This is another LLI presentation. I was not as happy with this talk as with some of the others I have given.I am not sure where I stand on this issue.
Most discussion about a national identity card has focused on the issue of terrorism rather than that of immigration, but much of the logic is the same.
Support for a national ID card was relatively low until 911. Right after 911 support jumped to 70%. By 2004 56% of Americans still thought it was a good idea.
Details of proposals for such card vary, questions include
- Would the card be compulsory or non compulsory?
Under non compulsory proposals you don't have to have one, but life is much easier if you do. - When would you have to present the card?
Any time a government official asks for it.
To get a job or enroll in school.
To receive social services
Or only for certain activities, like boarding an airplane. - How much information would be included on the card?
Smart card technology makes it possible to contain a wealth of information.
If we wish to halt illegal immigration then there must be some way to identify who is here legally and who is not.
- Currently the most often used IDs in this country are birth certificates, Social Security Numbers and Driver's Licenses.
- Unfortunately it is relatively easy to obtain fraudulent copies of these documents and there is a thriving black market in them.
- The Driver's License is the closest thing we have to a universal ID.
- 18 of the 19 911 hijackers had either state issued drivers license or ID cards, or counterfeit driver's licenses.
To be effective a national ID card
- would have to be tamper proof,
- would need to include a digital picture and some biometric, such as a finger print or retina scan,
- would need to be machine readable
- and need to be backed up by a data base that could verify that the card was issued to the holder.
It would also be necessary to get a handle on so called "breeder documents", particularly the birth certificate. If I have a birth certificate I can get a Social Security Number and a driver's license.
Supporters of a national ID card point out over 100 countries have either compulsory or non compulsory cards, including
Argentina | Egypt | Madagascar | Sweden |
Australia | Estonia | Malaysia | Switzerland |
Austria | Finland | Netherlands | Thailand |
Belarus | France |
| Turkey |
Belgium | Germany | Poland | Vietnam |
Bosnia Herzegovina | Greece | Portugal |
|
Brazil | Hong Kong | Romania |
|
Bulgaria | Hungary | Russia |
|
Canada | Iceland | Saudi Arabia |
|
Chile | Indonesia | Singapore |
|
China | Israel | Slovakia |
|
Columbia | Italy | Slovenia |
|
Croatia | Latvia | South Africa |
|
Cuba | Lithuania | Spain |
|
Czech Republic | Luxembourg | Sri Lanka |
|
Opposition to the card centers on three points.
First, it would be prohibitively expensive.
- The Real ID Act, which was passed by congress in 2005, incorporates many of the elements of a national ID card by standardizing state driver's licenses.
- A September 2006 analysis by the a number of state organizations estimated that the bill will cost 11 billion dollars to implement and impose unrealistic burdens on the states.
Second, it will not work.
- Witness the rapidly changing technology to prevent counterfeiting and credit card fraud.
- Those seeking to subvert the system quickly catch up with any new innovation. Opponents point out that many of the nations who currently have national IDs still have terrorist attacks.
Finally the most often heard opposition to such a card revolves around the invasion of privacy.
- Even if usage of the card is initially limited the temptation to use the card for other purposes is too great.
We could use it to track
pedophiles
career criminals
political dissidents
Democrats - Critics point out that the Social Security Number, which was initially intended solely to track earnings for the propose of calculating Social Security payments, has become a defacto universal ID.
If I have your Social Security Number I can just about find our what you had for breakfast.
Many argue that the data base needed to support a National ID card would be susceptible to hackers and increase the likelihood of fraud and identity theft.
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 36
Did you mention acceptance?
There are all kinds of books, movies, documentaries about
666, the mark of the beast, how world tyranny comes about
by this kind of thing ... which may be totally groundless, yet
a lot of people don't like it.
Say we get dependent on being able to ID people, and then
some technology comes along to make the cards we do have
easier to countferfeit, do we end up having to embed chips
in our brains, where is it going to end?
I don't know how this can happen but there needs to some
some kind of world-wide civil liberties conference and some
rights maybe posted and adopted by the UN for all people.
Who is going to enforce them though.
Also ... what about the goverment and the CIA for example.
If we have a foolproof untamperable system we will not have
covert agents anymore ... of course we will.
I agree with Olga, but the need for this is pretty great and
overriding.
Another thing is this RFID technology, and how some groups
wants everything that is sold to have its own RFID number, and
then everything that we do, place we go, food we eat, book we
read, out whole lives are out there ... how can we trust ourselves
with this ... and how can we avoid it?
