ignored, accused of lying, blamed for the persecution or forcibly returned to the persecutors against their will. It would be a relief if these processes would work and allow vulnerable people to escape from undeserved and dangerous situations, but unfortunately this is not the reality.
Furthermore, there are no non-state solutions. NGOs and religious organizations like the United Nations, Red Cross and Caritas don’t issue substitute IDs; jurisdictional arbitrage such as Flag Theory requires an existing birth certificate or old passport; and non-government IDs from World Passport or Digitalcourage are not accepted. This lack of alternatives only cements the state’s monopoly.
In the 1950s, the United Nations issued conventions on statelessness [3] and refugee status [4], but despite this, nation-states still today refuse to issue IDs for stateless people, people who weren’t registered at birth, and people who have fled political, cultural or interpersonal persecution — whether by arbitrarily or discriminatorily denying applications for stateless status, refugee status or delayed birth registration, ignoring submitted applications, or not having a process for applications at all, while simultaneously criminalizing people without a legal identity. [5] In 2014, the UNHCR started a campaign to “end statelessness by 2024” [6], but today it is still impossible to get a stateless or non-citizen passport, and unlike the laissez-passer passports and emergency travel documents of the past, the United Nations no longer issues substitute IDs, despite that it could help millions of people to access necessities such as employment, housing and healthcare.
This rigid system condemns individuals purely and permanently to their circumstances of birth, which they could not influence and can never change. As an adult, there is no way to enter the system, no steps to take, no goal to work toward. If you were born in the wrong place (e.g. stateless, refugee, dissident) and/or to the wrong people (e.g. child abuse, cult, no birth registration), there is no way to rise above your situation through effort, determination nor compassion.
The state’s monopoly on identity is therefore an unethical, fatalistic single point of failure.
Even for people who have access to ID, the name that the state prints on their ID may not correspond to the name that they use in real life, which could put them in danger. [7] Many countries restrict or even ban legal name changes, which endangers victims of abuse (such as adults who escaped from child abuse, domestic abuse, cults or gangs), who use a self-chosen name for a fresh start, to feel human, to recover from trauma or for physical safety reasons. [8]
As government ID is not universal and does not guarantee security or trust, it is clear that government ID requirements only serve to disproportionately and unfairly exclude people from services. [9]
Back to the topic of “surveillance capitalism” — Google, Facebook, Windows and Android are not true monopolies. Many good alternatives are available, including search engines like DuckDuckGo and Startpage, decentralized social networks like Mastodon, Lemmy and Nostr, open source operating systems such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint, and custom ROMs such as Lineage or Graphene for Android. In addition, there are many ways to protect your privacy, such as reducing usage of social media, configuring privacy settings, using an ad blocker and using a VPN or Tor, as well as burner phones, pseudonyms and using cash, gift cards or crypto instead of credit cards. [10]
In comparison, when the state forces the vast majority of employers, landlords and hospitals to require government ID in order to access their services, there are only a few gray market alternatives left (such under the table work, informal rentals for cash, or doctors who accept out-of-pocket payments). [11]
It is a stark contrast: If you don’t use Facebook for privacy reasons, you can still find different ways to keep in contact with friends and keep up to date with local events. If you can’t rent most apartments because the landlord requires a passport or driver’s license, you are very lucky if you can find a room in a shared apartment where your roommates deal with the contract for you and you pay rent to your roommates in cash. One thing can be an inconvenience, one thing can cause homelessness.
Unfortunately, it is a common misconception that government ID is the only way to trust that “someone is who they say they are”. [12] If someone admits that they don’t have “proper ID”, they are often seen as untrustworthy, hiding something or even dangerous. [13] The equation of “ID = trust” not only leads to social stigma and exclusion, but can also lead to poverty and homelessness [14], threats of violence, or even indefinite detention (in many countries, cops can demand ID without probable cause, and detain the individual until their legal identity is known — which can mean indefinite imprisonment for people who were never assigned a legal identity [15] [16]). Rather than “innocent until proven guilty”, this creates a situation of “guilty and no way to prove innocence”.
