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White House Frowns on National ID Card
sonic writes "'One security measure that [Homeland Defense Chief] Clarke didn't put much store in, however, was a proposal by some industry leaders, including Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, to create a national ID card.
Clarke said he could not name one official who supports the idea as proposed, though he said the administration does not yet have a formal position on the concept.
"Everyone I've talked to doesn't think it's a good idea," Clarke said. "
and his name is Larry.... His brothers are Darrel and Darrel
How about an official Slashdot ID card? That'd be pretty cool, IMHO.
Alcohol and Calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive.
The Homeland Security Chief is not Richard Clarke. It is Tom Ridge. Do people even read the articles they submit? It plainly says " President Bush's special adviser on cyberspace security said". I love to bitch about the editorial control of this site, but this is obvious.
Why don't you just try waiting a while before you post again in the Friction Forum?? Say, 10-15 years. The way I figure it, at your present rate of maturing, that ought to just about raise you to the mid-elementary level, where most children learn to exercise a little decorum. (Yes, I know, that's a big artsy fartsy word, but if you write it down real careful like, in 5 years or so you can look it up in the Dic-tion-ary).
On the other hand, post all the feces you want. I really don't give a shit. We just laugh our asses off at how stupid you sound anyway ...
Allen Heinrich Poetry Editor Friction Magazine
Robert Heinlein said it best:
"When ID's are mandatory, it is time to leave the planet."
The idea, raised since the Sept. 11 attacks, has drawn criticism from civil libertarians, who say it would violate individuals' privacy.
And how would a national ID card be any different than a driver's license?
~ now you know
Does the word "vulture" come to mind ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
They certainly don't have to pay for it.
When a company like MS eventually gets Hailstorm rolled out, they will have a database of a large sector of the country.
Which they will then "share" with the government for free.
Or at least to get out of anti-trust difficulties.
Paranoid?
Maybe. for now.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
Does
Anyhow, my point: this would be a good time to write to your representative. Tell him/her/it that the White House's reasons may not be the same as yours or your rep's, but that the Congress should stand behind this "frowning."
After all, "frowning" is hardly a policy decision. A few campaign contributions from major software companies and Bush will change his mind. Now is the time to say NO and make it stick.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
doesn't my ICQ number count?
Your social security number is already a national id card. Link it with a driver's license and you're set.
Regardless, this is a good sign. I also think one of the reasons that politicians are backing down on earlier proposals is because the public isn't as furious anymore. Wait about 3-6 months and few will care; wait a year and it'll be thrown in the back of society's minds. (Note: I don't mean to downplay the attacks by any means; all I'm saying is that it's human nature to get over things in about 3-6 months, of course, not including the people who were directly affected by it.)
Anyways, now that society's not as angry anymore, people are becoming relatively sane again. And in another year, we'll be back where we started.
Isn't there already some form of national identification? Passports, state IDs, drivers license... do we really need to have to carry another card at all times? It won't prevent anything, people will still be able to fake them one way or another.
Sounds like another waste of government money, another public nuissance, and another think to install the illusion of safety.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
..we have lot's of national ID cards all over Europe and no big brother in sight.
Just our crime rates are lower, our economic wealth is greater and people may drink alcohol on the streets.
The US is in fact criminals paradise without any decent resident laws (you must register where you live at the local public authority). Swift moving around, never be caught. There might be reasons for this but they belong to the 18th century not to the 21th.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
We already have a nice system to identify people that does not intrude upon the citizenry.
what we need to do is moniter who is in this country better.
1) do extensive background checks on visa applications before they are allowed in.
2)when they get here, they must register with some agency (INS?) giving their name address and phone number of the place they will be staying at.
3)have interviews every 2-3 months to make sure information is updated.
4)have the states issue diffrent drivers licences/ state ID cards to aliens
5)make the states issue a uniform and permanent number to all state ID cards (in my state you get a new number every time you buy a new card)
this may make it a pain for people to come a d do business here but tough....give the aliens a harder time than the citizens.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Personally, I would love to have one Card in my wallet that was my Driver's License, Credit Cards, Bank Statements, Passports, et cetera. However, the rate of theft of one's card with all of this information on would be tremendous. Just imagine if someone got a hold of a simple string of digits that would give them access to your medical history, banking, credit, and passports. While the idea of ID theft is for more security, while making the general populous secure, we are giving more power to the evil minded.
If i did not have to worry about crime i would love an ID card. However, if i did not need to worry about crime i wouldn't need an ID card. I still want one nonetheless, because i bet it would be cool looking!
Just my $0.02.
AJ
-------
artlu.net
Since one can buy on most L.A. street corners 1) a California Drivers License, 2) a Green card 3) a birth certificate all with matching names and photos, for $ 500 - $1500 what the hell use is a National ID card that will be forged?
The additional cost of that new card to those who can't get it legally won't generate enough spending to solve the lack of buying in this economy either.