Are you realy going to track the Democrats?LOL
There are so many loopholes in this program. With the technology we have today why cant we use DNA as ID? There is no fakeing DNA and if we had DNA samples on file for everyone that is Legal wouldn't taking DNA from those not in the system and not showing in the system point them out?
LOL - it's a brave new world
change and economic growth is probably going to be
going up by 7x - talk about future shock. Is there time
for nostalgia, or do we need to start really putting a
lot of effort into understanding the need for this and
educating people, and coming into some reasonable
compromise.
Scientists and business people are telling/lobbying
polititians right now about how ordinary people can
pose a huge threat the country by things they can
do rather easily .. like in Iraq right now. Lucky we do
not have insurgents, but how many would it take to
shut down the US and scare the bejeezus out of
all of us? And it gets worse in the future.
That is why they want to be able to track everything.
I have an idea ... let's kill two birds with one stone ... let's
impose a national ID on all Iraqis first and debug the
system while we find the terrorists, then we will know at
least some of the tricks that can be used to control a
population and maybe can understand what is being
created by this while stopping terrorism in Iraq.
Pandora's box has already been open for a while.
Finally the most often heard opposition to such a card revolves around the invasion of privacy.
Even if usage of the card is initially limited the temptation to use the card for other purposes is too great.
We could use it to track
pedophiles *
career criminals
political dissidents
Democrats
*Did you mean to say Republicans (isn't that a code word for them) here, considering that you mentioned Democrats.... I didn't know that one party had the lock on Americanism. If we listen to the words of George Washington, he railed in his Farewell Address against instituting a party system here in the USA.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977007628
This was something I touched on sometime ago and I think that I might repost it... Interesting article nonetheless, you get a 10 from despite my disagreement on many of your tenets.
Someone always starts this BS don't they Shun?
The reason I said "use it to track Democrats" is because I was speaking to a predominately Democratic audience. I didn't mean to imply anything about either party.
AS far as loosing our anonymity, it is gone, you have to expect that that every transaction that you make that involves an electronic transfer is tracked and stored, any electronic contact such as a chatroom is tracked and store(until after Hell freezes over), and you surely have to expect that every action you take is recorded by someone with a camera (video or still), a cell phone with camera capbility, or with some stationary (business or personal) security system. Unless you keep the cameras out of you bedroom their is record that some one will or can scan, so the tracking and survelance issue seems moot.
There is the issue of the acceptance by the public, and that will only last as long as the media (the worst offenders of digging for videos on us) as the energy to keep it on the 24 hour news (the half hour evening news is so over).
That only leaves the implementation. First there needs to be a reasonbalve time frame (use the longest time required for replacing a driver's license or the Passport renewal) that way we already have the system inplace to issue the ID cards. Next we give people a positive consequence (or an avoidance of a negative one), start with a dollar reward for getting one (a reverse of your income tax filed income, the less you make the more of a reward you get [onetim]) or you require every drivers license to included as part of the request your federal ID number, or you deny federal benefits/ federally funded state benefits without the federal ID number included in the request.
The Democrats will love being tracked, it will validate the neo-con conspiracy theory that Hillary blame for Monica, the Republicans will love being tracked because they will know somebody cares, the "greens" will love it because they (including Gore) can hold it up to show one more way that nature is being abuse, all other little groups or individuals will love it because they will then have somnething they can hold in their hand that they can focus their anger at.
The only group that may be the stumbling block will be the libertarians, because as many of them in as many ways as possible avoid any reliance on the government, so they truly don't care or need the card.
A most recent example of the potential resistance is a college in Michigan (of all places) that refuses all state or federal money, even that given to their students (they replace the money currently recieved from the state by their students so the school isn;t beholding even indirectly). That is truly scary that a legitamate college is so self reliant that it actually operates without the government money. What is even more frightening is that the school is in an open setting is a small town about hour from Univ. Michigan Ann Arbor campus, Hillsdale College in Hillsdale Michigan.
It's like my dad used to say, "locks are for honest people, if a crook wants in... he'll find a way."
> The reason I said "use it to track Democrats" is because
> I was speaking to a predominately Democratic audience.
> I didn't mean to imply anything about either party
You never know who you are speaking to in reality.
My reading of your comment was an attempt at
levity ... if you were a Republican it was a slight
jibe at the Democrats, if you were a Democrat it
was the opposite. Since the article itself was not
partisan I thought the comment was funny.
