Trump’s executive order on voting rights. I may be misinterpreting this (correct me please if I am), but it sure sounds like you won’t be allowed to vote if you didn’t opt for a “RealID” version of your license. A regular driver’s license contains no information regarding citizenship status, at least in my state, so it wouldn’t count. A lot of low income people in rural America have skipped getting a “RealID” because it’s more expensive. If this order goes thru, that decision may cost them their right to vote. This could disenfranchise millions of low income voters.
At all times? Even when pished at 3am stumbling home? That sounds rather dystopian and I say that living in the country with the most CCTV in the world.
To start off: Especially when you’re openly drunk at 3am and unable to act normal 😂
You need to be able to identify yourself to law enforcement (and some others like ticket inspectors on trains) when stopped (for a valid reason ofc), I’d say that makes sense? We don’t have a distrust of our (law) enforcement like there is in the US, they’re held to a high standard here.
In a lot of instances they also need a copy of your ID at the bank, your work, etc. This is mostly to prevent identity fraud as far as I’m aware.
More info: NL: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/identificatieplicht / BE: https://www.watwat.be/politie/wie-mag-mijn-identiteitskaart-vragen
It’s literally just a card (almost) everybody keeps on them together with their bank card. In the future we’ll most likely just be able to use digID (in NL) or Itsme (Belgium) as a substitute to identify ourselves.
If you get stopped and don’t have it with you the first time you’ll just get a warning and they’ll just look you up by name instead, after that they fine you for not having it with you. If you do not identify yourself they can take you to the police station until they can identify you, you know the only people who have an issue identifying themselves usually? Drunks and people who either have a history / current issue with police. (You often see this in the videos of our favorite police vlogger: https://www.youtube.com/@PolitieVloggerJanWillem)
I’ll add on to this before you still call it dystopian, for every single time a police officer asks for an ID they have to note that down, its logged that they looked this person up, they have to write why they did it (reminder: every single time) and this can get checked by a superior officer/other instance (depends on country I believe) + anyone who was checked can dispute the check afterwards. They’re very harsh on abuse of the access police have and everything they do for their work is logged systemtically and also by the officers in question (source: I worked for Belgian police IT). Here’s an example of when an officer looked up people he could not justify: https://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20240215_94848864
Wow, thank you for the detailed response!
That final article isn’t quite relevant though and doesn’t exactly instill confidence when it took 2 years and 108,000 searches (180 per day) before anything was done…
I’m glad to hear there’s supposed to be some form of accountability, and checks and balances but we’ve seen throughout history that those sorts of checks are always open to abuse or intentionally ignored when it’s convenient for the powers that be. You may have a benevolent police force just now but that doesn’t guarantee anything in the future.
Mandatory government ID on your person at all times is still dystopian.