Bar-codes of your SSN should be tattoo'd to your forearm. Perhaps the SSN should be the result of an algorythm that is keyed off your DNA, so that if there's any doubt, they can run a DNA check on you to verify that your ID is correct.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Richard Clarke stressed Wednesday that the nuisance of online vandals and the occasional hacker should not be used as a yardstick to measure the threat of terrorism to cyberspace.
So they waited for the polling data to come back before they wrote the response. Frowns, my ass. They found out the average joe is not that much of a sheep. Uh-oh, time to duck and cover
1Alpha7
Live to be Moderated
Reports in The Observer reported on 30 September that an ID card will be introduced, which will be mandatory "to use public services, including schools and hospitals, under plans being drawn up by the Home Office" however Home Secretary David Blunkett and Lord Rooker said on 1 October that there are no plans to introduce legislation on ID cards this year or early next year. Surely this is going to create more questions that it raises? Good article about it over at Privacy International too
Join the Free Software Foundation
http://www.templetons.com/brad/oracard.html
There's a nice prototype of the national id card.
I thought Tom Ridge was homeland defense chief?
Everyone seems to say that one of the main problems wiht a National ID card is identity theft.
It is my beleive that if the system was implimented properly it would make identity theft so hard it is almost impossable.
Think about it, when you call a bank to do phone banking or walk into a bank, you are identified by a a serious of numbers and/or signature. If you know the numbers OR you know how to fake the signature then you are who you say you are.
BUT, what if you had to present a ID card which contained a photograph of yourself (hard to fake), and also had biometric ID terminals: present thumb here for thumb scan, etc.
This could be taken to the next level in the future with devices that can plug into your computer or telephone to do the same thing. If you log onto your banks web site, they say "insert your thumb into your thumb print scanner now" - Your thumb print scanner then transfers the encrypted data to the bank for verification against a database.
Like we've said before each time this comes up.
WHATS the point of ID's? We have drivers licences and passports and state ID's and All this other stuff. We also must remember that we are at war with terrorists. They kill themselves while they kill others. They don't care if you know who they are/were. Matter of fact, they probably prefer that you DO know.
Don't Tread on Me
...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'?
When did they start talking to /.ers??
Any nation ID card will fail, and probabally make it easier for "terrorists" to enter the country due to a false sense of security. Once the card is reverse engineered, some millionaire with a grudge will buy/have made equipment to produce them or modify them. The ONLY way a national ID card could ever work is if the card were tied to a national database and that database had unique information on the individual with the card, such as genetic, retinal, or finger prints. You think there was a stink when people had to register their guns, just imagine trying to get the entire population to do this.
Now with that said, I wouldn't totally discount the idea. Why not require all foreigners over on visas submit thumb prints that are tied to cards? It would make it harder to "legally" enter the country on a stolen or counterfeit visa, though of course not impossible, but considering the paranoia in the US now it would make a "sleeper agents" job a bit more difficult.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Clarke then followed up with some remarks about Larry Ellison:
"As far as anyone can tell, the only real supporter of the scheme is that Larry Ellison guy. He is so obsessed with being richer than Bill Gates that he will use any occasion to pimp out Oracle. I think it has something to do with him being a caveman; anyone with that much testosterone is obviously going to have a hard time coping in an industry where nobody really gives a damn about penis size."
ID's are, in a sense, already mandatory. Think about this. How do you open up a bank account? How do you get a job? How do you prove your age? I could ask hundreds of questions... but the answer is always the same:
A Government Issued ID Card
State Driver's License
State Identification Card
Military ID
Military Dependant ID
Passport
I'm sure there are other official forms of ID, but these are the 'mainstream' ones.
At least one of these is necessary 99% of the time as proof of identity or age. You don't need one, but how much can you really do without one?
When I was in college (in Michigan, natch) we had a SmartCard Student ID that you could put up to $50 on (on the SmartChip or whatever). Almost nobody used it, though, after having filled it up and then lost it -- that $50 was nonrecoverable, as transient and easier to lose than cash, and extremely easy to use if someone else happened to get it.
The last thing I'd want to have is a SmartCard with my SSN et al.
Imagine what would've happened to Sandra Bullock if she had one ;-)
On the other hand, the faster it goes into effect, the less time M$ will have to try to get it based on hailstorm. Thats all we need:
terrorist: "Just a few bits of code, and a buffer overflow, and my name changes from Achmed bin Muhammed, terrorist to George Johnson, stock analyst."
Microsoft: This tragedy was not our fault, we blame BUGTRAQ for releasing news of this vulnerability to the public.
Maybe Larry needs to spend more on bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H campaign contributions if he wants his ideas to get a warmer reception in DC.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Just like Russia back in the good old days.
Except here officers would say please after asking for your papers...
This is a horse that just won't die, and it worries me how many people are actually considering it. At least here in Alberta, our premier knows what to think of National ID cards.