I did not appreciate the humor of partisanly
equating child-molesters to Republicans, but I
do not think Shun was trying to start anything
I just think these things start over the slightest
thing, and I am just tired of it. Sorry to interrupt
the flow, and I didn't mean to come down on you
Shun.
It needs the digital infrastructure to replay its sample to verify
it against your body basically. You can have your card substitute
for your body, but absolutely the only thing about any of us that
doesn't changes is our DNA - I think.
Think of how many movie and TV shows will be obsolete when
murders do not happen and no one has any idea why anyone
would or could want to murder anyone else, in a generation or
two all of human history will be irrelevent. Oh the good old
days when you could murder, steal, rob and rape and not get
caught.
The future is just coming way to fast for my liking.
As a Dane having also studied Constitutional Law in America, I can tell you that a national ID card and database will be the quickest way to effectively destroy the US Constitution, especially as it applies to the uniquely American flavor of Democracy - perfectly expressed in the words of Lincoln at his Gettysburg address - of a "government of the people, by the people and for the people...." and even more... the inalienable rights as so perfectly captured by America's Declaration of Independence: "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..."
One of the wisest bit of spirit and intent to the Founding Fathers formulation of a Constitution was to ensure that a George would not return to haunt the one thing which every American can say is his or hers... one's freedom within the framework of one's personal thinking, heart and hearth. Hearth here means one's home and family. One's "home" includes the freedom to move about, work and express one's self as one's heart and mind wishes.
In Denmark, for example, one *generally* enjoys all the liberties Americans take for granted... except this one thing. When one moves from one location to another... when one seeks any type of medical or therapeutic help for any reason... when you join a church... when one engages in any activity that encompasses a transaction of wealth, no matter how insignificant... when one has a television or radio in his home... when one ever calls 911 (211 in Denmark) for help for one's self or another... when one moves about anywhere where one's license plate is captured on video... when one is asked by the police to present his ID card in the many parts of Copenhagen where the police can stop anyone for any reason... when one uses his Dankort VISA credit card to buy lunch at a particular bar in a particular neighborhood... when one makes a phone call... when one joins any employment union or organization of any type... when one takes any course, even weaving for retired people... when one buys any prescription medicine even with cash, or any doctor writes that prescription even if you never buy it... And it goes on .... to where even as I sit here in my Copenhagen home and type this commentary on my broadband Internet connection, it all is being cataloged and referenced within a central data system to my national ID card number.
Now, Denmark is for the time being a very good democracy with generally benevolently-intended people to whom we have given much of our personal power by proxy (our vote). However, in the past seven years in Denmark, due to a lack of people desiring to work for the socialized system as the system gets ever more complex and less human, and due to more privatization of those services, more and more of the public services has been outsourced to private interests, including huge insurance corporations and their vested special interests. They then are given into their corporate database key bits of the government's database connected to every citizen's national ID number.
If history is to be learned from, the more power and freedoms we surrender to a government, the more that government will have a tendency to attract a particular class of people who seek more absolute power. And that eventually always has led to the destruction of whatever pattern of hopeful democracy a particular nation had hoped for. Information on people's personal thoughts, aspirations, patterns of behavior, daily activities etc. is as close to absolute power over people one can get. That has always been the pattern since the first words to any history book ever was written in any language from any culture. Plato and Socrates warned vehemently against this. Socrates saw that the Atheneum form for democracy was being corrupted by special interests (this is my own sifting of hyperbole - for what were the "gods of the State" whom Socrates refused to bow down to?), and so he was eventually charged for corrupting the thinking of youth by criticizing that "democracy." And so he was executed.
America's Founding Fathers also were wise to this, for once a society begins the path into surrendering personal freedoms, it is virtually impossible to stop the slippery slide down into absolute loss of freedom. America's Founding Fathers genius, as Peter Jennings pointed out along with Newt Gingrich in a wonderful TIME Magazine article (2003) on this subject: "The Founding Fathers would argue that it [America's flavor of democracy] has to come from the bottom up." It is far far better to be vulnerable to outside attack, and collectively learn from that, than to ever ever degrade America's "spirit of democracy." For that "spirit" is composed of the citizens, from the bottom up, who make up America. That spirit will always be far more powerful than the hugest bomb any terrorist could ever hope to destroy that spirit with. The only thing that will destroy that unique American spirit will come when common Americans willingly and blindly surrender their spirit to a top-down idea, such as a this ID card and its database, to a rabid wolf in sheep's skin.