If innocence is not based on your actions, but purely on possession of government ID, it creates an impossible scenario when no jurisdiction agrees to print ID for you — from stateless people who literally have nowhere to go, to refugees who can’t return to or interact with their country of birth for safety reasons, to adults whose births were never registered, to victims of child abuse, domestic abuse or cult abuse who don’t use their birth name due to decades of trauma or worse the risk of being tracked down and returned. Instead of blaming authoritarian countries, uncooperative bureaucrats, abusive or neglectful birth parents, violent ex-partners or sociopathic cult leaders, the victim is blamed, distrusted and considered as a criminal.
Worse still, these people are not being accused of a specific crime and there is no real justification to deny printing IDs for them — their only “crime” is the vicious circle of not having papers because the state refuses to print papers for them. You would think economic exclusion — banned from employment, housing, healthcare, education, banking, travel, contracts, mail, sim cards and more — would be a punishment for only the most severe of crimes. But for stateless people, refugees, victims of abuse and people who weren’t registered at birth, it is a punishment for being born.
In an ideal world, people would be judged on their actions and intent, rather than on circumstances of birth and decisions of bureaucrats. For housing, only your ability to pay rent would be relevant. For a job, only your skills and work ethic would be relevant. For healthcare, only your medical condition would be relevant (it would be against the Hippocratic Oath to deny medical treatment to people without ID, especially if they are paying out-of-pocket in cash).
For identity, it would be enough to say your name, get a vouch from a friend, landlord or employer, link to a social media profile, or use a non-government photo ID (such as from Digitalcourage or World Passport, which does not require birth registration or citizenship and allows self-chosen names).
For authentication, you could use a password or PIN (e.g. SMS code to pickup mail), physical key or card (e.g. mailbox keys, membership cards) or a cryptographic keypair (such as in PGP, Bitcoin or Monero).
For trust, word-of-mouth was the primary method before government IDs were invented (and made mandatory) in the 20th century. [17] [18] [19] Nowadays, word-of-mouth includes vouches from friends, online reviews, social networks, web-of-trust and memberships. Cash deposits and escrow systems (e.g. Bitrated) could protect against scams, theft or damage.
Fortunately, such a meritocratic, non-government market is not theoretical. Permissionless free markets have existed since decades — under the names of agorism [20], informal economies, black and gray markets, parallel economies and Second Realms — and offer hope and a means to survive to people in need. [21] [22]
While human rights activists have campaigned since the 1950s for universal access to legal identity (while the affected individuals are left in limbo or excluded entirely from society), agorist free markets have been helping people to access work, housing and healthcare since decades. [23] As more daily necessities require government ID every year, the informal economy continues to provide a much-needed lifeline and way to survive.
Examples of agorist markets include under-the-table jobs, informal apartment rentals, health clinics run by volunteers and anonymous sim cards. Most of these informal markets are local, based on word-of-mouth with cash-in-hand payments. The internet can also provide an uncensored digital economy, such as for global trade [24], remote work, activism, fundraising [25] and community building. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Monero provide a much-needed way to send and receive money online without government ID or a bank account [26] [27] and withdraw to local cash when needed [28].
There are many reasons why people participate in agorist markets. It can be quicker and easier to rent out your spare room for cash, pay a doctor out-of-pocket instead of dealing with public health insurance, or hire an online freelancer for crypto. Bureaucracy doesn’t just shut people out of the market, it also takes time and money to fill out forms, deal with months-long wait times, pay extortionate fees, and apply for government permission (which may be denied for arbitrary or discriminatory reasons). Agorism cuts the red tape, enabling people to access what they need in a truly free market.
As the state continues to ostracize and even criminalize vulnerable people, agorism provides not only hope of inclusion and equal opportunities, but a practical, proven solution which works today. For universal and safe access to daily needs such as employment, housing and healthcare, it is important to build and use these agorist markets that are immune to the state’s monopoly on identity, invisible to the state’s data economy, and free for everyone to use.
