alt Hacker NewsA government may have entirely benign reasons for creating a comprehensive population database, but you cannot guarantee who will control that database later. You have to trust the people who control it, not only now, but at all times in the future, but history does not support that.
Nazi Germany and occupied forces used census data, municipal population registers, etc., to identify and track down targeted people. The United States, during World War II, used census information to assist in the removal and incarceration of citizens with Japanese, Italian, and German heritage. The Rwanda population database explicitly classified people as Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa. This became the mechanism to target Tutsi during the Rwandan genocide. In China today, these databases are used to surveil and imprison Uyghurs.
Those are examples of official policy turned to dark purposes. It did not even include malfeasance for malfeasance or criminality by individuals or cartels who somehow gain access.
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Are you aware that pretty much every developed country has such database? Even the US, its guaranteed US 3 letters agencies have such comprehensive population databases
Uh? The reason is that the constitution doesn't explicitly allow the federal gov to do it, so it's a state power.
It's not like you care about all the thing you enumerated, they literally ask you for your "race" when getting a driver's license, which is the defacto ID document anyways. You're installing flock cameras everywhere and gargling palantir's balls while they implement the surveillance state.
A government won't give up on malicious acts just because it lacks accurate census. The United States does a lot more surveillance and oppression than EU countries that have national ID and mandatory ID documents.
The lack of a comprehensive population database only seems to hinder the actual useful civilian bureaucracy, not law enforcement, intelligence services, or ICE. The latter just grab anyone who looks brown enough.