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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."
I'd rather just have a chip implanted in my neck. Or maybe a nice barcode tattoo.
I write trance music.
Voluntary? Whats the point then? A Drivers license is voluntary.
Yeah, it'll be really cute when you can't fly on a plane, ride a train, get a credit card, open a bank account, or get a job without one...
Not to mention have email...
If I'm really good and I turn in lots of bad, bad terrorists will the government bump me up to Platinum card status?
And if so, can I get mine with Pokemon or my favorite sport's team emblazoned across it?
And how many of those things (not counting email) do you do without using a driver's license or a social security number?
Just please educate me. What is so wrong about the card? If you would like to have an ID card, something that the US do _NOT_ have, and it carries your picture and your fingerprint, what again is so wrong with that. In my homecountry, Germany, 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. It carries your address, height, weight, place of birth and your picture. If you move within the country (see above) you have to have it updated. True, it does not carry your fingerprint, but it has a nice little code that gets scanned when you travel by airplane, etc. It is compatible with the electronic readers at immigration that you guys might be familiar with. And I even think there is a fine if you do not carry it with you. So how is the proposed ID card so much different? I personally would like it if people have to register in a more thorough way if they travel with me on an airplane. Please do not get me wrong, systems can be abused and there are enough examples of that, but I do not see that coming with a national ID card system.
Could someone in the press pleas at least ask the damn question? To wit: how exactly would these ID cards have prevented the events of 9/11? The terrorists didn't have to lie about their names to get on the airplanes, they just had to buy the tickets!
And the brethren went away edified.
It doesn't sound like too bad of an idea. The problem would come from the limitations of the system. Or more precisely, what it would limit people from doing. It may be voluntary to have such an ID card, but if it's too inconveniencing NOT to have one, it's essentially mandatory.
If it's simply for ID purposes in high-risk areas, then that's fine. If I want to get on board a plane filled with tons of jet fuel and with hundreds of other people, it's okay to check and see that I'm not "dangerous." (Who defines "dangerous" here, also?)
But if I'm going to go buy some liquor, cigarettes, pr0n, or _Catcher in the Rye_, I don't want to have to use my ID. I could care less about who knows I'm buying what, but do you REALLY need to know?
The other interesting point I'd like to bring up is: Fakes. How hard would these things be to fake? No matter how hard you try, someone with enough time and money will find a way to make a fake. I mean, there's high school kids with fake drivers licenses now.
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
The basic premise of 'National ID' systems is that if we build a database of all law-abiding trustworthy citizens, anybody who does not exist in this database must be a 'prohibited person'.
This premise is also one of the biggest dangers of a national ID, and the primary objection raised by civil libertarians and the ultra paranoid.
The 'Brady Bill' background check law was written with a safeguard- all records of 'successful' checks were to be deleted. In reality, the Clinton administration ignored this limitation, holding records indefinitely.
The same sort of behavior can be expected regarding any safeguards built into a 'National ID' system.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I know this may sound like a silly thing to quibble over in such an important plan, but I think we (like all special interest groups) have a right to be heard.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. I am quite relieved to see that they dropped the idea of trying to track mod-points real-time. That would have been a nightmare!
The cards also would be instantly checked against a new national database. That database would base would link existing criminal and immigration data to screen out potential terrorists.
But AFAIK, none of the terrorists HAD criminal records. They were perfectly good citizens as far as anyone knew up until getting on those planes. So criminal data's no good.
Ah, but they did just emigrate from Afghanistan, or Iraq. That would show up on the immigration data.
So what this suggests to me, is that if you've just immigrated from Iraq or Afghanistan, I'd be allowing another thirty minutes at the airport, to deal with all those 'are you a terrorist' questions. Because that's the only thing that separated all those terrorists from the rest of the travellers.
It'd be good to see a policy from the US that didn't assume that terrorists have a big flashing sign on their forehead that says "I AM A TERRORIST." Because that's how I think they're planning on telling Osama Bin Laden from all the other robed, bearded guys carrying AK47s in Afghanistan.
-- This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
When was the last time you heard of any US citizen being able to do much without presenting their social security number?
How long before Feinstein sells (ahem, I mean, "legislates") access to this database to major publishers and media conglomerates? After all, with all the talk of encryption crippling and government-mandated copy-prevention lately, perhaps the mysterious terrorists are financing their operations by selling bootleg DVDs (perhaps even with secret terrorist messages steganographically embedded in the signal! Gasp!) and using hacked no-back-door versions of commercial encryption software, so, just in case, we should probably let MPAA and BSA use the database to correlate with any 'suspicious' activity they might notice...