The following books and articles provide more information about agorism and the dangers of the state’s monopoly on identity:
“An Agorist Primer” by SEK3
https://kopubco.com/pdf/An_Agorist_Primer_by_SEK3.pdf
“Second Realm: Book on Strategy” by Smuggler & XYZ
https://ia801807.us.archive.org/34/items/second-realm-digital/Second%20Realm%20Paperback%20New.pdf
“Fifty things to do NOW” by The Free and Unashamed
https://libertyunderattack.com/fifty-things-now-free-unashamed
“Passports Were a “Temporary” War Measure” by Speranta Dumitru
https://fee.org/articles/passports-were-a-temporary-war-measure
“During World War II, we did have something to hide” by Hans de Zwart
https://medium.com/@hansdezwart/during-world-war-ii-we-did-have-something-to-hide-40689565c550
“With each person left living on the streets, we are losing as a society” by Petr Baroch
https://www.statelessness.eu/blog/each-person-left-living-streets-we-are-losing-society
“The rarely discussed dangers of KYC and what you can do about it” by AnarkioCrypto
https://vonupodcast.com/know-your-customer-kyc-the-rarely-discussed-danger-guest-article-audio
“Exclusion and identity: life without ID” by Privacy International
https://www.privacyinternational.org/long-read/2544/exclusion-and-identity-life-without-id
“Proving who I am: the plight of people in detention without proof of legal identity” by Vicki Prais
https://www.penalreform.org/blog/proving-who-i-am-the-plight-of-people/
“Establishing identity is a vital, risky and changing business” by The Economist
https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2018/12/18/establishing-identity-is-a-vital-risky-and-changing-business
“What’s in a name? The case for inclusivity through anonymity” by Common Thread
https://blog.twitter.com/common-thread/en/topics/stories/2021/whats-in-a-name-the-case-for-inclusivity-through-anonymity
“True Names Not Required: On Identity and Pseudonymity in Cyberspace” by DerGigi
https://dergigi.medium.com/true-names-not-required-fc6647dfe24a
“Citizenship is obsolete” by Samuela Davidova
https://medium.com/@DavidovaSamuela/citizenship-is-obsolete-c36a20056752
Sources:
[1] https://thereboot.com/why-we-should-end-the-data-economy/
[2] https://anarkio.codeberg.page/blog/roadblocks-to-obtaining-government-id.html
[3] https://www.unhcr.org/what-we-do/protect-human-rights/ending-statelessness/un-conventions-statelessness
[4] https://www.unhcr.org/about-unhcr/who-we-are/1951-refugee-convention
[5] https://index.statelessness.eu/sites/default/files/UNHCR%2C%20Faces%20of%20Statelessness%20in%20the%20Czech%20Republic%20(2020).pdf
[6] https://unhcr.org/ibelong/about-statelessness
[7] https://blog.twitter.com/common-thread/en/topics/stories/2021/whats-in-a-name-the-case-for-inclusivity-through-anonymity
[8] https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/2274/identity-discrimination-and-challenge-id
[9] https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2018/12/18/establishing-identity-is-a-vital-risky-and-changing-business
[10] https://anonymousplanet.org/guide.html
[11] https://anarkio.codeberg.page/blog/survival-outside-the-state.html
[12] https://sneak.berlin/20200118/you-dont-need-to-see-my-id
[13] https://vonupodcast.com/know-your-customer-kyc-the-rarely-discussed-danger-guest-article-audio/
[14] https://www.statelessness.eu/blog/each-person-left-living-streets-we-are-losing-society
[15] https://www.penalreform.org/blog/proving-who-i-am-the-plight-of-people/
[16] https://index.statelessness.eu/themes/detention
[17] https://dergigi.medium.com/true-names-not-required-fc6647dfe24a
[18] https://fee.org/articles/passports-were-a-temporary-war-measure/
[19] https://medium.com/@hansdezwart/during-world-war-ii-we-did-have-something-to-hide-40689565c550
[20] https://anarkio.codeberg.page/agorism/
[21] https://libertyunderattack.com/fifty-things-now-free-unashamed
[22] https://medium.com/@Kallman/a-21st-century-introduction-to-agorism-5dc69b54d79f
[23] https://kopubco.com/pdf/An_Agorist_Primer_by_SEK3.pdf
[24] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/kyc-free-bitcoin-circular-economies
[25] https://kuno.anne.media
[26] https://c4ss.org/content/57847
[27] https://whycryptocurrencies.com/toc.html
[28] https://blog.trezor.io/buy-bitcoin-without-kyc-33b883029ff1
