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McNealy Calls for National ID Card Too
Syre writes: "Well McNealy's at it again calling for a national ID card (a smart card powered by Java, anyone?)." So let's get this straight: Oracle wants a national ID card powered by Oracle. Sun wants a national ID card powered by Java. (Even though the U.S. already has a national ID card, since the states are in the process of linking their driver's license databases together.) Is there any company that doesn't want to exploit a tragedy for financial gain? And didn't each and every one of the hijackers present valid ID?
So, what's wrong with all the other national ID cards we carry around in our wallets? Social Security card not good enough? My drivers license not good enough? Passport? Credit cards? As if the government can't find out who I am using these 'old' methods.
Exactly what advantage does yet another card have? I'm sure they'll be just as easy to counterfeit as current identification methods...
Culture is more than commerce
"Absolute anonymity breeds absolute irresponsibility"
So, Mr. McNealy, shall we assume you are now absolutely anonymous?
"I'm tired of the outrage. If you get on a plane, I want to know who you are. If you rent a crop duster, I want to know who you are,'' he said.
If you head a large corporation, I want to know who you are.
A long time ago, this man was respectable. What happened?
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
What info do these "authorities" want? Under what circumstances can they requisition this information, or ask the person to make an ID?
I can understand using it in a fully secure situation such as boarding a plane, assuming that such a thing is Constitutional and isn't yet another link into the Revelations style end of humanity, and assuming that it can be used accurately.
Of course the answer to that last question fades off into potential violation of independant liberty, as in requiring national criminal ID for renting a truck in case you intend to load it with a fertilizer bomb. But I think at least the previous questions should be reasonably answered.
How can a driver's license count as a national ID card if everyone doesn't drive, or qualify for one?
The terriorist did indeed present valid ID's, but under more careful exam. some of the id's were expired which should have set alarms off in securities head...
Larry Ellison pointed out that all the information is already in some databases, but while businesses like VISA, AMEX and others poll their databases and link these data together, federal agencies do NOT. If they did, 6 of these 19 terrorists would have been CAUGHT at entry and the attack would likely NEVER happen since they were sought for in some counties in US. How can someone get into the country without notice by INS when he is on 'Wanted' list on Florida?
The other point I've heard was that (as I've heard) Oracle planed to donate database software for the purpose of creating the global ID.
And last, but not least, the plan for global ID proposed by Larry Ellison should have been on voluntary basis to make things for you convenient and avoid these long and thorough checks of identity that will definitely appear on different wanna-be-secure locations like airports.
Get your facts straight, please, before starting to slander someone's ideas.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
There are two separate issues here. A national ID is not necessarily so bad. However, assigning a uniques identification number to each American is what threatens privacy. Having a unique ID number which is accessible to anyone permits cross-correlating databases and other methods of mining data and constructing profiles of people. Also, if there was a bar code or similar machine-readable encoding of the number on the ID card, then soon anyone (airline, dentist, grocery store, border guard, building security) would start swiping the card and recording our movements and activities in a way that would be very easy to combine in giant databases.
I am not saying this would happen, or is even likely, but it would be possible and that is scary enough.
why?
What is a national ID card good for? What is it going to prevent? Will it prevent a guy from walking into a bank and holding it up? No. Would it prevent what happened one month ago? Definitely not, based on all the safeguards the perps passed right on through.
Guess I should just say it now - Ellison and McNealy are nothing more than opportunists who are taking advantage of a bad situation in order to pump up their stock prices.
The Oracle ID card would have an initial cost of $100,000 and require a fulltime DBA to administer.
It would also require 2387 separate patches upon receipt of the card, BEFORE it is placed in your wallet to keep it from spontaneously collapsing in upon itself on first use.
Also, that $100,000 is per pocket in your wallet: 2 bill pockets and 8 card pockets such as my wallet has would cost $1,000,000 up front.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
My local Taco Bell doesnt take credit cards.
National ID Card? They dont take checks either.
Aha, We can starve the terrorists!