You know, I had promised myself to disengage from further political discussion here, and focus only on my professional work as an author engaged in helping traumatized people through various therapies. But your article here provoked in me this response, and I feel so strongly about this subject, having lived and worked in America (and Canada) for half my life. I deeply love Denmark... but half the time when my mind feels America in my work, watching TV or traveling and discussing the human spirit, I cannot tell you how profoundly I love America more than any other place on this globe. In spite of all that has gone down since 9-11, America remains for me a beacon of hope for this globe, so deep in crisis from so many fronts. Don't extinguish that beacon with an absolutely horrible and dangerous plan like a national database and ID card for citizens. Therefore, this commentary and warning about your article has turned into an article in its own right. For that I thank you.
If you think we cant be tracked right now your sadly mistaken. What do you call the Patriot Act? Just typing on your computer can be tracked.
It would then be simple to identify and deport aliens. Just round them up and march them through a sensor. We could then use Gitmo to hold them while they work off the cost of their passage home.
> You know, I had promised myself to disengage from further
> political discussion here, and focus only on my professional
> work as an author engaged in helping traumatized people
> through various therapies.
That makes a helluva lotta sense! ;-)
I wonder if ants at one point were individual beings alone in the world before they became expendable, meaningless cogs the ant colony machine that get massively attacked and eaten if they don't smell right ... have the right ID?
I certainly have a vision of what this planet is becoming, what our lives are becoming what humanity is becoming ... is it avoidable?
We have spent about 2000 years programming ourselves that we are special and we have souls and we are outside any kind of physical work, in short we have evolved to where we think we are the world and we can ignore physical reality with no price pushing the externalities onto someone else. Someone realizes that someday the oil is going to run out and in response people start buying SUVs like crazy and arguing about it. We know that cigarette smoking is paying to kill yourself, lots of people still smoke. We realize that there certainly are a lot of things we are not thinking about and that our behavior doesn't make a lot of sense as a species, and we distract ourselves with gadgets, games, drugs, screaming matches, wars, blame games, Gather?
Either way, card or no card the inevitable march towards a reckoning with reality and our true nature is coming ... and I think most people are just comforted by the fact that they can play the game win some small satisfaction, stay in the herd, and die before it happens ... this is how we seem to be defining being human ... rebellion ... denial.
On the other side there may be a human way to engineer a mass culture, I see two basic choices ... we can stomp on the majority of people, or we can try to meet their needs. Stomping on people has the advantage that's the way we have been doing it, and some people really like to stomp on other people .. it drives towards a stable state.
On the other hand, maybe if enough people can see their going to get stomped on and decide they do not want to get stomped on bad enough to do something about it, just maybe some compromise can be worked I. I t's probably a long shot.
I'm hopeful of a future where each human being has exactly the same power as another, regardless if from New York or the dregs of Mexico City's garbage dump, hopefully now no longer day, since there won't be any more real national boundaries, other that cities, each with their economic/cultural specialties, and we look to the stars. But that's pretty much sf. The problem with a guy like Bush and so many others, is that they base their entire frame of service as a President not on making the future any better, since the results of his actions will come back to haunt us when he's perhaps writing his memoirs someplace safe. He has no vision, at best, and we are now living in a world where we really cannot afford the luxury of thinking that all the bad stuff out there will work itself out in some way in the future. The future is coming down on us in the express lane. We now are the metaphorical, mythical God capable of destroying our world. The decisions we now make will result, in the next few decades, a make it or break it scenario for our children. We cannot continue behaving like mad chimps anymore. I guess it's a tough one, since it honestly is in our genes. However, I do believe we are not entirely bound by those genes, since those too are part of an even deeper pattern that I would hesitate to put to words here. I think our future is 50-50, but I am very strongly leaning on the side of success. That's probably a too-out-there discussion for most people tho handle.
your calm well-reasoned posts, those are rare on Gather.
I think I would put another spin on President Bush, and that
is that he thinks he is doing the right thing to promote peace
and to make the future better. I believe he is using an old
paradigm to get there, but the governments of the world
are old for the most part, especially re: the subjects of this
article.
I just cannot get behind anyone that attacks or praises
President Bush, and I regret it when I do. Flipping to
either side of this kind of discussion is not productive
however many arguments there seem to be for it
either way it is just all or nothing from both
dsyfunctional sides.
> We now are the metaphorical, mythical God capable
> of destroying our world.
Yes, we have the power of life and death, and choose to
play God in our pride and ignorance, but we are not Gods.