You know, as recent as a year or so ago, the above would have sounded like paranoid ranting to me. It worries me that it no longer does...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
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
On that note, does anybody know what kinds of legislative action really would be needed to put this together? It strikes me as requiring a pretty close-coupling of business and government interests, OR the federalization of a whole lot of currently private organizations.
-schussat
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
If Ashcroft and Fienstien both like it, it HAS to be a REALLY bad idea. Come on, I can't think of many people who have worse records when it comes to undermining the Bill of Rights than those two.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
i jerk off a lot, its not illegal, but i dont want george bush to watch either.
"i was saying gnu-rd"
The card would contain basic information about the holder, including Social Security number, and would be linked to a federal database containing detailed personal data, including digital records of the person's thumbprint, palm print, face or eyes.
Later of course we could expand it for more specific information like your health records, financial status, political slant, religious affiliations and employment history. Of course you would not have to provide this to anyone else, but then again they would not have to hire you, provide products or services, and extend credit to you.
To handle these issues I am certain we will be asked to trust them. And should it prove to be an issue You they will take it up in a future bill.
I am reminded of the principle of SAM (Specific, Attainable, and Measurable). I then ask the simple question (the same I posed for cryptography "back doors"), "If this was in place on 9/11, would it have stopped the terrorists?" Ding-ding-ding, I am sorry, but at last count something like 14 of the hijackers were unknown to anyone. They would have had cards that allowed them to get on without an issue.
"But what about the others? They would have been stopped." No, they would not have been on to begin with, or they would have paid someone to create or reprogram cards.
So what will work? With regards to planes, no one on a plane will believe a hijacker is anything but suicidal. Even if they are not, and really just want money. Sorry, we are going to be looking out for ourselves and each other. The best security you can ever hope to find.
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.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. What's in it for him is a death-grip on the identities of the entire country. What's in it for him is becoming as important as a public utility, but having all the benefits of a for-profit corporation. What's in it for him is that this is the only way he'll ever get richer and more important than Bill Gates, and he's got a woody the size of Florida.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
If you push for this national ID card, I will give money to support the campaign of any person who runs against you.
I consider myself a liberal Democrat, but don't let that concern you. I will support your opponent regardless of his or her stances on any other issues, just as long as they advocate doing away with the national ID. They could be a member of the KKK an an advocate of dumping cyanide in our drinking water, and I'll still give them money.
Why, you ask? Simple: to punish you for selling the freedom of the people of the United States down the river.
Sincerely,
MAXOMENOS of Slashdot.
Finding God in a Dog
For your first l33t hacking job on this onerous and invasive abortion of an idea, I recommend cloning Larry Ellison's ID card.
Imagine the ease with which we can catch all terrorists and thugs since they'll all be named "Larry". What a great concept! Thanks for your assistance in this matter.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
``Wouldn't you feel better if everyone who walked into an airport showed their ID card and put their thumb in the scanner and you knew they were who they said they were?''
No Larry, I would not feel better. I might feel safer, but not by very much. Besides, is what we want to feel better about flying, or do we want to feel safer about flying? Or do we want to actually BE safer while flying?
How about that for a novel approach? Instead of trying to get the public to be willing to board a plane, why not improve safety for real? Put those National Guardsmen to work checking bags.
Do you realize that STILL, 9 out of 10 checked bags are placed into the cargo compartment of commercial jets, without so much as a passing glance? It's true.
You can also STILL check a bag on a flight, and then not get on that flight, and your bag will be carried anyway. You think we were caught with our pants down on 9/11? What will our leaders tell us about air safety when the next attack is a classical bomb-in-checked-bag-but-terrorist-missed-flight, like the Lockerbie disaster?
Edith Keeler Must Die
Uh, no. That's unconstitutional, directly contradicting Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution regarding Congress:
No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
and Article I, Section 10 of the United States Constitution regarding the States:
No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.
Look up "ex post facto" if you haven't learned what it is in 11th grade Government class yet. I'm sure you completely hate Ashcroft and will criticize everything he does, but don't falsify what he wants. He's not out to throw out the Constitution. I don't always agree with what he says (I absolutely abhor the idea of a national ID card), but saying a remark like that is just ridiculous.