-AlPhAbEt
National ID cards are a stupid idea, and EULAs, lawyers and general scruing are no longer just a nusance but part of Americana
Faithful /.ers probably noticed slashdot was down all afternoon. Since they won't tell you why, I will.
Timothy posted 4 troll articles, causing the troll filter to kick in, banning slashdot's ip address. The slashdot/osdn staff was too busy checking monster.com for job leads to notice. Fortunately, the janitor rebooted slashbox, so everything is back to normal.
nice and quiet, you have enough peace and quiet to do your business.
btw, what's your record for size or width or turds? I once shitted a log the size of a baseball bat.
Who here (above the age of 16) doesn't carry some form of ID with them every time they leave the house? (Your reply does not count if you are currenty wanted by the police of any nation in the world.) I've got my driver's license with me everywhere I go. It's dumb not to have a credit card with you, in case of some sort of emergency or whatever. Anytime you do something involving alchool, you've got to have proof of your age, so on weekends... Now, it's not as if the US government doesn't already keep records on everybody, SS#, plus whatever they do for foreigners. Theft and counterfeit duplication of a National ID would be a problem, but the problem is worse right now. All you've got to do is fake a SS card and a birth certificate, and you have got your victim at your mercy. And SS cards are easier to fake than driver's licenses. (You don't even need to fake the SS card. The only requirement for a replacement SS card is one form of ID, which may include a student ID.) Big Brother is not here, nor will be here in America in the foreseeable future, but we don't have the option of being anarchists either.
This is not to advocate big brotherism, but look at it from a different angle. I believe that national, standardized ID cards are a good idea for a different reason than simply national security. In my line of work, I often have to check drivers' licenses and other identification (I'm a store clerk, so I need to verify signatures on credit cards and for checks). Sometimes it's difficult to find the ID number on a card-- especially out-of-state cards-- so having the cards standardized would be a great help.
Also, it could cut down on the incidences of underage drinking and other vices. Many people I know get out-of-state fake IDs because they're often so blasted confusing that bouncers and clerks don't even bother to check them. Of course, on the other side of the coin, sometimes perfectly valid IDs are destroyed because they're foreign and assumed fake.
I'm not proposing anything like the "Identi-Eeze" card (from Douglas Adams' "Mostly Harmless"-- basically, it had everything and if stolen, could royally screw you over), but a standard photo ID card couldn't hurt things.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
that's funny, mine says "666"
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Isn't a passport like a National ID Card?
5.) a few states issue non-photo licenses--therefore you have a document that allows you only to drive a car, and doesn't work for ID purposes.
I can't see how a national ID card can be an invasion of privacy. It's not like you'll have to idenitfy yourself more often than you do nowdays.
Local id-cards can be used just as easily to monitor people. It's just question of smacking the databases together.
Here in Sweden we have a national ID card and I don't get stopped by the police every twenty seconds. Ohh, and for the record, we dont have to carry the card with us.
The point of the ID card should be to demonstrate that you are who you say you are. Income, place of employment, etc. should not be on the card, just the minimal data needed to prove that you are a citizen.
First of all, Selective Service (AKA the draft) does not include women. So its only manditory for half the population.
And secondly, it isn't an ID. People don't ask for selective service ID numbers when you board planes or whatever.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Asked about Clarke's disklike of the national ID card plan, Ellison was quoted as saying, "Ok, so no ID cards. How about every citizen is required to purchase an Oracle Database Enterprise license? C'mon, folks, I get to make money off of this somehow, right?"
"Understand you're having a little Jimmy Page trouble."
Does /. have a split personality today?
Yes, it does. There are more then one editor, so if one doesn't like a story, it gets trashed. If someone else likes a story later, it may get posted. That explains the situation where someone submits something, gets it rejected, only to see it on the site a month/week/year later.
It's also possible you submitted your article after the original one was put in the queue.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
When a company like MS eventually gets Hailstorm rolled out, they will have a database of a large sector of the country.
.NET My Services previously known as hailstorm, would be a system for centrally storing all the user info from Hotmail/Windows XP users that decided they want Microsoft to be the central arbiter of their information.
At best,
Oracle and Sun on the other hand decided to use the an incident that involved the most deaths by violent means on American soil in over a century as a chance to hawk their fucking software. People on Slashdot like the bash Microsoft because their software is buggy and they put a couple of greedy startups out of business yet when people sink so low as to use the deaths of their fellow citizens as a cheap and guady way to make more money WHERE THE FUCK IS THE OUTRAGE?.
Here's my take on it...Prototype of US National ID Card Unveiled
PS: What's interesting is that besides being one big ad for Oracle and Sun products not one person has shown how a national ID card would have prevented the acts of September 11th. Heck, it isn't like teh airlines weren't already asking for ID before people boarded the plane or are Ellison and McNeally suggesting racial profiling where all foreigners fly on seperate flights from God Fearing Americans?
Will a 'national ID card' (a passport is about the same, only bigger, right?) have to be with you all the time? So what? Your credit card and your driver's license probably are, too.
