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Driver's Licenses to Become National ID Cards
XorNand writes: "Time is reporting that the Dept of Transportation, acting on instructions from Congress, is in the process of linking together states' drivers' license databases. They figure that it'll be cheaper and easier to slip under the radar of civil libertarians and privacy watchdogs. Wonder if Larry is a bit peeved that he's not getting his cut?"
So I just need to stop driving to become a nonperson! Well worth it, really.
If you don't drive, you're a terrorist, right?
I don't know very many places that don't require a driver's license as the standard form of identification. State sponsored photo ID's are basically the only form of ID that is accepted everywhere (i.e. using personal checks at stores, getting into nightclubs, etc). Making em national isn't going to be much of a change, except for 2 things. 1) Your less likely to be thrown out of a club in another state for having an ID they don't recognize, and 2) You can't get away with speeding in another state quite as easily, because now the state trooper has access to ALL the state databases :)
I am !amused.
Shouldn't the national ID be uniform across the country? In the sense that the kind of info displayed on the card and the lay out. If it is not uniform, then it's harder to detect forgery on those ID, especially if the ID is out-of-state.
Then, the question on the on-card security add-on implies that we're effectively getting a new driver's licence ID. I dunno why don't they just enforce a single, uniform ID in the first place?
Just my 2c.
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Error 500: Internal sig error
The danger is that such a bogus ID will be taken as valid in more places and for more things due to its "national scope", and it'll be easier to get into things and do more damage than it is now (difficult concept, I know).
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
It's already the standard photo ID. It makes sense for the feds to require standardization of state IDs, so that all states have to meet the same requirments. E.g., I've lived in NY for a few years, and my wife has an NY state license...but my 4-year-old Florida license is much higher tech (plastic, digital photo, holograms) than the low-tech laminated paper NY state licenses.
You already have to show your license or something similar when flying. The chances of fraud will be reduced if we have common standards for all state ID cards.
Furthermore - what about all the states that DON'T let you opt out of having your SSN on your license. Imagine having your credit rating linked to your driving record linked to the number of bars you visit linked to your medical records....
Right now the SSN is the key to a whole lot of information - one of the few things keeping the world from being 1984-like is the fact that the databases aren't readily accessible. The more the SSN becomes a commonplace number, the more someone can track/grab your identity.
Not to be paranoid or anything...
How incredibly easy it was for them to get fake drivers licenses, SS Numbers and Birth certificates. So now if you get a driver's license in California under a fake name, you can create a person that exsists in every single state. I don't see how this will help.
If he does, his daughters fake ids won't work anymore.
:)
I'm not sure which is the scarier part of the article- the way it blythely assures you that this isn't really a significant step because the civil liberties damage is already done, or the fact that this is probably true. As they point out, all this involves is linking together data that's already kept and making it a bit easier to access. The problem is that making it easier to access will make it that much more tempting to access it for more and more trivial reasons. If it's really possible to check any driver's licence just by scanning it, how long will it be until you have to scan your license to buy alcohol or tobacco, rather than just showing it (or here in California not bothering to show it because nobody seems to care)?
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
I particularly like the tone of the article. "Give up, don't fuss, it's just too hard. Life will be much easier if you just conform." The Disneyfication of the Corporate States of America continues....
this is getting old and so are you
blog
Right now, driving is considered a "privilege" (If you ask me, it's pretty much a requirement nowadays), which makes it real easy for states to take away your driving "privileges" for accumulating too many points, etc... If this becomes a national ID card, what is going to happen to that "privilege" philosophy?
Iowa used to use your SSN as the DL number. You could "opt-out" when you got a license, and they would generate an ID. But, that was often quite a hassle as the generated ID had letters in it and many merchants had check clearing systems that flagged an Iowa DL with letters as invalid.
Of course, Iowa was also the only place I ever enountered Y2k problems. In 1997 I had a credit card that expired in 2000. Almost every place I tried to use it claimed it was expired.
You have been a number for years. Now it's overt. The technology has made invasion cheap, we can fight it or roll over. Any ideas on how to fight?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
- Decentralized database. States would be the only repository of the information associated with the DL. This as opposed to a large federal database (and at much added cost).