If you are willing to go through a hefty background check and whatnot to ensure you are not associated with foriegn terrorist agencies than you can go and get the National ID CARD. You are no longer searched as heavily or treated as a terrorist. People who oppose this National ID card will be searched and questioned.
Yep, guilty until proven innocent. That's the New American Way.
I oppose giving our corporate government more ways of tracking my medical records, spending habits, and private life. I guess that makes me a potential terrorist.
"Is there any company that doesn't want to exploit a tragedy for financial gain?"
hahah. hahahahahahha. HAHAHHAHHAH! AHHHAAHHAHHHAHHAHAHHAHAHAH!
no. there is no company large enough to suggest something like that that also gives a shit about humanity or safety or privacy, or anything except their christmas bonuses.
excess money makes *most* people heartless, evil, greedy and opportunistic. the current economic situation isn't helping things either - they only want more money to come in faster right now, because they see no reasonable income in the future.
they are owned by money, not the other way around. the things you own, end up owning you. example: ever seen someone who owns a ferarri not get murderously angry & violent when they see that someone has scratched their car? its not because something like that really matters, its because their self worth is enveloped entirely in their belongings.
so no, there is no large company that will not take every available opportunity to monopolize a situation that can benefit them - no matter how many people died to create that situation.
But we known from many studies and long experience that you cannot be objective if you have a stake in the matter, no matter how much you try. That's why scientists conduct double-blind studies. And that's why we should scrutinize both administration policies and corporate proposals very, very carefully.
I do actually think a national ID system would actually be a good thing. But I think its purpose should only be to allow people to identify themselves reliably to other humans and to establish their residency status. As such, it should involve neither smartcards nor Java nor Oracle software. In fact, I don't think it should involve a national database at all. Rather, it should be a difficult-to-forge physical artifact with picture, name, thumbprint, and a 40 digit unique number with checksum (the length making it difficult to remember from casual observation, and to make it difficult to invent existing numbers). The number should be printed in an OCR font so that it can be read and verified, but the rest of the information on the card should be deliberately hard to capture by automatic means. Such a card could then be used to establish identity for purposes like immigration, security check-ins, financial transactions, etc. Yet it would resist the creation of a "big brother" database probably better than our current ad-hoc system based on social security numbers.
Such a system would be of no commercial value to McNealy or Ellison. Would they still support it?Well...
These terrible people, taking advantage of such tragedies...
In completely unrelated break through, I will be selling white t-shirts with "Check out this shirt, I'm a real American!" written on it with black magic marker. Only 29.95.
Orders to come in anytime now.
One thing nor mentioned so far is that even if Dubya were to succeed in specifying, developing and implementing a new US ID card (ie. succeed in managing a major IT project without cost overrun or failure to provide required functionality...), what happens to the numerous foreigners in the USA?
I'm sure that the rest of the world would probably fail to come up to the US 'standards' - would an Afghan passport be accepted as readily as a US ID card? Or a Britsh/French/Japanese passport, for that matter? (Or insert your chosen US-friendly/US-client state in that sentence).
So even if the US cards were miraculuously foolproof and unforgeable, the baddies would just start getting fake IDs from ither countries, which the US couldn't refuse without significant political and legal problems.
For example, I hold a British passport, a Swiss driving licence, and a Spanish student ID - which of these would be accepted in the Brave New World as allowing me to fly from New York to Boston?
The real question that the populace needs to ask is whether or not any system of National IDs would really provide a benefit for the People in the form of Enhanced Security, while simultaneously not eroding our Freedoms. Furthermore, what will be the implications of the information that such a system provides, and what reliability do we have for the accuracy and precision of that data?
If such cards hold information on criminal record, citizenship status, and so forth, will this information be used in a discriminatory fashion? Will convicted murderer be able to board an airliner? How about someone who plead guilty to petty theft decades ago? How about people with speeding tickets? Will cards hold information on ethnic background, and if so, how will this affect racial profiling?