Don't get paranoid here! I just heard that all the indices and warning signs about 09/11 have been in the FBI/CIA/NSA databases loooong before. Yet no one was able to filter out the unnecessary bloat. Believe me, they have more important things to do than to, er, what exactly what they cannot already do today?
Use The Source, Luke!
You mean you might get coupons in the mail for your next dose of Amoxicillin?
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
In Canada, Income Tax was introduced sometime in the last century as a method of dealing with war debts if I don't miss my recollection. This "Temporary Measure" has proved to have remarkable staying power. Decades and decades later, and still going strong.
Hmmm. Kinda like the Liberals getting elected with a plan to repeal the GST (VAT-like tax). They never did. Hmmmm.
Temporary measures tend to not be. Governments tend not to repeal measures giving them more money or power.
The old RPG Traveller (by Marc Miller) captured this by pointing out (in the rules for generating worlds) the relationship between high population and oppressive government and between oppressive government and high levels of law and law enforcement.
It was only a game. But strangely reality seems to be following pretty much the pattern they mapped out....
Tomb
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
As much as my inner civil libertarian likes the White House backing away from a national ID card, I really have to wonder at that last comment. Specifically, if you have some way to correlate data between multiple cards (DMV databases, social security, etc), isn't it the same thing as having a national ID? Mine just happens to say "California Driver's Liscence" on the front while yours says "M.I.T. Student ID." It just takes one giant database record merge to put the whole mess together.
It seems the civil liberty issue is not the use of a single card (as symbolic as that might be) but the sharing of the information already out there. The "record merge" can already be done under limited circumstances (e.g. manually by a detective with warrants to search records at all the instituions). The real problem here would be the wholesale sharing of that information, especially electronically for any bureaucrat with too much free time to peruse.
Viewed from that point, I don't know whether to relax about a national ID card (since the thing essentially already exists) or freak out in panic (for the same reasons).
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
First of all, BB is much more in force in Europe then he is here in the US. Think EU regulations wanting to keep all voice/IP transactions on record for seven years. Think the crypto laws in the UK. Hell, think about the video cameras on the streets in the UK! That's not Big Brother!?
Anyway, I seriously doubt that the ID cards have anything to do with the crime rate in various EU countries.
And America's economy, even now, is greater then any individual EU state. I'm not sure if we're bigger then the EU as a whole, but then you guys don't have "EU ID cards" do you?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I am sorry but I don't get it ?!
What would you show to proof your identity to someone? Your birth certificate ?!
State drivers liscenses now require Federal Slave Serial Numbers on them (SSN) and most states also require some sort of biometric - thumbscans etc - therefore its a de facto national Biometric ID card.
... so much as a decrease in security. Think about it, one card that authenticates you for flight, voting rights, liscense, etc, can be printed by ONE card printer. On the other hand, faking a driver's liscense, passport, and stealing a SS# involves lying, printing fake watermarks, accumulating realistic stationary, and is a real pain in the ass. Compare all of that to making one card with a magnetic strip on it. From what I've heard, people have already cracked ATM card encryption. How long would it take to break something the gov't made?
unlike the US which slaps you on the wrist and sends you back out to commit more crime.
What the hell? Have you ever even looked at the stats? The only 'civilized' country that has a larger percentage of it's people in jail is The People's Republic of China. America is far, far 'tougher' on crime then any European country (measured in the number of people in jail, measured by the punishments for various crimes, etc). Yet our crime rates are higher!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Why is this story posted under "Your Rights Online"?!
;)
Not everything is online, the ID card was intended for the real world.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
that would be taking away things for each individual state to do... and then people will be like "why do we have states again?"
my $0.02
I'm sure you'd need a PIN/password as well as the ID number to get your med history, etc. In theory, you'd probably want to tie it to a biometric as well, not as a catchall but as a 'backup' to make sure you're the real person. (IE, you'd need to have the card, the pin, and the biometric to access the data).
I'm not for the id card, but I don't think it's quite as bleak as you predicted.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
"Everyone I talked to doesn't think it's a good idea."
I wonder if defending proper English grammar falls under the jurisdiction of "Homeland Defense".
Probably not.
I say we should create a new war department, the department of "English Grammar Defense". I wish to appoint my high school English teacher, Mrs. Johnson, to head up this new department.
Thank you for your time.
i hear you man..really long turds are nice to crap out, it's almost like a colonic. The wide ones tear up my sphincter, it's all bloody and my ass hurts for days.
Your social security number is already a national id card. Link it with a driver's license and you're set.
They allowed that, then mandated it, several years ago.
If you didn't have to provide your SS number the last time you renewed, expect to have to produce it next time.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Lots of comments here talk about the photo driver's license as being an ID card. Other than a few states still issuing non-photo licenses (VT and NJ for instance, and a bunch of others if you have a religious objection to being photographed)I more or less agree with this statement.
I like to say this about photo licenses:
"Like a lot of government programs, the photo driver's license is incapable of solving the problem that didn't exist until it was created."