- Standardizing the info on the cards. This would include a photo id, signature, and a magbar for quick input into a computer. Instead of the mess in which some states don't have photo IDs, some require SSN, etc. This still leaves enough up to the states as to not trample their states' rights.
- Improved communication between databases. Because the system would be decentralized, there would need to be an easy way for government officials to request info from such DBs; because states would be required to at least store a minimum of information, it would be simple to define a query standard. This way, rules can be put in place that if information is requested without a warrent, only specific pieces could be sent. If the database was centralized, then this would be much harder to enforce.
The groups are not completely at ease; this plan would suddenly give several DMVs near-absolute power, and unless regulations are put in place, this might be abuse. They also do worry, as many have posted, that there are both legal and illegal reasons not to have a DL; those that legally lack one may be forced to get one despite not having to drive -- this may cause states to have to provide DLs with "No Driving" restrictions to be issued in general for those currently without one."Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
The powers of Congress are not all explicitly enumerated in the Constitution. The last sentence of Article 1 Section 8 says that Congress can make all laws "necessary and proper" to enable their enumerated powers. This might not sound like much, but in practice it has allowed the Government extrodinary latitude. This was a big issue when Hamilton was pushing for a national bank (It doesn't say anything at all in the Constitution about the Government running a bank), but it's been a pretty much resolved issue for about 200 years. I wonder what percentage of current laws would survive without that clause.
If the U.S. domestic response to terrorism starts to resemble Zimbabwe's, which passed a law in November making it compulsory to carry ID on pain of fine or imprisonment, well, that's something to worry about.
But until Congress passes a law like that -- and until you can't enter a movie theater without the usher checking you for priors -- there isn't all that much to get exercised about.
Er, no Frank, that's when it's too damn late to start doing anything about it.
Once you get to that stage people start becoming afraid of resisting goverments attempts to be Big Brother in all aspects of life, as it becomes a lot easier for the government to make otherwise innocent peoples life difficult by 'accidently' putting false information on the cards.
Oops. We accidentally put that you've got a criminal history on your card...oh well better luck at the next job interview.
Most of the privacy rights -- if there really are such things...
Yes, Frank such a thing does exist in the rest of the world. Here's the government body that protects my privacy and data.
For some, the real problem with smarter, more centralized ID cards is that they give bureaucrats a better chance to screw up more of your life
No there are lots of people who don't like the idea of either government or companies being able to see anymore information about them, than is absolutely necessary.
With the growth of the Internet it is getting far too easy for companies and governments to trade information about their citizens.
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
Great! So you get a fake driver's license. I mean, wasn't the whole point of a National ID card having a reliable way to identify somebody? What the hell makes them think that driver's licenses are a reliable method? You slip your friend at the DMV a few hundred and you can get a license no problem. Hell, in Illinois they'll even let you drive a truck!
It's all about trust relationships. At some point down the line you have to trust that somebody has verified who a person is and has done so accurately. As long as the system is dependent on trusting an underpaid, overworked, low level bureaucrat, people who want to get false identification will continue to do so. Heck, even if they are a well paid bureaucrat in a cushy position, they can still be bought, it just costs a bit more.
Ultimately the only people who this will effect is law abiding citizens who don't get fake ID's. Anybody who honestly wants to conceal their identity will continue to do so in any number of ways that are nearly impossible to prevent.
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Just because YOU don't have your driver's license doesn't mean that They don't have you still loaded up in their database with your picture and all your information. You aren't getting away THAT easy.
If you REALLY want to disappear without a trace get yourself a sitcom on the WB network. Both you and your career will not be heard from again.
And once there are nifty little networked readers in all these places, it'll be incredibly trivial for Big Brother to track your movements-- hey, you had to give your SSN when you bought that prepaid cell phone after the PATRIOT II passed in 2003, right?
And, of course, Big Brother has lots of annoying minions working in the IRS, local law enforcement, and collections agencies, all of whom are going to have much easier access to records than the law would suggest.
This isn't the America I want to live in. I want to live in a country where the long arm of the law doesn't have the resources to pursue anyone but the real baddies, by conventional means like the ones we had five or ten years ago.