Furthermore, how will the data be stored? Will it all be contained on a Smart Card (easily hackable), or will it be contained in a Central Database? Who will be in charge of this Database? If this central database is hacked, aren't all records for all citizens suddenly called into question? And if this database is undetectibly hacked, how will this provide any more security than a person carrying a forged driver's license? It is doubtful that this card on it's own will be enough to provide true security. Schneier talks of a dual data system, where a user provides a password or biometric data in addition to the ID card to provide authentication. Couldn't these also be stolen or faked, perhaps not at the personal level, but also by hacking the card or database?
What about the convienience factor? Many people have said that while Americans clamor for security, the aspect of life that they're least willing to give up is convieneince. Will transmitting a query across the network for every ID card access be so painfully slow that many people will forgo its use? Will people who forget or lose their card be locked out of their daily routines until the situation is resolved? And how will foreigners deal with the lack of a National ID card? Will they be issued a temporary one upon arrival in this nation? How easy will these be to forge, and how will this affect tourism, and their opinion of "America, The Haven of Freedom and Democracy"?
I for one wonder how many of these questions will be asked by people who will decide whether or not such a system should be implemented. This is not a trivial issue, and the proper analysis of such a system will take time, time that few want to waste in this era of fast solutions and anxious precautions.
Let's face it folks; having a federally issued ID card, with your picture on it is NOT what bothers everyone. Do you think you government doesn't know you are a citizen? Do you have a passport? That's federally issued ID.
.FAA regulations clearly allow you to travel without ID.
The REAL issue is where you have to present said ID card.
I don't have to present ID to ride the bus, to buy groceries, to drive on the highway (though I do have to have my driver's license). I don't have to present ID to cross from state to state. You don't technically have to show ID to board an airplane (but good luck doing so nowadays after the sept. 11 incidents)
The issue is someone using that federal ID to track where you go, when, and how, and what you do, what you buy, etc. Isn't it?
After all we all know how to spot a real American. Check the clothes. Check the accent. Check the knowledge of baseball trivia.
What was the success of German spying efforts in WWII? Germans looked just like plenty of Americans; but few if any had mastery of baseball trivia. The Germans with American music trivia (particularly jazz) were generally in the German resistance. If you go far enough into our trivia, it conquers your mind and there's no need for us to worry about you.
The only function served by ID cards would be they would allow certain technical citizens to be granted certain privileges, when under present circumstances they will be prone to intense interrogation for not bearing the obvious signs of being, in a cultural sense, citizens. Why screw with the status quo on this one, when it favors most of us here?
Altho it would be useful, in considering a new relationship, to have full access not just to the prospective other's ID card, but also the EGO card and the SUPER-EGO card. If the SUPER-EGO resembles any of several nasty old Middle-Eastern deities, report this to local law enforcement.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
The world is an unsafe place, that was true even before the attacks. If someone wants to kill someone people bad enough he's going to get me no matter what I do. Yes, we should take precautions but let's not get carried away here.
McNealy says ``I'm tired of the outrage. If you get on a plane, I want to know who you are. If you rent a crop duster, I want to know who you are,''
He's going for the knee jerk reaction here. Maybe he should also propose that the card have an American flag on them.
I wouldn't worry about air travel nowadays, if I had a reason to travel I wouldn't hesitate in the least. If I had the money I would take my family to Disney World now. The news footage I saw with no lines looks a lot better than the last time I was there.
The unthinkable was done, it shocked everyone, but now the element of surprise is gone. Terrorists aren't going to use a commercial plane anymore than the Japenese were going to come back to Pearl Harbor a month later.
I crop duster, why worry about that, a crackpot a few years ago only needed a rental truck. He could have just as easily stolen a truck one night and carried the attack out the next morning. There's no limit to the evil things some people are capable of if they are determined. I'm sure they'll come up with something just as evil and unexpected.
How about confidentiality of the card information? I'm sure you wouldn't have to physically present you card for every transaction you want to do. Are they going to tie all of my accounts into one card? Oh, that would be great, now if I call an order into one unscrupulous place, I'm locked out of all my accounts until the banks straighten it out.