Remember, photo licenses are fairly new docs. No state had them prior to 1967 (most did after 1974. The theory I have for this has to do with controlling draft dodgers...but I'm still working on the evidence.) Over and over again though, the fact came up that the photograph was not added to the license for anything to do with actually driving an automobile. (The non-photo license is more than adquate for administering motor vehicle law.) And I say to those who say that DL is optional--in most parts of this country, it is very hard to live life without it.
I can go on about this for a long time...but this is my main idea concerning this issue. DMV's now suddenly have the obligation to be identity controllers. There is some type of diminishing returns on the ability to do so with the population of your state. The fact of the matter is, your security system is only as good as your biggest weakness, and with driver's licensing, your biggest weakness is the fact that you have millions of cards out there issued by thousands of DMV officials. How anyone could think you could have a secure system with those types of numbers is unexplainable to me.
My fear is that we're gonna get into some vicious circle (which has already happened.) Photo's get added to licenses--identity theft begins. holograms get added to licenses--people trust the document more, but then it becomes more useful, so fraud gets worse. fingerprinting is thought to be a good idea, so we lose our privacy, and in the long run the document becomes even more valuable and then it costs $5000 to get a fake license--but it's worth it to the criminal who then can cash out a $50,000 bank account. What's next? As far as I am concerned, we're screwed, and I'm calling up my state legislator demanding that she introduce a bill making the photo optional on our state licenses. I think it's the only way to avoid the stupidity in the long run.
Almost nobody used it, though, after having filled it up and then lost it -- that $50 was nonrecoverable, as transient and easier to lose than cash, and extremely easy to use if someone else happened to get it.
:(
Here at ISU we have the same thing, except the data is stored encrypted on a mag-stripe. The only problem is that the mag-stripe starts to ware down, and you're FUCKING MONEY GETS ERASED! I'm not kidding. I stuck my card in the machine, it says "read error" and pops the card back out with $10 missing!
Oh and of course it's the only way to pay for laundry service
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
> brother in sight.
You don't? Are you sure?
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
Why would the White House frown on a national US ID card, when it was all in favor of the strongly authoritarian "PATRIOT" act?
There's a weird undercurrent in USA Right Wing politics against things like national ID cards. The more crazed Republicans ("Black Helicopter Republicans", sort of like "Log Cabin Republicans", only the average BHR gets less respect) usually believe that national ID cards equate to the "Mark of the Beast". I can't really believe that consideration of weird, fringe beliefs keeps the current White House from doing the national ID card thing.
We're all happy with having a SSN, a driver's license, and a passport. I can't leave the country without my passport, and I can't do anything of consequence without a SSN and/or a driver's license.
Just take the driver's license itself. I can't even imagine trying to do things without a DL. Forget cashing a check, how about opening a checking account in the first place? Certainly I would need st least a SSN for that. I can't work without a SSN (at least "over the table").
Why are we happy to let each individual state do something that we fear the national government doing? Think about this: which do you trust less, your particular state, or the feds? I've definitely lived in states where it would go both ways, myself.
Come on, give it up, that's
It isn't actually very surprising to be hearing this from the Whitehouse. Republicans have traditionally been against national ID cards, in fact I remember republicans railing against the Clinton Health Care Plan because it could have implicitly created a national ID card.
There are still some ethics in Washington, surprisingly.
and it's not like anyone didn't just see this as a ploy to sell more copies of Oracle anyway.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Kind of scary. It always seems to be either careless apathy or raging stupidity. Can't we ever get people to think soberly about the dangers facing us without going off the deep end?
Clarke said he could not name one official who supports the idea as proposed, though he said the administration does not yet have a formal position on the concept.
If they ever DO mandate a national ID card/number I want it to be mandatory to provide it for registration in federal elections and to be collected federally and checked for uniqueness. That would go a long way toward eliminating election fraud.
"Everyone I've talked to doesn't think it's a good idea," Clarke said.
Which is why I almost didn't post this, for fear of turning more Republicans on to the idea of national ID cards than it turns Democrats off from it.
In case you haven't been following the issues, it's primarily Democratic legislators who have been in favor of a national ID card and other tightening of citizen tracking.
But the Democrats are the main beneficiaries of the votes of illegal/undocumented non-citizen voters. So they have also been strong opponents of voter verification and proponents of unexamined registration and voting schemes such as "motor-voter" and always-absentee-without-reason voting.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
...have national ID implants? even scarier!
Keep in mind that in most of Europe, businesses can not just freely sell your information to the highest bidder. A recent CNN/Money article listed seven infomation "brokerage" firms that an American needed to contact to get off most mailing lists. Even then, if your information was originally on one of these lists, someone has already purchased it.
In Europe, most citizens would not let businesses get that far out of hand. Of course, many Americans would argue that comes at the expense of a loss of other rights by citizens as well.
