On Fri, 21 Nov 1997, John Young wrote:
This is where Big Brother may arrive big time.
Under active consideration is a plan to require taxpayers to obtain digital IDs for all electronic transactions, keeping records that could be examined on audit.
And what if "taxpayers" simply don't keep these records? There have been quite a few things government has tried to impose on the American people in the last two hundred years, and have just been laughed at. For example during the civil war, I believe there was a tax "imposed" which many people simply ignored.
The IDs would be issued by IRS certified agencies, subject to government developed standards to ensure that proper identity checks are performed before anyone is allowed to shop online.
This is absurd. They can't possibly control every single one of us.
The IRS would enforce this by issuing its own digital certificates to issuers of digital IDs so that they can electronically prove that they have received IRS certification.
And who would they prove it to? The IRS would have to have enough bureaucrats to track us all down. - Actually they could wage a war just like the one with the Income Tax now. Prosecute high-profile cases and publicize the hell out of them if the IRS wins, issue a gag order if the IRS loses.
The technology they need to make this happen is available. All that's missing are the regulations forcing compliance.
Regulations do not *force* compliance. Words on pieces of paper do not force anything on me. Even laws against the worst thing humans could do to each other (murder) do not *force* compliance. And such laws are the ones agreed to by most people. If laws that have the absolute greatest support cannot prevent human actions, how can you think regulations with such broad opposition could possibly do so? ___________________________________________________________________ Jon Galt e-mail: jongalt@pinn.net website: http://www.pinn.net/~jongalt/ PGP public key available on my website. __________________________________________________________________