I mean I'm all for all of these companies proposing these things, the more companies involved touting their own standard the longer it will take for someone to agree on a standard. As long as each individual company can buy enough poliiticians I mean.
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
In the darkest 1950s Cold War hysteria, when U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy, R-Wi., was demanding that Congress toss aside the Constitution in order to hunt down the agents of his "red menace," a move was made by the Republican attorney general of the United States to expand the the use of information gathered through wiretapping in cases of espionage and sabotage. The proposal required Senate approval, which seemed assured as the shadow of McCarthyism hung heavy over the Capitol.
One senator, Wayne Morse, a Republican senator from the state of Oregon, stood alone in opposition to increased use of wiretaps on the phone lines of those suspected of subversion. Wiretapping phones was, Morse said, "a police state tactic." When the attorney general pressed his case before the Senate, Morse countered that, "I am shocked that an attorney general of the United States should believe Gestapo methods are needed in detecting Gestapo elements."
At every turn, and at considerable political cost, the Oregon senator fought the wiretapping plan. And his relentless defense of the right to privacy paid off. As Morse's biographer, Mason Drukman, recalls, "the bill ultimately died in the Judiciary Committee, one of the few measures of its kind to fail during the McCarthy era."
Morse's battle against the wiretapping scheme was recalled this week when, in an equally hysterical moment, the Senate was again asked to massively increase the ability of a Republican attorney general to wiretap phones -- and, now, Internet communications. Again, one senator stood up to the rush to rip of the Constitution.
U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold's courageous moves to challenge the most irresponsible and unnecessary components of Attorney General John Ashcroft's "anti-terrorism" agenda won him few friends in the Senate. The Wisconsin Democrat broke not just with Republicans but with the overwhelming majority of fellow Senate Democrats -- who were willing to sacrifice fundamental rights on the altar of Ashcroft's ambition.
Ashcroft and his Senate allies have been promoting a grab bag of police-state proposals that will do little to reduce the threat of terrorism, while doing much to increase the threat to civil liberties. In addition to seeking permission to conduct "roving wiretaps," the Ashcroft proposal was written to permit greatly expanded computer surveillance, and to permit government agents to secretly search private homes.
read more: http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/
a poem by Drew
--///--
Ellison's motives come from below.
Look in his eyes. What do they show?
You may think that smile is for the stockholders,
but his home is Hades, where all evil smoulders.
His Chief DBA is the Dark Prince of Lies,
His unholy power is version 9i.
You thought that this baby ate up RAM before?
For version 9i, you'll buy six times more!
What violence will come of these columns and rows?
SQL*plus is the reaper of souls!
To commit is sure folly; to roll-back, calamity.
A cartesian join will doom all of humanity!
Constraints are forged of titanium chains,
and triggers are hardwired into your brain.
A single long int marks your identity --
The mark of the beast is a primary key.
The language of Satan? PL/SQL --
How else would he store his procedures in Hell?
You'll live in dread fear of the keyword DELETE.
The mark of the beast is a primary key.
Oracle 9i is a harbinger of Dark!
(But I cannot say more; nor publish benchmarks.)
But you value your soul, so my words you will heed:
The mark of the beast is a primary key.
--///--
Thank you.
In Germany there is a need to carry ID at all times. Also if you move you have to register with the police within 2 weeks or be fined. And foreigners will need this registration to, e.g., get a bank account. If you take into account that wages will almost always be paid to a bank account and not as cash or check, this creates a pretty good facility to track people with no outside (cash!) funding.
These measures where introduced to find domestic terrorists that want to survive their acts of terror and it does help to a certain extend. It makes it also more difficult for people wanted by the police to hide. However it does only help against terrorists that stay in the county for a longer time and are active for some time.
It does not help to find one-time terrorists. It does not help to identify terrorists that have not done anything wrong yet. It does not help to find terrorists that have strong support from the population (a.k.a. freedom fighters). All it does is to significantly improve the chances of identifying a terrorist that moves around and strikes multiple times. That was enough reason to introduce it, and I believe it has actually helped somewhat to bring about the end of the Red Army Fraction. At least they had be far more careful and spend more effort on hiding and less on doing terrorism.