Europe's privacy rules reguarding information are so strict that they actually considered *stopping* doing business with the United States. "Fortunately," they decided to let individual businesses dictate their privacy policies in the US in order to business with their European counterparts.
Instead of a wakeup call, it seems that influcence has caused many to fall asleep at the wheel. Too much of this is asking for an accident.
There are circumstances where a Citizen qualifies to vote but does not have or need an SS number.
There are a few duplications - both multiple people under one number and people with more than one number.
Non-citizens have SS numbers legally.
Criminal conviction status and other issues that might affect eligibility to vote aren't attached to SS number (with the possible exception of military discharge status).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'm a immigrant in the US and this new ID card would surely just make our life much harder and would allow the US the explot undocumented immigrants even more. For those of you who don't live in the US: Here the undocummented immigrants are the ones who clean at night and work at the jobs that no other person would do, and the pressure of an national ID would push them deeper underground making them more vulnerable to abusive work conditions. besides that it would limit the personal freedom of the average citizen, this measure looks like taken from a dictatorship!
If you think I'm going to let someone use one of those damn tattoo things on me, you're nucking futs! Those things HURT! Plus, they mar your appearance! FORGET IT!
Great answer! Now if only I could make a list of the Jessica Alba lookalike's in my area...
:)
heheh
Come on, moderators--rate this up!
Without explanation, this certainly doesnt deserver +5 anything...
I actually like using my US Passport for identification. It is accepted almost everywhere a driver's license is, but it does not show my street address or phone number. It is a nearly pure identification credential, and other than providing space for foreign consuls to note where I have visited abroad, it has no other use than to prove who I am and that I am a US citizen.
Edith Keeler Must Die
They allowed that, then mandated it, several years ago.
Maybe in your state. Not only did I renew mine last August, I was changing to a different state. Didnt need my SS#
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
What really blows my mind is this strange addiction to smart cards... digital ID? smartcard smartcard!!!!!!
smartcards suck. The readers are overpriced, the cards are delicate and cannot be worn on the person without clothing or in the shower.
I have an Ibutton ring, I shower with it on, If I'm buck naked (Ok all of you can stop going Ewwwwww!) I still have my ibuton on me. It stores more, can do more(Java VM built in) is pretty much indestructable (stainless steel) and is super secure/tamper proof. (Open the ibutton can and it releases the inert gas inside and causes the silicon inside to quickly erase/destruct)
I log in my computer, unlock my home's doors, and open the garage door with it. I also store my bank accountnumbers inside and when in my reader that cost a paltry $15.00, it also stores my login/password for websites and automagically logs me in.
granted the java ring is expensive ($75.00) bit the ibuton in single price quantity with 32K of flash storage is around $5.00 and about $2.00 if you are only interested in a ID.
smartcards are $5.00 each in lots of 100, the reader is horribly overpriced, and durability is not there by any means.
A national id is a horribe idea, but thinking of using a smartcard for it is plain stupidity.
About as stupid as thinking that Oracle was being nice and generous by offering to design the database.... Geee, what humanitarians.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Barcode tattoos on peoples' forearms?!? That's a ridiculous idea!
The tattoos should be on people foreheads. That way a computer can scan a crowd of people rapidly, provided there aren't too many hats. Forearms aren't nearly as visible.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
One White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, was quoted as saying:
<Nelson>Haw ha!</Nelson>
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
I think I am more comfortable with this than with my data sitting unencrypted, on some doctor's PC somewhere. Otoh, can you imagine teaching a whole nation how to create and use pincodes longer than four digits? Scary.
There will be a day when one needs a card to legally exist. It's sad really.
They've already well on the way with the "optional" ID/tracking systems.
Latest is to help with airport security, but we already have ez-pass, and mass transit cards. All "optional", priviledged, and deeply cross referenced via SSN.
The process is simple. You APPLY/PLEAD for them to do background/credit check, they build and maintain a dosier on you, assign an ID, and you breeze right through or get cents off the fare.
Next step, people start bitching they have too many IDs. In comes Microsoft, or similar, and offers to "manage" them all under the likes of their "Passport" concept.
End game... One ID.
Then, like like finding a job without a degree, the only question remaining is "Why don't YOU have one?". We don't need trouble, we only deal with people who are "with the program".
How are they're tracing the steps of that detached anthrax case in NY? By using her subway access card. When, where, and how long for every significant movement she made.
Personally, I'd rather they just cut to the chase. They're doing to do it anyway, at least they can minimize the tax bite as they cut through so many of the pointless intermediate steps.
I don't know how many of you out there have noticed it. It is happenning, quicker than any of us, including myself, want to believe.
I used to think it was several years off - maybe even a couple of decades or more. The signs are there. There is unrest in the land - it was there before 9/11 - that only caused it to flare up more. You can feel it, you can see it - in peoples reactions, in peoples discussions, in their attitudes.
Something is stirring - I dare fear that something big is going to happen here in America - it may take the form of a massive civil war, or a quiet totalitarian takeover - I fear both, but the latter I fear more.