Sure,
It may make you *feel* safe, but when it comes down to it, anyone with a card or a good eBay rating can really screw you over.
By all accounts, many of the terrorists were quiet, neighborly people. An ID card will only allow for these people to be registered. Secuirty is not something that exists. This card is just something to make us think that it does.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Do I get a Yellow Card as a warning, and a Red Card when I'm about to be thrown out of the country?
sulli
RTFJ.
Not yet. As AT&T used to say, "You will".
This is a dangerous approach to take. If we actually need a 'National ID system' to solve a specific problem (many Americans are unconvinced) then it should be designed and implemented in such a way as to solve the problem at hand, with inherent safeguards to prevent abuse, now or in the future.
If we build a system that has the potential to be abused by individuals, by corporations, or by the state, then it will be abused.
As little trust I have in our current government, I have even less reason to trust in a future administration's response to future threats.
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
Click for Larry's Card
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
``Wouldn't you feel better if everyone who walked into an airport showed their ID card and put their thumb in the scanner and you knew they were who they said they were?''
Where in the hell did this asinine premise that perps will behave as long as they've been positively identified come about?
Well, no. As it happens, the perps who attacked the WTC were NOT travelling incognito. As it happens, I *have* travelled under someone else's name in order to use a return ticket that they didn't need, which was no skin off anyone's nose, and certainly didn't present a danger to my fellow passengers.
If someone is willing to commit suicide, what in the world makes Ellison imagine that he can be deterred by having his name in a database?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
A man is on a train, reading his paper, sipping his coffee. A uniformed man with a gun and badge approaches him.
"ID card please."
"Excuse me, sir?"
"Your ID card please," he repeats with an gleam in his eye.
"I..I.. I think it's in my wallet, hold on." Man fumbles with his wallet as the uniformed man caresses the butt of his weapon.
"Ah, yes, this is it." The man hands it over tot he uniformed man, who checks it over.
"Where are you going, sir?"
"Well, I don't see how that's any of your business-"
"EVERYTHING is my business, sir. I'm trying to protect America from terrorists. So, WHERE are you going?"
"Why, that's preposterous! I don't have to answer that! Ever since Black Tuesday, our freedoms have been taken from us! Why, we used to never have to have our ID cards and an approval stamp to travel across the state!"
"That's enough of that!" Uniformed man blows his whistle and pulls out his gun.
"No, people, can't you understand! Help me! Help yourselves! We're being taken over by fascists! Help--"
The man falls limp. The Uniformed man wipes the butt of his weapon ont he man's shirt, after having used it as a club. The other people in the car pretend not to see anything.
"Yes sir, God Bless America. These terrorists are just like Pokemon, gotta catch em all."
Another uniformed man is going through the man's luggage.
"Hey, Joe, look at this. His laptop runs Linux. Yep, he's a terrorist all right."
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
What is the point in this proposal? Is it to make the country more secure against illegal aliens that might be dormant terrorists? Is it to prevent criminals from usurping other people's ID?
If these are indeed the goals, then I'd suggest to take a look at developed countries that already have implemented nation-wide ID cards. Namely, Europe. Why, it's fascinating.
Because you see, illegal immigration is totally out of control in Europe. As for terrorism, Spain (Basque Separatist movements), France (Corsican Separatists, Basques, Muslims), UK (IRA), as well as Greece, Italy and Germany have had severe terrorist attacks in the 1990s in spite of strict ID card policies.
How come these countries can harbor terrorists in spite of mandatory ID cards, you ask? It's because ID cards are not a silver bullet against crime. First, they can be forged. Always. France recently replaced its obsolete ID card with an embossed, hologramed, specially printed ID card, the deployment of which was a very expensive program. 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.
So unless you have totally non-corrupt officials, all you're going to achieve is put terrorism out of reach of poor students. That's a tempting solution considering what is said in some literature circles after a few vodkas. But I don't think it will be the best one.
Look at Europe, for Heaven's sake, because they already did all the stupid things before us!
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Uh-huh, right after the war on drugs.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
It's the sound of the American far right. They're shooting target practice. Maybe Bin Laden was right--we will create more Usamas. It's just that we won't create them in the Middle East. We will create them in our own back yard. Anybody wanna go into the mountains of Wyoming, Idaho, Montanna, and West Virginia to fingerprint them Bible-believin', gun-toten, God-fearen' good-ol boys and give them a number so that they "may neither buy nor sell"? Volunteers? Janet Reno? Anybody?
