Vietnam to collect biometrics – even DNA – for new ID cards

https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/vietnam_id_cards_dna/

by Brajeshwar • 2 years ago

78 67 2 years ago

hnbad7• 2 years ago

And state capitalists will keep defending Vietnam as "communist" because the universities offer courses in "Dialectical Materialism and Ho Chi Minh Thought", I'm sure, just as when they denounced LGBT rights protests as an American "color revolution".

It's not your DNA anymore, it's The People's DNA now.

Once again goes to show that if you try to use a state to build communism all you get is a state, which is all the more likely to slide into authoritarianism because it gets to claim it's all for the common good. If you actually want to build communism, you need to start bottom up with material conditions first. This is why anarchists keep talking about prefiguration.

neontomo• 2 years ago

I've never been convinced that communism wasn't about power, like with capitalism, it's just different people holding the sticks.

hnbad7• 2 years ago

That's why I prefer the label "anarchism" even if the desired end state of anarchism fits Marx's definition of communism as a "state-less, class-less" society. To paraphrase Bakunin: I don't care if the stick I am beaten with is called The People's Stick, I want there to be no stick at all.

Vanguardism by trying to utilize the existing systems of oppression to bring about communism fails the instance it succeeds in taking over those systems because the interests of rulers are not those of those ruled over. Aspirationally communist states like the Soviet Union or Mao's China merely succeeded in abolishing the capitalist class by replacing it with the bureaucracy. But under communism there must not only be no capitalist class but also no working class because the perpetuation of a working class means there is still a class system and the oppression that comes with it.

Anarchist practice means creating federated, horizontal structures and dismantling oppressive hierarchies (i.e. the systems that enable people to exert power over others). You can still have individual bad actors but the damage a bad actor can do in a horizontal structure is negligible compared to what they can do in a hierarchy, especially one that rewards bad behavior (cf. people complaining that sociopaths make the best business people).

So at worst, yes, you will have other people holding the sticks but the sticks will be much smaller and thus easier to overcome if used against you.

shadowgovt3• 2 years ago

Correct, and it even seems self-evident from the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" that many communist theorists adopted as descriptive of their theory.

Jiro2• 2 years ago

"Under capitalism, man oppresses man. But under socialism, it's the other way around."

somenameforme3• 2 years ago

I don't understand how communism can work, even in theory, without authoritarianism. If a state guarantees minimum standards, then many people would be motivated to pursue their own interests. In a communist society, who wants to be a janitor? In a capitalist society that role is filled in a very brutal fashion - clean the toilets, go find another job, or go homeless. That's nothing to be proud of, but if the choice is between that pseudo-freedom and the very real non-freedom of the government dictating you are hereby deemed a toilet cleaner, I'd much rather go for the former.

I'd also add that I only mention janitor as something more relatable. There are a tremendous number of less well known jobs where people essentially have to sacrifice their health to provide the niceties we all take for granted. For instance if you've ever been in a town with a paper mill, it smells horrible 24/7 and its effects on everybody's health are even worse. How/why would anybody ever work/live in such places in a communist system, unless forced to?

ttymck• 2 years ago

It sounds like you've described two systems where folks are forced to work at a paper mill.

NhanH• 2 years ago

Communism assumes that no one has to clean the toilet, but the toilet would still be cleaned. It’s the abundance of resources premise. You can’t have communism in a scarcity world. The common example being taught to kids are oxygen: think of how everyone can consume as much as they need, and there are enough for everyone.

How the toilet actually get clean is left as the exercise for the reader.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF2• 2 years ago

I think if you ask 3 communists to define communism you get 4 answers. For one, some are anarcho-communists and some aren't.

Adn when I ask, is it okay if I have possessions, is it okay if I trade and make contracts, I think they're mostly on board with that. But then there's some boundary where they say it's not okay if I make a contract to own stake in a company. Capitalism seems to obviously work great for me cause I get paid in fiat currency to work on startups that are likely to fail, and I have no risk.

Maybe communism is like "Simple software architecture", lots of people agree they want it and it would be easy to have "if only everyone else agreed", but then they can't agree what it is, or when you go to actually implement it, there's a good reason nobody really does it.

BobaFloutist3• 2 years ago

If I had to guess, two things:

1. Increased investment in automation for the least desirable jobs.

2. Everyone can have the basic necessities covered, but still get paid for doing extra. The least desirable, most unpleasant jobs would have to be paid considerably more than they currently are (which is theoretically supposed to be how it works in capitalism too, capitalism isn't supposed to rely on a trapped, indebted underclass that's forced to take any job at any pay). If working twenty years part time with plenty of vacation allowances as a janitor* meant that you and your children get to live what is currently considered an upper class lifestyle, people would be lining up to do their tour of duty as a janitor*.

Think of how professional sports (or union-represented trade jobs) are theoretically supposed to work: It's hard enough on your body that you can't really keep up at it all the way to 65, so you're supposedly paid enough/given good enough benefits to spend less of your life working, and live the rest of your life out on your savings.

xkbarkar• 2 years ago

When privacy is criminalized, only criminals will have privacy.