I want this for your sake. I want you to be able to escape bad debts, a warrant for your arrest on drug charges, the ex-spouse with an unfair judgement against you. Right now you could change your name, move to another state, pay cash, and live quietly, and thankfully, never screwing up again.
But once all this is in place, you'll be sickly aware that you'll never manage to avoid the little red light on the ID-card scanner that'll bust you in a moment. Then you'll be more prone to a violent solution to your desparate situation, once escape and disappearance are no longer a realistic option. That's worse for my own safety.
(Of course, it'll please the Feds-- more of an excuse to clamp down on gun rights!)
I want to live in a country with a little breathing room, without an omnipresent electronic nanny state.
Doesn't anybody else, in the country of Patrick Henry and Tom Paine? Isn't anybody going to fight this?
I know that some of you, for your "safety", want to have a national ID card, national ID number, surveillance cameras, and face recognition everywhere. But isn't there a place, actually otherwise a really nice place, that you could move to? I think it's called "Europe".
You can't copyright facts. One of the necessary qualifications for copyrightable material is that it be "original", and facts fail this test. For example, if you copyright a map (of a real place, that is), it covers the coloring, symbols, etc., but not the actual factual meaning of the map (locations of things).
This was the subject of a lawsuit over phone books. One phone book produced sued another for copying the contents of the book, claiming copyright infringement. The court dismissed the suit, saying that the names and numbers in a phone book are factual in nature, and thus not copyrightable. If there were some novelty to the ordering, organization, or selection of the names -- some piece of "original" work -- then it would be copyrightable. But alphabetic ordering certainly fails this test.
Your name, address and personal data are all factual. So your idea doesn't really work. Cute, though.
Unifying the ID isn't really a big deal in and of itself. There's no danger to civil rights that people could more easily verify the validity of identification. The particular set of information they choose to standardize on is likely to be innocuous.
The danger of a national ID is in the way it is used. In particular, in the use of a magstrip or other machine-readable common format. Most states seem to have something like this -- Illinois has some sort of 2D bar code, for instance -- but because there's no standard you cannot reasonably expect to scan every person's card at some given point. So I've never seen anyplace where they actually use a machine to read the card.
If you have a national ID, then this would no longer be the case. It makes it very possible -- and likely inevitable -- that IDs will regularly be scanned in all sorts of locations. Courthouses, airports (whether or not you are flying), privately secured locations (office buildings, etc.)... and the next thing you know there's random road blocks (to catch drunk drivers, drug smugglers, terrorists, or whatever other justification they choose) and they'll scan your ID.
If these systems were one-way, even this wouldn't be too terribly bad. That is, if such scans only checked to see if there was an outstanding warrant or other legal restriction placed on you. However, this is unlikely to be the way these cards would be used by the government, and certainly not the way they'd be used by private security. It is all too easy to record every time you pass such a checkpoint, and in that way coming up with an extensive profile of every person's movement and associations.
Of course, much of this already exists with credit cards. And who knows... maybe they'll join them together.
Having had a few deep breaths and calmed down a bit, I'd like to add that despite 30 years of terrorist attacks (sponsored by US citizens), the UK hasn't seen it necessary to introduce ID cards.
In fact the only time there was a widespread to detain possible terrorists was the internment in the 1970's, which cause so much hatred of the UK government, that it recruited a whole new generation of terrorists for the Republican cause.
To prevent terrorists striking against you, a country has three options:
1) Stop the terrorists hating you so much that they will risk their lives or commit suicide to hurt you.
2) Have focussed intelligence agencies that can actually gather and act on intelligence data, rather than destabilising other countries.
3)Kill _everyone_ who might not like you.
The US is having a good go at number 3 (3,800 civilians so far and counting), but in the long run methods one and two are cheaper in dollars, lives lost and liberties given up in the name of freedom.
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
I recently got my drivers license. In the process of doing so, I was told that someone in Alabama with the same name birthdate as myself had multiple DUI convictions. So it seems this information is already national available to government agencies. I don't think we need to be really worried until they start talking about tying it to biometrics or something ridiculous like that. I mean, its worrisome, but only to the extent that systems like this have been worrisome since their introductions in the previous century. Not a new, or necessarily worse, problem.
