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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?
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.
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.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
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.
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?
This is a good argument for searching the criminal warrants DB when you run a license, then calling the police. A much simpler (and cheaper) solution that giving Oracle $5 billion and saying "make it work".
It's a good fantasy, but here are the problems (the biggest three that come to mind):
1) Price. The "ID Card" you're describing sounds more like a PDA with wireless networking than an inanimate piece of plastic. How much will that cost to develop/deliver?
2) Network. What wireless network will these cards use to be "validated/invalidated by a central server"? As far as I know, there isn't a nationwide (covering everywhere people live and work) wireless network that could provide this service.
3) Ineffective. This system is only useful against people who are using their own identity to get ID. Anybody who (gasp!) uses false documents to get one is undetectable until after the fact. This alone makes this entire system completely useless.
Nope. Not a good idea in the least. Maybe in Candyland, but not here.
Who did what now?
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.
On Privacy:
On the 9/11 terrorism
Right, I understand now, SUN and Oracle are the good guys and Microsoft is evil.
Yeah. Right.