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Ellison's ID Card Plan Gets More Attention
fredbox writes: "A Mercury News article reports Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and John Ashcroft have been meeting to discuss creation of a national ID database including fingerprints, facial scans, etc. Other supporters include Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy. They claim these cards would be 'voluntary', much as the act of leaving your home or purchasing groceries are voluntary activities." Update: 10/18 01:48 GMT by M : Hah! btempleton writes: "Here is a prototype of Larry Ellison's new national ID card."
but what if something you say today, gets held against you in 5 years do to changing political climate?
What if something that you do now is legal, but becomes illegal, and the go after people retroactivly?(something ashcroft wants to do)
In America there was a period of time called Macarthism whre those very things happened.
The old, if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide adage has always led to abuse , and has given rise to dictorships.
This isn't theoretical, it has happened.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's a problem because I trust my own government only slightly more than I trust Phred Terrorist. Or, looking at it another way, I trust my own government less so -- with the terrorist, I know he's trying to kill me.
Basically, I don't trust my own government to do the right thing. Especially because as time passes the responsiveness of the U.S. government to Big Money increases, and the rights of the private citizen decrease. I most certainly don't trust Enron, Phillip Morris, CBS, and AOL to be interested in my well-being. Insofar as Corporate America cares about the individual citizen at all, it's as a revenue source.
There are also those among the quite wealthy and therefore influential who do not think that equal protection before the law should hold. At the very least, the rich should be more equal than others, they believe.
This proposed identification and tracking system does not actually solve any problems we currently face. What it does do is open the door to the abrogation of our every Constitutional right.
I am normally opposed to Libertarians (and libertarians), as I have problems with their philosophy. However, on this issue I believe all Americans can stand united. This is a frightening idea.
Oh, go on, check out my job.
From the Social Security Number FAQ:
"It's not a good idea to carry your SSN card with you (or other documents
that contain your SSN). If you should lose your wallet or purse, your SSN
would make it easier for a thief to apply for credit in your name or
otherwise fraudulently use your number."
Now imagine if said card also contained or linked to a database containing your fingerprints, facial scans, and DNA sequencing. Better hope you don't ever drop your wallet, or get it stolen.
You're going on the assumption that it's a good thing that they can laways track you. Some people would prefer not to have the government living with them 24 hours a day.
The question is, what benefit does this new card give us? We already have "voluntary" (bleh) id cards of several sorts. What does having this gigantic database accomplish that the current system doesn't? How would this have changed the events of September 11th, and even if it did alter them, was it worth the guy at the airport being able to print out a nice copy of my fingerprint for home use?
-Puk
- What is so wrong about the card? Let's check the parent post for some ideas:
- you have to register with the city you live in
- tell them where you live and, if you move, unregister with your old city and register in the new one
- They can always track you
- You have to have an ID card [...] And I even think there is a fine if you do not carry it with you.
I think that covers that question fairly well. Now, on to the second half of your question (which you forgot to ask):- What are the benefits of this system?
- A false sense of security when I board an airplane, because all of the nice people chose to register themselves with the government, so obviously there are no terrorists on board.
- Another piece of plastic to replace when I lose my wallet.
- Another token which links all of my data to each other and to me to make the theft of my identity easier.
- Umm...
I know us Americans are paranoid about our privacy, but honestly, don't you see any problem with the scenario outlined above?A "voluntary" ID card? Who is buying this idea? Do they have any idea what are they even talking about? Why would I "choose" to carry this? If I can just choose to not carry the card, when I am challenged, I can simply state that I don't have an ID, and they will have to accomodate me, because after all, this is voluntary, right?
So the whole system is worthless. Hence, this is just a smooth way to introduce the concept. Anyone who believes this is going to be voluntary is looney.
not living in a police state where any petty official may demand "Zeigen Sie Ihre Papiere, Kameraden!".