As though no one possessing a valid ID has ever committed a terrorist attack...
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
I beleive in Civil Liberties and all, but is a national ID card that bad? Before you mark this as 'Flamebait,' consider much of Europe (France and Switzerland spring to mind). Every French and Swiss person legally has to have a national ID card and carry it with them at all times, on pain of arrest. They're a little larger than a credit card, and have a strip along the bottom that you could pass through a passport reader (somthing like <<;), so if it wanted the Man could bring up your entire immigration record in one go. That's the theory: in practice, no one carries them or is ever asked for them, and if you are, you can just say "I forgot." Many of my French friends have never been asked for them in their lives, even when arrested. All they use them for is to travel within Europe without carrying their passports (yes, they can even fly with them on intra-Europeen flights).
The point is, just because they have a possibility to be used for evil, dosen't mean they will be. Look at Napster: it (in itself) is not illegal, it just has the possibility of being used for illegal purposes, yet we support it. Now switch the word "illegal" with "bad" and the word "Napster" with the phrase "National ID Card" and instantly our opinion chanages. Well-legislated IDs can be useful, and besides, most of you already have one; it's called a Passport (and if you don't have one you should). They can be well used in such things are preventing identity theft, reducing fraud, and miinimizing travel pains. The key to them is well-written and concrete legislation, crafted without the input of lobby groups or vested interests. In France, no bartender can ask for your National ID card, nor can an insurer, a municipal police officier, or a private company. In fact, I htink it may be a constitutional right that only the Feds can (not sure about that). Do they have a problem with it? No, because only (theoretically) responsible people have access to the card. Legislate well, and National IDs (be them in Driver's Licence form or whatnot) can be a Good Thing(tm).
Cue The Sun...
Whether we generally acknowledge it or not, we have an excellent system of government here in America. Some of this is based on the forethought and intention of the various people who helped found our country, and some of it is based on chance, or, if you prefer, luck. Things happened in many cases because of compromise, accident, and caprice.
One of the most important unintended features of our government is the amount of play between law and enforcement. It is widely understood (among law and philosophy students, anyway) that no society enforces its laws perfectly. Laws are usually written with the inherent limitations of the state in mind.
In many cases, a poorly or selectively enforced law is good for society - and I will take copyright as an example (albeit a hot button one). We currently have an impossibly strict and protectionist set of laws protecting authors (of books, software, etc). Yet these laws are rarely enforced at all, and when they are, typically against companies or large organizations doing what we would call "bootlegging" or "piracy" and hardly ever against "informal" violations. Person to person breaches of copyright happen with astounding frequency and, looked at objectively, constitute a massive act of civil disobedience, with just those acts we know about totaling millions per minute (napster, etc). This state of affairs, where enforcement lags behind the law, has two important effects it would have been difficult to achieve "head on:"
1) Artists do get paid, and they get paid quite well. Copyrightable media is a worldwide business estimable in the trillions of dollars. Most people who can pay the author, do.
2) Conversely, lower-income and disadvantaged users gain access to books, software, and other media for free (by violating the law without consequences).
Should this be stopped via systematic enforcement, a massive chilling effect would occur across all aspects of our society, as children, students, and low-income users could no longer learn on stolen $1,000 compilers, or depend on hundreds of "stolen" texts. Programmers lose their (illegal) access to the latest tools and work of the industry, slowing feedback and development overall. As copyrighted material represents our intellectual heritage, properly enforcing the tollbooth in front of it stymies our intellectual development.
Surveillance technology such as a national ID is dangerous because, aside from the obvious potential for abuse, it allows for enforcement which is too effective. Many of the laws in our country were written as copyright law is - to be enforced using traditional, 20th century law-enforcement techniques. In some cases these laws (copyright, taxes) have extravagant penalties by way of "intimidation" - since enforcement is expected to be difficult or impossible. While new technology may be effective in improving enforcement against violent criminals and other laudable activities (for which improved enforcement actually is better), it will have numerous negative effects as it surpasses legislative intent on good laws and reduces the "containment" of bad laws.