A national ID system will make the latter all the more easy, and the former all the easier to stop (when I mean civil war - that could take many forms - but I am thinking more about an uprising against the US government - for real or perceived injustices against the American people - or an uprising against the corporate "masters" - I don't know for certain).
It is just something I feel - I hope that I am REALLY WRONG on this.
Does anyone else here feel this way, and know what I am getting at?
Am I the only person that is in favor of this?
I had an idea of a system after the attacks that involved a national ID card, after asking myself questions about how could this sort of thing have been prevented through domestic intelligence. A couple of days later I saw Oracle was proposing the same.
For one thing, a system like this might not be as naive as one might think. It can track a lot of things. Take a look at what the casinos do with those stupid little value cards or whatever they call them. A system like this could give the intelligence community the ways and means of tracking patterns of activity, and potentially flagging individuals as suspect.
I do not think that such a system would automatically thwart any attack imaginable, but it would at least give our intelligence officials the information available to look for a potential threat. Put the information there. Give them the responsibility of what to look for.
Instead of griping about Oracle trying to profit from the attacks by proposing a system like this, maybe we should really start thinking about what a system like this could really do.
I recently moved from the UK to the US. In the UK, you can pretty much live happily with no ID.
Here in California ID is required for everything. For example, I just (20 minutes ago) requested some info about cable modems. I needed to provide an ID number before getting any info!
Okay, so I don't have a Californian driving license. I don't have a social security card. If I didn't have a UK passport I would be pretty stuffed. That would mean: no bank account, no apartment, no TV, and (most importantly) no Beer.
So I have to carry my passport everywhere (and risk losing it - which would be a real bummer). I figure it is okay to leave it with my clothes whilst surfing off pacific beach, but technically that's against the INS rules.
Presumably all Americans need to carry their driving license nearly always. That sucks.
So, overall, I don't think a national ID would make any difference to anybody's privacy, and it would make going out considerably easier. (Gesh, half the doormen at bars/clubs don't know where to find my photo in my passport).
Where's any mention of Sun? I haven't even heard of Sun being involved. Did you read the article?
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
I myself am working on software for Traveller. Called travtrack, it is in the middling stages. It's very cool, using gtk+ and glib for data structures, classes, inheritance &c. and guile for its scripting language. Ideally, I'd like it to someday be the emacs of interstellar science-fiction RPGs.
Right now it's surprisingly far along, and is doing fairly well on the SourceForge ratings. It's just me working on it, but I'm hoping that once I get release 1.0 of both travtrack (the actual galaxy-tracking software) and travlib (the library which implements Traveller objects) more developers will pitch in.
Traveller's very, very far from dead.
Here's my little pet theory about why Larry and his bedfellows are so interested in this venture.
Everybody has a social security number. Look at your social security card. It's a piece of cheap paper that you could print yourself. Driver's licenses are more difficult to duplicate. But not so difficult that you'd entrust them for highly secure transactions. What's the point? Let's call a spade a spade. Another work for what we're talking about is authentication. Are you who you say you are? Something you have, something you are, something you know - the triptych of secure authentication. Give everyone a card with their picture on it, containing a unique code, with a PIN. What a sly dog, Lawrence. Good way to beat William to the punch, you good samaritan humanitarian, you.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
And I'm a crazy civil libertarian.
All of these points have been raised the last four or five times this discussion has come up, but:
1. We allready have them.
2. You need to be able to postively identify people.
3. Questionable identification is more of a problem for our privacy than positive information.
4. It's the stockpiling of information on the part of big whatever that needs to be curtailed - not their ability to verify the information that they are allowed to stockpile by having a centralised system for handling IDs.
Who you are, where you live and where you work are all perfectly reasonable things for the government to know! You give this info to the government and the government gives you a card. Very reasonable. The government *has* to be able to know these things in order to carry out the minimal functions of the state, and the only rational reason for someone not to want the government to know these things about them is that they're a criminal. End of story.
That said, Oracle and Sun are big democratic contributors - in spite of Sun's CEO's (what's his name, the thin guy in the hat) claims to be some kind of jesse venturite or something. Unless the Republicans can find someone on their end of the ideological "spectrum" (with rightists and centrists as it's two "extremes") to spearhead the thing, it's going to go nowhere. So, I wouldn't be surprised if some little known tech firm in Austin (probably owned by Enron) comes up with a proposal that everyone on team W thinks is great.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Your inability to do so much as type "Heinlein" into Google (~100,000 hits) is not.
If you remain unable to answer even the simplest questions on your own, how can you hope to even understand the daily news without prior spoon feeding of the history, technology, and other information it depends on? I hope you haven't reached voting age yet.
The issue here is not JUST privacy. Just think about how this would be handled... if there is a legislative mandate that requires law abiding citizens to always carry ID just in order to partake in normal life processes, then that should frighten most people. I should be able to use cash to go buy something and NEVER have to be ID'd. If the company wishes to ID me, fine... but that is not the role of the government, especially not the federal government. And if it is a law, then that means it must be enforced. Now, we will suddenly have a wide spread criminal pandemic of evil people that didn't have their ID's on them.