Yes, systems can be abused,and in the long run, all systems will be abused. If we create the necessary infrastructure for the government and corporations to track us today, they may not use it for less noble purposes now. But under a more conservative administration, after a more distressing terrorist event, they will use the database we build today to empower the big brother of tomorrow.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
...unless you, the people, fight like grim death against it.
Here in Australia we had a proposal for the `Australia Card' -- basically the same as this proposal, only not as technologically sophisticated. It was put to the people's vote (referendum or an election issue? I don't remember) and the people's response was to tell the proposers how to fold it into sharp corners, and where to stick it afterwards. That's Ok, though, because then they introduced the Tax File Number, which is a wannabe SSN -- you need it to earn an income (failure to provide a TFN is not illegal, but automatically results in you being taxed at 49.5%), to open a bank account, or just about anywhere else where you are using money in a non-trivial way.
The TFN was possible because we (the Australian population) had just fought furiously and won against a more draconian scheme, and were tired. Also, this almost slipped under the radar without comment, as the parliament rushed it through with very little debate, in the house or in public.
This may turn out to be another High Aim Tactic. Ask for something which is absolutely ridiculous, and let yourself be beaten back to what you wanted in the first place. Even if Ellison is serious (surely not...?) his overtures can -- and probably will -- be used by others with the same barrow to push.
The question is where to draw the line. How much freedom from surveillance do you want? Once you have figured that out, don't settle for one jot less! As soon as you rationalise that `I don't really need to be able to X' and bargain away the right to be able to do so, then you have just lost something precious which you will never get back.
Of course, things are rarely that simple, and some things are obviously stupid. (Such as, eg, `I demand the right to stockpile Anthrax spores'.) But the apparatchiks will use these examples to persuade you that the right to freely assemble, for example, is just too dangerous for you to have. It will not be put to you like that. It will be that some travel may have to be restricted, or that restrictions based on profiling [Hmm, you have travelled in the middle east, your family name is arabic, and you talk funny...] will be instituted `for the time being'.
If history teaches us anything, it is that `for the time being' can be translated `for the foreseeable future', and that just means `until it is no longer profitable to do so'.
Wasn't it a Founding Father who said `the Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance'?
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
All this achieved was to raise the cost of a fake ID to about 5000FF ($600-700) on the black market. The best forgeries come of course from corrupt officials who fabricated cards with fake IDs using the state-approved machines.
My goodness... physical security is not a good means of preventing copying. A well run ID system with enough memory on the card to do real cryptographic signatures would provide both security and tracability making forgeries nearly impossible to do.
A good ID card would contain a very small memory chip on it which contained a cryptographically signed message including the person who issued the ID, expiry time, issue time, distinguishing characteristics and possibly a photograph that was directly linked to a read-only id number embedded on every card to prevent the transfer of the information and signature to another card.
Information about each applicant would be captured on a machine which generated it's own cryptographic signature to ensure tracability. If in the case of a falsified record being entered into the system, you could expire every single ID card on the back-end and require each applicant to come back in.
You of course make providing false records a felony in federal courts punishable by a hefty amount of jail time.
These kinds of cards could eliminate drivers licenses and social security cards and as long as there was no physical printed number on the card itself and the readers for such cards were only issued to specific areas (aiports, police cars, etc), corporate interests would not be able to ask you for the information.
The only way to forge this particular type of cards requires either cracking the key, social engineering or some level of corruption.
Cracking the key is unlikely, but the nice thing about a realtime lookup system is you can do things like revoke CA keys and make IDs invalid. You then proceed to stagger the issue of cards with different signing keys so that the number of cards you'd invalidate if worst came to worst would be kept to a minimum.
Social engineering is a problem, but again, with a nice lookup system you could not ever get two IDs with different names. Once you registered, your biometic information would be checked against a master database to insure you haven't registered before. Obviously, registering under the wrong information the first time would lead to some rather nasty concequences down the road in case you actually wanted to have a life.
Corruption is a harder problem to deal with, but as stated before, revoking cards is not a problem with this type of system. You also have a nice paper trail which would make corruption very risky. Obviously paying the people who have control over the system well would help immensely.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.