The Trump administration is building a national citizenship data system

[Dulcinea]

(NPR) The Trump administration has, for the first time ever, built a searchable national citizenship data system.

The tool, which is being rolled out in phases, is designed to be used by state and local election officials to give them an easier way to ensure only citizens are voting. But it was developed rapidly without a public process, and some of those officials are already worrying about what else it could be used for.

NPR is the first news organization to report the details of the new system.

For decades, voting officials have noted that there was no national citizenship list to compare their state lists to, so to verify citizenship for their voters, they either needed to ask people to provide a birth certificate or a passport — something that could disenfranchise millions — or use a complex patchwork of disparate data sources.

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/29/nx-s1-5409608/citizenship-trump-privacy-voting-database

[J_William_Ryan]

1. Another 'solution' in search of a 'problem' that doesn't exist.

Trump’s unwarranted, bizarre obsession with this non-issue continues.

[usonian]

2. Technology put to tyrannical use, again and again. Fascist Playbook.

Last edited Mon Jun 30, 2025, 06:47 PM - Edit history (1)

From the book "IBM and the Holocaust"

Book site: https://ibmandtheholocaust.com/about-ibm-and-holocaust

IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM’s strategic alliance with Nazi Germany—beginning in 1933, in the first weeks that Hitler came to power, and continuing throughout World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.

Only after Jews were identified—a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately—could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.

But IBM’s Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company’s custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate his persecution of the Jews. Historians have always been amazed at the speed and accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify and locate European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully assembled. The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor.

IBM and its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, one by one, anticipating the Reich’s needs. They did not merely sell the machines and walk away. Instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees and became the sole source of the billions of punch cards Hitler needed.