Of course, no discussion of federal or quasi-federal surveillance or information-gathering technology should pass without further acknowledgement of the general "chilling effect" on free speech and free expression these technologies create.
When people are aware that they are being observed (even in abstract, highly specific, or systematized ways), their behavior is altered - whether it is no longer stealing a kiss on a dark street corner for fear of the mute eyes of the surveillance camera on the traffic light, or altering the way they write their correspondence, choosing not to share an opinion in a debate, or choosing not to travel. This is an implicit and often unconscious reaction to authority, and it represents, collectively, the psychological weight of being observed. U.S. Courts have acknowledged that this kind of tacit "intimidation" sometimes constitutes a breach of our first amendment rights, as it makes us self-conscious and we work to avoid an implicit judgment. It is political dialogue on a primitive level - and where those in power are actively observing, "dissent" is stifled.
Common sense can tell you that to live in a state of "freedom" we must be free of the specter of observation.
The story of government is the story of uneasy compromise between freedom and conformity necessary for a healthy society. America has had its success on the foundation of personal freedom's default supremacy; here, our homes, our persons, and our daily business are meant to be sacrosanct and immune from invasion by both each other and the state, as evinced by many of our strongest legal edicts (the Bill of Rights is preoccupied extensively with personal sovereignty, and it is - theoretically - the highest legal doctrine in our country). Our lives were meant to be lived outside the view of the government, which must be absent unless it has "probable cause" - and by and large, this is true... at least for the moment.
This is not an accident, but by design. Our government's success is based on its distrust of itself. We could still have a monarchy if we believed people in power always know what's best, or do the right thing. Instead, we have a complicated, subdivided, cynical democracy; one which, even now, functions in spite of itself, its wheels greased with millions of illegal yet necessary actions every moment. In all of human history, Government has never, ever walked it's talk, but with new technology, it might soon be ready to try.
We're on the road to Tycho.
So what if you're being identified by a number. You're already identified by hundreds of numbers - this just gives you a nationwide one. And so what if "They" could use this to track you - you already are. Weren't you ever bothered that just by having your supposedly-secret (and obviously not) social security number that someone could steal your identity? We've never had a way of proving to someone with certainty that we are who we say we are without jumping through hoops - and even then identity theft can still be committed. With a biometric-labeled national ID we can finally have a good way of authenticating ourselves, provided they develop the system right (dual-key encryption of biometrics, for starters). It beats some unlaminated blue card with no picture.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Most (all?) states will issue non-drivers a state ID card, typically through the same agency that issues driver's licenses.
Essentially it's the same as a driver's license except it doesn't license you to drive. Use it to prove your identity, residency, and age, buy booze, cash checks, etc.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The states drivers records databases are collected into a central commerical database already for the purposes of (1) driver insurance (2) car rental screening (3) job application screening (integrity) and (4) general credit screening.
Problems arise when the "card" isn't just a card, but a set of back-end databases and records that are exchanged in non-transparent ways and that you have no control over. Problems also arise when the "cards" and ID numbers are designed and used poorly (e.g., when knowing your semi-public social security number potentially can be used to get access to your bank accounts).
The problem with using driver's licenses and all the other bogus ID documents and numbers that exist in the US is that they don't work well and are being used for things they were never designed for. Self-proclaimed civil libertarians are at fault here: we won't get any good, secure ID cards and numbers as long as any such effort is immediately torpedoed.
What we should do to protect our civil liberties is to design a robust, secure system of identification, and create privacy legislation that lets us get control of who stores what data about us. Or, in different words, the complete opposite of the agenda of the libertarians and the conservatives.
All German citizens are required to have a national ID card. The card is about the same size as a passport (see below for why). It has a photo, place of birth, ID number (which is not the Social Security number -- since the national ID has its own number, there is no need for using the pension fund number for everything as in the US), physical description and city/state of current residency.
The ID card also is used in the German passport (which is why the size is what it is), thus killing two birds with one stone.
The card must be renewed every few years, with a new photo and so on; any time you move, you must also get a new card or have the current one updated with the new place of residency. You have to show proof of residency -- a rental contract, a lease or a deed for land, for example. (Foreigners have to do a lot more -- proof of right to work, proof of employment or place of study, proof of income, statement of renouncing of rights to social services, no prior criminal record, in some cases an affidavit from a German sponsor, etc.)