Cant be bothered to search for who said that to give credit.

Phrase still stands

bertman• 2 years ago

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmermann

Creator of PGP

cratermoon2• 2 years ago

It's interesting how in the US people rail against government moves like this in Vietnam while giving a pass to private companies doing the same thing. Ostensibly, it's OK because the companies don't have the law to enforce participation, but practically speaking there are lots of ways to coerce people into giving up their privacy by making the consequences of not giving it up such that they are effectively excluded from economic life. Of course these companies do sell the data, and they sell it to governments, so the end result is the same. The extra step allows the middleman to turn a profit, so in western neoliberal economics it's not only permissible, it's laudable.

shadowgovt3• 2 years ago

When privacy is the price of a hamburger, those who hold their privacy dear will cook for themselves.

robswc• 2 years ago

People rail against it all the time. They just don't walk the walk.

I will say though. Theoretically you can still "opt-out" of it. Visit with old people and see how you don't need to live with all these services lol

shadowgovt3• 2 years ago

I don't think such thought-terminating clichés are useful in the modern era.

So only criminals don't file their SEC statements or their taxes? Yes. That is true. And we make it true because otherwise the injury society suffers granting such flavors of privacy is greater than the benefits society gains safeguarding such privacy. It allows bad actors too much freedom of movement in the dark if we don't enforce tax law or SEC disclosure law.

As always, privacy is a balancing act between personal integrity and public need.

gottorf• 2 years ago

because otherwise the injury society suffers granting such flavors of privacy is greater than the benefits society gains safeguarding such privacy

Ideally this statement would be true of every piece of law or regulation that reduces individual liberties, including that of privacy. However, what actually seems to happen in practice is that:

- government employees are incentivized to make things easier for themselves by expanding their own powers

- elected policymakers are incentivized to enact sweeping new laws with their name stamped on them, and are not disincentivized from or punished by engaging in government overreach

- ordinary people are not sufficiently inconvenienced by any single new breaches of privacy

It all adds up to a ratcheting mechanism that only goes in the direction of less privacy and fewer individual liberties over time, and only "crackpots" (or people principled to the point of removing themselves from everyday society, e.g. rms when it comes to free software) oppose it.

mekoka• 2 years ago

The version of that quote that I know is about freedom. It's by Tom Robbins. I don't know if he's the original source.

When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free.

Jiro2• 2 years ago

The original is "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."

refurb• 2 years ago

This is a very American and by extension Western civilization point of view. One not shared in other societies.

One survey that I found really interesting (can’t find it now) was one done in Singapore.

A vast majority 70%+ agreed with the statement “a stable society is more important than adhering to democratic principles”.

So all this commentary in the West about Singapore being a flawed democracy doesn’t register with Singaporeans. They are more than happy to give up democratic rights as long as the government delivers as promised.

It’s a view that is quite prevalent across Asia (including Vietnam).

seanmcdirmid2• 2 years ago

I would say it’s a western point of view, and by extension, an American one. Not the other way around, America isn’t the prospector or even a very good exemplar of democratic ideals. On the other hand, much of Asia, especially east Asia’s focus on stability over democratic principles is very much a product of China’s dominate role in that region.

ametrau• 2 years ago

Human rights (like privacy) are fundamental and not cultural, racial etc.

Obviously.

karaterobot• 2 years ago

Local media reported at the time of the amendments that changes were made to reflect trends in digital society management.

I had not heard of this term, and I don't find much of substance regarding digital society management on the web. But it does seem to exist as a cluster of concepts at the union of academic, Orwellian, and marketing vocabularies. Sometimes you see a phrase and feel dread that you'll have to live in a world where it's just an ordinary thing people say. I remember when "Department of Homeland Security" felt dystopian. Now it feels like an ordinary, well-worn phrase that I intellectually know must be dystopian, but the nerve endings that used to tingle are now burned out. Here's to the continual process of redefining normal.

dudefeliciano• 2 years ago

this talk was pretty interesting and scary at ccc https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-12004-please_identify_yourself

nonrandomstring• 2 years ago

Privacy was only one of the issues mentioned in that talk alongside exclusion/lockout, racism, compulsion or choice. The subtext seemed to be that the Indian project was reckless, violated multiple rights, and revealed multiple problems, whereas the European version observed UDHR and ECHR definitions of "right to privacy" and much more. In summary the Euro ID schedule is much more cautious.

Resilience is a real problem in my view. When these systems go tits-up - and they will go spectacularly tits-up as biosciences and AI advance - the lack of alternatives like RFID cards, papers, trusted notaries etc will have a colossal impact. The danger is not the idea of legibility for digital governance (we already have that) but the blind, gushing enthusiasm to build one centralised system around singular technologies.

belZaah• 2 years ago

The sad thing is, it does not have to be this way. Estonia has biometry-based identity, information sharing between agencies etc. and, I assure you, is not a dystopian hellhole because the way these things have been set up. You biometry, for example, is captured and used by one agency for one purpose only - to issue physical and electronic identity documents. Nobody else gets access. I helped build some of these things, have done research on how and why it functions. AMA.

suddenclarity• 2 years ago

The issue is that once the information exists, it will be used. Every infant in Sweden has had to supply a blood test for research since 1975. Then a murder happened and suddenly the police gained access to the database. Then a rape happened and the police requested access again. A few years ago politicians discussed opening it up for all "serious" crimes. Now they are changing the constitution to limit what one is allowed to say, extending what constitutes a crime.