Maybe some wealthy Saudis will end up funding our mujahidin. Yes!!! Now it all makes sense. Their plan is for that to happen, so that the Arabs can experience "blow-back". Wow! It's pure genius. Carry on, fellas.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
> We once had a Constitutional
> republic, a government of laws not of men.
>Now we have a tyranny of
> lawyer-politicians.
THIS is the dormant stage of the Constitutional Republic. Give it time. It may take centuries to come around. Revolution would cost much more than
comfort-stricken Americans are prepared to pay.
Let's run out of oil, and be the target of attacks time and time again, instead of just "911". Things will have to get a whole hell of a lot worse before America gets up off its ass and whips itself into shape.
What the hell was so significant about September?
It stands as one of the many national tragedies that the USA has suffered in its long history, in some ways unique, but time will heal even this wound. It started a little desert-storm type of war against an even sillier enemy which is even less capable of fighting a modern war than Iraq was. What else? Did it trigger Great Depression II? Did it start WWIII?
September 11th was neither "unthinkable" or unpredictable (in a general sense). There are
plenty of far more tragic scenarios that would
case more harm and are even more "unthinkable",
but they aren't happening.
Things have to get pretty bad before military men take up arms together with their leadership against the lawful authority of their nation.
Things are not that bad yet. Period. It's even
possible that we are not heading there!!
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
What did you expect? It seems that all of the "intellectuals" in America are either ignorant about history, or worse, know full well about what has happened in the past, and somehow delude themselves (And hence, much of America) into believing that "This time it'll be different. We've learned from this mistake" -- and then go and make the same mistake, the same way.
And what's worse, is an even larger number of people in America don't even bother to learn history, believing it to be completely irrelevant to their lives. So, they trust these people on TV (Whether some so-called intellectual, or the reporter) because they must know what they're talking about, they don't interview the clueless. So they are led like sheep-- straight into a mistake centuries old, known and documented.
I truly do pity people who somehow believe that 'humanity has evolved' since then. The only thing that's changed is the technology-- but people still do the same rotten things to each other, for the same reasons, and use the same sad excuses. (Kill your neighbor, terrorize the town, and claim it's 'god's will' that these things be done.)
No religion can claim to be exempt from this; saying that your deeds are "gods will" is as old as any concept of religion. And religion is not the only scapegoat used to hide behind.
Take "National Security" for example. Such things as an ID card may actually help; but at what cost?
And, finally, some forgotten massacres in history that many "intelectuals" choose to forget, ignore, and then eventually fight to allow in the name of peace:
13 Million Armenians: The Turks roughly during the peroid of World War I (Who still talks nowdays of the extermination of the Armenians? -- Adolf Hitler)
6 Million Jews, 6 Million additional "unwanted" others: Nazis during World War II.
Up to 40 Million (estimated): Stalin and Soviet Union's hospitality.
Between 32.25 and 61.7 million people --Mao Zedung (or whatever you spell it like) According to a 1971 report by the US Judiciary Comittee. (estimate started in 1949) Current estimates are higher.
8 Million Cambodians: 1975-1979. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. After the Vietnamese chased Pol Pot & Co. to Thailand, many western contries (Including the US, Canada, and Japan) supplied the thugs with food, shelter, and health care.
500,000 dead Hutus: Killed by the Tutsis starting during 1971 in Rwanda and Burundi. It took 15 years for anybody to give it much attention.
Croatia and Serbia -- No complete record exists.
Pacifists and intellectuals will gloss over these, and lie to try to convince you to join their cause. It's the same old story. It's happened before. It will happen again. Humanity has not evolved.
Just as some are trying to convince you that a National ID is a 'good thing', people have made very similar arguments for the massacres listed above.
Learn history for yourself, and do what you can to educate others. Please.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
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.
That's rich.
Ellison sez:
Two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson warned us that our liberties were at risk unless we exercised "eternal vigilance." Jefferson lived in an age of aristocrats and monarchs. We live with the threat of terrorists getting their hands on weapons with the capacity to destroy entire cities.
George II is issuing executive orders left and right, and he's conductiing a war, though none has been declared by Congress. Ellison flies around in a Gulfstream and considers his right to land at night is more important than the San Jose ordinance that forbids it.
These two look like a monarch and an aristocrat to me.
Jefferson WAS a visionary, and his words are even more appropriate and revelant today.
Edith Keeler Must Die