We are not all knowing ... I wonder if we really know anything
at all but how to destroy. Speaking of mad chimps have you
ever read anything about the social differences between
chimps and bonobos? Another out there subject but one
that seems to say it is possible for primates to exist in
peace.
in the country, is critical to stop the invasion we're currently undergoing. It's pretty
well known that penalizing employers of illegal aliens is the key to mass deportation by attrition.
This can only be achieved when employers can reasonably be held accountable for
"knowingly" hiring illegal aliens. A tamperproof biometric (fingerprint, eye retina, voice)
foolproof system is essential for this. I've seen it on TV where we have our eyes and
fingerprints checked with a scanner light - either we do it, or we give away our country to the invaders, after hundreds of thousands of US troops lost their lives to prevent that from happening, in WWII. Too high a price has been paid to safeguard our sovereignty to give it all away now. A little privacy intrusion isn't much compared with
the sacrifices our military people paid.
\\\\The future is just coming way to fast for my liking.////
You're not alone in this feeling! If they can hold off for another thirty years I'm not likely to care.
I was taught as a young boy in school that one of the differences between freedom in the united States and government in other countries was the fact that you could go virtually anywhere in the US and as long as you didnt violate the law, no one could ask you for identification or interfere with you!
Several years back a black man in California was arrested for walking in a white neighborhood and when stopped and asked for identification he said roughly "hell no, I'm not doing anything wrong and I don't have to show you identification." He was found guilty of, I beleive, obstructing an officer, and the case was taken to a higher court which held for the state. Finally, it went to the Supreme Court. They decided that the man was doing noting wrong and there was no cause to ask him for ID! In the meantime he had been arrested a second time on the same charge. That one was dropped! BTW, he was walking like a man out for exercise in the middle of the day.
We see these things change gradualy without regard for the fact that these are freedoms of ours that are being given away by us. Not someone taking them from us, just given away. And it makes me sad for the thought of what kind of freedom will be around for my great grand children?
That we need to do something in regard to immigration, both legal and illegal, is obvious to vertually everyone. How to accomplish that is not very easy. I believe we can do a better job of providing data base information to accompany social security numbers so that employers might do a better job of screening those elgible to work here.
My Social Security card says right on it that it is "not to be used for identification purposes." Yep, that's your laugh for the day! The misuse of this number is rampant! Misuse of our credit reporting agencies using this number is epidemic. the "real ID" thing they've tried to foist off on states is ungodly expensive to small states like Idaho and has not been implemented by most.
I have a passport and that should be all the ID I need. The database I mentioned for employers could store the age, linage and known physical characteristics of the supposed card holder. If they'd hold off until adulthood to issue these things they could inlude height and weight as well as scars, color of eyes. And these, if they be work cards could be required to be renewed every ten years or so to capture any needed update. This would help reduce the number of forgeries. When I see the words "foolproof system" I feel someone is badly underestimating their "fools" just like the "childproof" lids do on the medicine bottles!
However, if they have a bio-identifiable type card, bet your socks they will come up with bio-identifiable counterfits! I don't have any really good answers to the problem but tend to oppose the national ID card on principle, regardless how many other countries in the world use one. This country used to be different! Have we got the guts to continue being different and a land of freedom or are we going to sacrifice it for some supposed added security?
That "little privacy intrusion" may well not be much but that is one of the things my father and brother fought against in WW I and WW II. To give away what others have fought for and many have died for is not respectful to those making their sacrifices IMHO.
This may come down to whether or not the United States of America can survive as a free and independent nation in the coming world or whether we choose not to try to preserve these values!
that case, all that was fought for in WWII is now lost, as the whole world will see us as
a prime place to gate crash and set up shop.
They also then disregard our language and culture (as illegal aliens here now do), and as we allow the whole world in, we cease to be the USA, and we become the world.
Those who steadfastly refuse to budge on privacy concerns need to realize that when confronted with the loss of your nation, privacy, although important, isn't as important as repelling the invasion, and preserving your national sovereignty and
identity.
I'm not sold on the idea that immitration law cannot be enforce without that. When has the government actually tried? I know there are many illegals here and no one is bothering about them. How about where you live?
I'm tempted to say we can try biometric identification as long as it's used only for employment. But that is a very tricky slope! Just like the social security number never being used for identification. We know how that went!
I still think the first thing to do is make an honest attempt to control the boarders and immigration through conventional means. I just hate to give up the country we had without a fight, don't you?
Thanks!
severe pressure on Mexico would be a huge factor. it's got to happen sooner or later.