The thing is, the whole infrastructure of making this work is missing in the US. Not only is there a lack of legislation regulating the use and defining abuse of the ID card (privacy is actually strictly protected in Germany, at least against private individuals), but a lack of people to manage that information.
Every German city and county (Landkreis or Gemeinde) has a residency office, or Einwohnermeldeamt, where all residents (citizens and foreigners) are required to register (and unregister if you move), along with showing documentation for previous places of residency, next of kin and so on. It is a serious offense to lie on any of those forms or to have a false ID; it is a minor offense to not carry an ID at all times (driver's license doesn't count).
Because the national ID is not directly linked to the retirement system (or anything else), there is a greatly reduced danger of identity theft WRT the pension or health insurance system. (Cashing checks almost never happens in Germany -- checks are rarely used -- and for an ID at the bank, you use your bank card anyway.)
The information stored is decentralized -- meaning, while the authorities can quickly access it if need be, it's not all in one spot waiting to be abused; and no one but the government and the inidividual may access that individual's information. Anyone caught trying to misuse or hand over that information to third parties is in deep doo-doo.
What I want to know is, why not have such a system in the States, rather than this half-arsed idea with driver's licenses? As many have pointed out already, it's vastly open to abuse or chaos and won't do a thing to identify people out-of-state...
Anyway...
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Welcome to America, where you're innocent of a crime until proven guilty, but all I have to do is say you owe me money and the burden of proof is on you to prove you don't and get it erased from your credit report.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
A national ID will just be another ID for people to steal. What makes you think the post office is going to detect fraud any better than a national bank? You delude yourself to think any kind of computer program can take the place of personal service.
Get to know the people you trust your money to. If you want to know your banker, go visit him! Open an account at some nice stable local bank and get to know someone there. If you want to be sure of ticket purchasing, get to know a travel agent. The local banker can offer you the same account and credit card insurnce that the national bank does but he might know your spending habits better than a computer program. Sure, it costs more but there's a trade off to everything isn't there? As a society, we get what we demand.
Identity theft is rampant because big institutions are irresponsible with their lending. The same fool that thought automatic executions of email attachments thought it would be a good idea to offer credit cards by mail. It just screams, screw me and everyone else, I don't care so long as I'm raking in the cash.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The 9th Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people" is one such reassurance. All it's saying is "don't worry if you don't see one of your rights explicitly spelled out in the Constitution - just because it isn't in there doesn't mean that the Constitution gets rid of it."
The 9th Amendment has been brought up as an argument for the right to privacy, but to my knowledge a court has never accepted that argument. However, the Supreme Court has said that a right to privacy does exist as an implication of some of the other amendments (specifically in the Due Process clause of the 14th amendment.)
The 10th Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people" is another amendment that you could say doesn't really do much. The authoritative word on the matter was set down by none other than John Marshall (who is probably most famous for articulating the theory of judicial review in Marbury vs. Madison). In Marshall's decision of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) he said two things - 1) the people who wrote the amendment didn't mean for it to limit the powers of the Federal government because they wrote it to read "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution..." instead of "The powers not [explicitly] delegated to the United States by the Constitution...". It might seem somewhat absurd to parse the sentence so much, but for the most part members of the First Congress, which submitted the amendment in the first place, agreed that the court was interpreting their intent correctly. 2)Marshall pointed out that any document that explicitly enumerated every power of government would be too large, convoluted, and cumbersome a document to even be understood. Remember, we have the Constitution was written by a group of men who considered the Confederation too weak to fix.