I am sure many others have already made the Brown Shirts comparison, but just like repetativeness and majority does not make something right, neither does it make it wrong.
Your statement:
is self contradictory. Rational is a word to describe a state of mind that would quickly enable one to quickly notice that your method of thought is the EXACT same justification used to create, coverup and forget the largest atrocities of humanities history. That is exactly what tyrants want the public to parrot, and that is exactly what our Founding Fathers warned us to be vigilant against.No, on second thought, I am absolutely SURE you are not a libertarian.
Anyway, the only data they have to work on are just that: data. Every incident, every occurrence, is fed into the database and correlated with as many factors as possible and realistic. There is a problem when the insurance benefit is high dollar (as æroplane insurance must be) and there is relatively little data to collect. On 11 Septemeber we had four commercial plane crashes. That's probably more than in the continental US in the previous dozen years, and certainly more than in the past half-dozen. Suddenly their actuarial tables were thrown all out of whack. So they corrected them.
The intelligent corporation self-insures as much as possible. When large enough, one may collect one's actuarial data, and put aside as much as one would have put into insurance premiums, and come out ahead of the game. Insurance is a sucker's bet, in the real world as much as in Vegas. Anyone who takes it deserves the reaming he will most certainly receive.
I still want to know why I am such an unlucky guy that I ALWAYS get a defective pair of X-Ray glasses.
but be careful... the way you worded it sounded very much like you were generalizing and labeling Americans as elitist. My father is a janitor and our families history is rather long here in the states. Lets not jump on the liberal bandwagon and start alienating everyone through our heartless and hypocritical hatred and bigotry
in the future, start thinking and saying the truth about what funds this. Namely, instead of saying "government" money... just say, Fruit of Extortion. After all, isn't the mafia seen as evil for the very same tactics... pay us to protect you from US.
Where's any mention of Sun? I haven't even heard of Sun being involved. Did you read the article?
Sun Micro CEO Sees More Support for National ID
I think the advocates of the notion have only themselves to blame for not presenting a good-faith attempt at that goal.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Okay, so now having public officials that don't understand and fear technology seems to be a good thing.
I think the only way to get politicians on your side of any technological issue is to scare them. From now on, we should just push the absolute worst-case scenario of issues we don't want to become a part of policy.
If the DMCA is passed, um, people could be forced to sign complicated contracts just to listen to music!
Actually, that's not quite frightening enough.
Maybe one of you can do better?
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
This guy just ripped off someone else's comment... see the original here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=22712&cid=244You can't get anything done without a driver's license, at least where I live, and the driver's license has your social security number on it, and a digital photo and thumb print that are also in a computer database.
How is that not a national ID card? Try getting by without it.
Nobody ever forced me to get a job but If I want to eat I have to make money. The way things are set up, you have to drive to get anywhere. Also, you idiots, I know that a driver's license is state and not federal, what I meant was how is that any less of an invasion of privacy. If you want to do anything, you have to have a driver's license or a state ID card: open a bank account, buy liquor, rent an apartment, etc.
~ now you know
And how would a national ID card be any different than a driver's license?
Drivers License databases are shared between states. Those records can also be used to keep track of people. So in this sense there is no difference.
However, Ellison's vision would have these ID cards linked to a database of fingerprints, and people with the ID cards, though they would be optional, would have easier access to airplanes. This could actually reduce security, so I see why the opposition (and Ellison's attempt to make a buck in services after sale).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Sooo, if you or anyone ever asks the question, "When did the government of, by and for the people turn into this multitentacled leviathan (sp?) who preys on us like so much food, and uses us as its lavatory?" You can proudly point to yourself and others and say, "When we all forfieted our responsibilities and sold ourselves to our emotions, when we quit CREATING the government and started to serve it"
When you have become a Canadian citizen, you get an ID card proving your citizenship. It's nothing new.
There are a number of problems with manditory auto insurance.
One of the largest problems is non-compliance.
Another problem is the fact that insurance rates are calculated by time period (monthly, quarterly, yearly) instead of by the distance driven. Someone who drives five thousand miles a month is more likely to be in an acident than their neighbor who drives fifty miles a month.
Both these problems would be solved by requiring that insurance be included in the price of gasoline. Everyone who drives would be insured, and people would pay insurance based on the distance they drive.
Motorists who get good gas mileage would get a small break on their insurance costs, which would provide incentives that would please the environmentalists.
Police and the court systems would spend less time pursuing charges of driving without insurance.
New drivers could avoid the catch-22 of needing an insured car to get a driver's licence, and needing a driver's license to register a car.
There wouldn't be so many advertisements for auto insurance.
You've hit the nail on the head. The 'f1r5t p05t' mentality has spread to moderation and article selection.