On the other hand it provides the gouvernment with a possibility to track its citizens. That is also a risk. And the worst kind of terrorism is that done by a totalitarian gouvernment against its citizens. So some balance has to be found.
One thing done in Germany in the past was to restrict access to and use of the collected data.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted and ignored otherwise.
MacNealy says: "I'm tired of the outrage. If you get on a plane, I want to know who you are. If you rent a crop duster, I want to know who you are."
Well, tough shit, Scott. I don't give a flying fuck what you demand. I'm an American citizen, and I don't have to prove it to you, or Ellison, or any other nosy bastard who wants to make a billion dollars on tools for totalitarians. If you're afraid of me, carry a gun.
When the people of this country elect a self-serving marketing dink like you to some responsible position, then your demands carry some weight. Until then, you can go fuck yourself.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
On Privacy:
On the 9/11 terrorism
Right, I understand now, SUN and Oracle are the good guys and Microsoft is evil.
Yeah. Right.
An internal passport is the tool of a repressive regime. Stalin introduced them to Russian and they're still using them.
I never thought I'd ever agree with Texas Republicans about anything.
My new license has a magnetic stripe on it and a bar-code, how much more do they need? Military ID's have the whole obverse side covered with 2-D 'puter code. If they are not using this now, why complicate it even more with a new system. Even if the contained data is encrypted, it my data and therefore unique, recordable and traceable.
What we don't need is an other level of beauacracy on top of what's already there, we need to actualy use what we have now enough to judge if a slight modification might be needed. Coordinate state drivers licenses should be enough. Maybe tighten up what documentation you need to get a license or state ID a little.
Oh by the way, if you have a murder warrant out for someone do you want the poor clerk at the Sec of States branch to freak out when she sees it; or say "It'll be mailed to this address in about ten days"? Mike Davis, spokesman for the Baltimore County Executive Office doesn't have a clue as to what deep inside the State's database when an arrest warrarnt flag trigger's a proceedure (actualy I don't either, but at least I'm not pretending to) Isn't it easier for a trained cop to stake out a mail box than to scrape a clerks brains off the wall?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Linking driver's license data between states does not make for a national ID card. You are not required to get a driver's license, nor are you required to get a walker's ID. You are not required to get any sort of ID right now, and that's the way it should stay.
Until right about the time that to conduct practically any business (e.g. connect utilities to your home, pay with any instrument other than cash, rent bowling shoes), the entity with whom you are dealing requires this card or the number therefrom. A voluntary national ID would be voluntary like the income tax is voluntary.
I was trying to suggest some ways to limit its impact on our freedoms
I think the best way to limit the impact on our freedoms is sundown clauses. Fighting domestic terrorism is uncharted territory and it will be hard to calibrate with precision how much of our traditional rights and privileges must be constrained.
At least a sundown clause will mean the constraints will all expire unless they can be justified by current facts and arguments.
I think a bigger danger than government abuse of additional powers is that a new generation will grow up without knowledge of the rights they once had. Over time, the love of individual freedom will atrophy and die from lack of use.
This is an honest question, not trying to make anyone angry: What's the big deal? How does a national ID infringe on liberties?
This is not the point. What does a national ID card do to enhance our security? Nothing. All the hijackers presented valid ID before boarding their flights. I think not even Scott McNealy, brazen as he is, would try to assert that Sun can build a system impervious to subversion. I am certain that in Germany's system it is not impossible to obtain a fake ID.
I am not at all opposed to giving up some liberties for a short time, as long as doing so supports measures that are effective. I am not willing to give up any liberties at all, based on theory or conjecture, or these days, on the bald unsupported declaration that this is how it must be. I want to know that my sacrifice means something, that it is effective in support of our efforts. Otherwise, no deal, I won't go along with it.
Edith Keeler Must Die