If I can light a cigar and talk like Columbo for a minute, the thing I can't get out of my mind is that a competent professional would do something like this:
FILL IN THE BLANKS:
___-XXX-XX09 [don't know]
XXX-_X_-3X4X [don't know]
XXX-XXX-01__ [don't know]
2XX-___-XX8X [don't know]
because a competent professional's default is to preserve as much entropy as possible for both parties. The "don't know" button is present because one or more of the challenges is something not known to the challengee.
If a competent professional sets it up blind (no information whatsoever disclosed to the challengee) to capture the entire entered telephone number that is because there is an explicit desire to capture all of the entered data.
I am in exactly the same spot you're in. I have two phone numbers available to me and neither is accepted. However, I have a different take on it: Hanlon's Razor says "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." This being the federal government in 2026, I think it's more likely that bureaucratic incompetence at play.
I will take a certain level of incompetence over outsourcing adjudication (and the priors for that, data) to private industry. Outsourcing isn't going to eliminate incompetence it just moves it beyond petitioning for redress as a citizen. And a few other things.
I believe that the staff are competent professionals. I don't believe that it's possible for Brawndo swigging morons to operate a single signon service for the United States federal government for multiple years, over multiple presidential administrations, without inducing a spontaneous self-immolation of mushroom cloud proportions (thinking of a certain poorly secured warehouse full of ammonium nitrate in Lebanon).
Do they have morals, and are those morals aligned with patriotic allegiance to the USA? Asking for a friend.
Can't. Need to print out a doc to take with me so the gubmint can validate my gubmint ID. They won't do it without the doc. They won't give me the doc because they don't like my phone.
This validation is for a specific purpose. In fact, and oddly enough, the federal govt (in its manifestation as the Post Office [0]) wants to validate my STATE id, not my federal ID. I think there's a barcode that they scan after validating it, but I am speculating since they won't give me the doc I need to take with me! Taking it to DMV wouldn't do any good.
This started because there was an option to do [black box process] with a phone. "But you can always show up in person (snerk snerk)." (it's a web site, it doesn't really talk in the first person or say "snerk") "Fine, I'll show up in person." "Alright, you'll need to print a document first... hang on a moment... give us your phone number. Oh sorry [black box process] says to tell you we don't recognize your phone, and we can't give you the doc." That's the gist of it. The black box process has been jacked into the process at the very beginning of the kill chain.
I've got to renew my drivers license in the next two months, we'll see how things go at the DMV.
[0] The Post Office is where I've gone to renew my passport.
If I can light a cigar and talk like Columbo for a minute, the thing I can't get out of my mind is that a competent professional would do something like this:
because a competent professional's default is to preserve as much entropy as possible for both parties. The "don't know" button is present because one or more of the challenges is something not known to the challengee.If a competent professional sets it up blind (no information whatsoever disclosed to the challengee) to capture the entire entered telephone number that is because there is an explicit desire to capture all of the entered data.
I am in exactly the same spot you're in. I have two phone numbers available to me and neither is accepted. However, I have a different take on it: Hanlon's Razor says "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." This being the federal government in 2026, I think it's more likely that bureaucratic incompetence at play.
I don't know if you read the full post at http://consulting.m3047.net/dubai-letters/voter-id-industry-...
I will take a certain level of incompetence over outsourcing adjudication (and the priors for that, data) to private industry. Outsourcing isn't going to eliminate incompetence it just moves it beyond petitioning for redress as a citizen. And a few other things.
I believe that the staff are competent professionals. I don't believe that it's possible for Brawndo swigging morons to operate a single signon service for the United States federal government for multiple years, over multiple presidential administrations, without inducing a spontaneous self-immolation of mushroom cloud proportions (thinking of a certain poorly secured warehouse full of ammonium nitrate in Lebanon).
Do they have morals, and are those morals aligned with patriotic allegiance to the USA? Asking for a friend.
Sometimes just have to show up in person.
Can't. Need to print out a doc to take with me so the gubmint can validate my gubmint ID. They won't do it without the doc. They won't give me the doc because they don't like my phone.
That sucks. What about the DMV? Maybe their systems correlate data.
This validation is for a specific purpose. In fact, and oddly enough, the federal govt (in its manifestation as the Post Office [0]) wants to validate my STATE id, not my federal ID. I think there's a barcode that they scan after validating it, but I am speculating since they won't give me the doc I need to take with me! Taking it to DMV wouldn't do any good.
This started because there was an option to do [black box process] with a phone. "But you can always show up in person (snerk snerk)." (it's a web site, it doesn't really talk in the first person or say "snerk") "Fine, I'll show up in person." "Alright, you'll need to print a document first... hang on a moment... give us your phone number. Oh sorry [black box process] says to tell you we don't recognize your phone, and we can't give you the doc." That's the gist of it. The black box process has been jacked into the process at the very beginning of the kill chain.
I've got to renew my drivers license in the next two months, we'll see how things go at the DMV.
[0] The Post Office is where I've gone to renew my passport.