Yeah I don't think people are really fully appreciating the scope of this, because it means people would essentially have to have a passport to open a bank account.

It's very dark. I tend to be libertarian about these things and feel like it's none of the government's business. Get a warrant and do your investigations if you want to prove someone is a foreigner up to no good. There is no real problem unless you're xenophobic or racist.

So I don't agree the "underlying idea is fine" at all. This is a step further though, by putting an administrative and financial burden on people to have a bank account.

The fact this is normal in other places in the world doesn't make it ok to me either — two wrongs don't make a right. And in any event many other places are more socialized than the US, so there isn't the same kind of burden on many places as there would be in the US. It would be one thing if the administration were bending over backwards to provide public healthcare, expand education and public research, but they're doing the opposite.

> I don't agree the "underlying idea is fine" at all

I gave you a shout out! :-P

> the reluctance to issue any kind of national ID

Americans have tended to resist this kind of surveillance (when done by the government). Honestly, because it's not necessary. It doesn't make sense to tax 350 million people when DOJ usually doesn't even go after the known big fish. Or when companies can openly violate e.g. money transfer laws at vast scale until they get rich enough to get the laws changed in their favor.

This feels like the kind of thing that will blow up if they implement it and then have to be kicked down the road forever, like RealID. Old people know that the initial RealID deadline was before Barack Obama's election.