I'm all for limitations to stop famous cases of one person having 50 identities but the current path is not without risks. The data we collect today might be used differently in 30 or 50 years and then there's no turning back.

caymanjim• 2 years ago

Given the number of people who voluntarily submit DNA to ancestry and other analysis sites, it really doesn't have much practical impact if governments collect it. Even without yours, they have enough of your relatives' to identify you. I have the same knee-jerk reaction as everyone else to government encroaching on privacy, but in the end we've all long since voluntarily given up any semblance of privacy. We're all carrying tracking devices and filling our homes with microphones and our families have given away our DNA for us. Privacy doesn't exist.

temp0826• 2 years ago

I expect someday that the entire population's full genomes will be recorded (by some government entity or otherwise) and public. It's sadly only a matter of time.

teeray• 2 years ago

Even without yours, they have enough of your relatives' to identify you

This is what makes me mildly irritated about “consent to collect DNA samples.” DNA is not just you, unlike other biometrics, like fingerprints—it’s your relatives too. This makes it hypothetically possible, for example, for some insurer to genetically determine you have a preexisting condition without ever consenting to give your DNA.

Of course this will never get unwound because of the enormous boon to law enforcement these mega gene databases have been.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF2• 2 years ago

"I also care, but actually I don't" wow

hervem• 2 years ago

Except that Viet. gov. isn't really good at putting directive..

During Covid, Vietnam had ~20 official applications to track vaccination and half of them could give travel/move certificate. And to not stop, every city & district did manage differently "inventory" from application, google form, excel over Dropbox to hand managed paper.

To finish, I don't even imaging how it could end; IT security speaking.

dadjoker• 2 years ago

What could possibly go wrong?

bookofjoe• 2 years ago

Newborn DNA Banking [in the U.S.; 2010]

https://www.aclu.org/documents/newborn-dna-banking

latchkey2• 2 years ago

They say in the article that it is no small feat, but in Vietnam, there is a lot of government. Even the most rural communities (where people literally have no running water or barely and electricity), they have local party officials overseeing things. If they want to get this done, it'll get done.

alephnerd4• 2 years ago

where people literally have no running water or barely and electricity

It's changed rapidly in the past few years.

I've been to rural Gia Lai (a friend of mine is from there), and the amount of basic infrastructure being implemented is astounding. They are trying to use digital infra similar to what Aadhar was used for in India.

It also makes sense to lock it biometrically given that the Cambodia and Laos borders are extremely porous, and it's fairly common for smugglers or migrants to try and bribe someone for VN ID cards.

Digital infra is the fastest and most efficient way to disburse welfare without worrying about corruption or shrinkage. If that means being reducing civil liberties, so be it. You can't eat PGP or use it to send your kid to high school.

local party officials overseeing things

They're useless (at least in Gia Lai). They messed up my friend's name on their passport and barely get anything done.

It's MPS that's taking over this, and they're competent (and scary for obvious reasons)

latchkey2• 2 years ago

I spent 2 years on a motorbike going all over VN/Cambodia/Laos... you go outside of the cities and it is village after village of people with very little infrastructure. Gia Lai isn't that rural. I drove AH17 and QL14c. I'm thinking more in the North. Ha Giang, Cao Bang, even out to Sapa.

ALL of the borders are porous. I literally drove over the northern border into China at some random point, and there was nobody there. It is super easy to go back and forth. I also drove a lot of the trade routes along the border cut into the forests. ID cards aren't going to stop anything.

You are definitely correct about competency. No argument there.

int_19h7• 2 years ago

The problem is that, in many cases, the governments that introduce those kinds of pervasive ID schemes are also the governments that lean authoritarian (or would love to).

It seems to me that, long-term, we really have three options that do not lead to a totalitarian hellscape:

1. Keep our strong centralized governments, but retain privacy (by e.g. not having biometric IDs) as a check on their ability to control citizens. Downside: governments are much less efficient. Caveat: arrangement is unstable and governments will constantly try to upset it.

2. Accept a reduction in privacy while also scaling down and decentralizing governance (libertarian municipalism, democratic confederalism etc) to the point where governments simply don't have sufficient power to get too abusive with such schemes. Downsides: reduced security. Caveat: such abuses will still happen, they'll just be more localized instead of uniform, and thus easier (but still costly) to evade when they happen.

3. Go full Amish. Downside: reduction in quality of life (some people would argue about this, but the consensus is fairly clear based on how many people choose this lifestyle today).

tamiral• 2 years ago

lots of countries share data and also require you to get finger printed, iris scanned, photo taken etc which is already a lot of biometrics.. not sure for this DNA thing looks a little excessive...

Vietnam to collect biometrics – even DNA – for new ID cards

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