this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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This depends on your government I guess? In Germany the authority for passports is a private company (former state property and now again owned by the Federal Republic of Germany) - but indeed that sounds scary.
Yes, that’s in the US where shady things are done like this a lot. Having lived in diffeeent countries abroad this doesn’t happen anywhere else as far as I can tell.
Oh it does. Neolibs looooove privatization. I'm from Honduras, where the modus operandi is to drive public entities to the ground from the inside in order to justify privatization, and then just pretend it's doing its job while corpos and politicians line their pockets. We're currently under a leftist government, and one of the first steps it took was to retake control of the energy sector, since it got privatized and sold to a Colombian company, a stunt that ended up in millions in debt and led to a mud fight between the private company and the government, which resulted in, among all the lawsuits back and forth, constant country-wide blackouts during a few months this year. It's the first leftist government in over a decade, and it's admittedly not doing great (we really don't have our shit together), but people here tend to forget we were sold a capitalist dystopia dressed up as a utopia, by a druglord-president that's currently holed up in NY over drug and arms trafficking charges.
Mmmm... I sure love how if I want to check my credit score for free I have to go through several different companies, all of which have shady-looking websites that were probably last updated 10yrs ago (but only for the page where you request info on your credit score, otherwise they look fairly modern); especially when said companies have had a reputation for leaking everyone's info and yet are still the official US contracted companies for it. Granted, it's been a while since I last tried to do it, but it's really uncomfortable.
Well I am kinda surprised thats the US, otherwise … not really surprised though 🫠
I think it depends on where you live. I had to go in person to get a copy of my birth certificate and provide a picture ID and SSN card.
I wonder how many millionaires became billionaires out of that scheme