What may be confusing, though, is that the history of the 10th Amendment isn't as simple as that. Even though the authoritative decision was made in 1819 the Courts would occasionally use the 10th Amendment to curtail the powers of the federal government. It's generally accepted that the court wasn't doing this because it had stumbled upon a more correct interpretation of the Constitution (after all, James Madison himself agreed with Marshall, and he wrote the Bill of Rights, so he should know!) No, the Court was curtailing Congress's power for political reasons, specifically the fact that most members of the court believed in laszie faire economics. The fact that the Court tried to cut the legs out from under Congress is a great example of the way the 3 branches fight amongst each other, and the reason we need checks and balances. Anyway, speaking of checks and balances, the practice of using the 10th Amendment to cripple Congress came to an end when FDR enacted all those government programs that he's so famous for. Think about it, the Depression era programs have to be the greatest expansion of Federal powers in our history - how was he able to get it past a Court that wanted explicitly wanted a weak federal government. In 1937 FDR checked the power of the Supreme Court by threatening to expand the Supreme Court and to add members who would give him the results he wanted. It's an amazingly dirty tactic, but it did restore the interpretation that is regarded to be the correct interpretation. This interpretation was reiterated by the 1941 case United States v. Darby.
So, what was the point of the 10th Amendment? Just like the 9th amendment it was a statement intended to reassure the people, but not to alter the functioning of the Constitution - it was simply a statement of a truism.
I have to admit though, that the argument isn't 100% dead. Why? Because in 1995 the conservatives of the Supreme Court (the same political types that were invoking the 10th Amendment before FDR) invoked the 10th Amendment again (US vs Lopez) - now, so far this seems to be a fairly limited ruling (because it hasn't affected any laws outside of the original law yet), but it may be that politically inspired use of the 10th Amendment is coming back in vogue. (Mostly depends on if more conservatives get added to the court, the decision to invoke the 10th was one of those 5-4 affairs.)
So, in summary, there's a chance that the Supreme Court would agree with you as far as the 10th Amendment goes, but 1)I doubt they would be correct in so agreeing, and 2)cynically speaking they probably won't do that to a law enacted in this environment by a Republican President. For better arguments than mine, I suggest reading the remarks of the Justices for the cases I've mentioned.
IANAL, but I was a history major.
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Not innocent until proven guilty anymore I'm afraid. My little brother was arrested, thrown in prison for a weekend, and now has to go to "therepy" where doctor patient confidentiality has been thown out the window because the state needs to know, "why he did it, and if if he'll do it again."
He has yet to go to trial, where is his innocence before proof of guilt?
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Own a credit card? How about a driver's license? A checking account? If you answered yes to any of these, you have already sacrificed a significant amount of your privacy for the sake of convenience.
None of these things are mandatory. You don't have to get a credit card and no one is holding a gun to your head making you drive. Any (and especially all) of those 3 things gives the state an enormous amount of information. They know where you get your money from, what you spend it on, probably where you live, what kind of car you drive, where you got this car, what you do with it, and can practically learn everything about you without ever meeting you in person.
So, why do we do it? Simple. Try to survive without a credit card. Pretty doable, but it rules out most e-commerce, and makes staying at hotels pretty difficult. No driver's license? Sure, but if you don't live in a city, you're probably fucked without a car.
No checking account? You're going to have to go far out of your way just to perform basic life functions. You expose yourself to great personal risk by mailing cash (and many companies will flat out refuse it). You have to get money orders for everything, and you could never accept money orders because cashing them requires ID. You'll probably fail most credit checks (which are done for everything nowadays; mobile phones, apartment leases, etc)
Beginning to see a trend? To function in society, you need to have some degree of accountability. You forfeit quite a lot of your freedom just so you can function. It's no coincidence that many ultra-privacy/paranoid people are drifters.
Being unknown is entirely your right, but fat lotta good it'll do you. A National ID card is entirely voluntary, so if you want the convenience of speedy airport checkout, you'll do it. And if not, no biggie. Get on the other line.
Here is a discussion of smart card security by cryptographer & computer security expert Bruce Schneier. It's pretty hard reading, but the main point is that, by depending on an external keypad and display, the smart cards allow a lot of new security breaks. For example, a hacked ATM terminal may steal your PIN and also divert the money -- the screen says your deposit is going to your account, but actually it's going to the somewhere in Belize, from which it will be untraceably transferred before you find out you've been robbed.
Bruce didn't consider putting a fingerprint sensor in the card itself. That will rule out some breaks -- neither stealing the PIN by "wiretapping" (and European PIN keypads have some protection against that), nor stealing the card and beating the PIN out of you will get someone into your accounts. But other vulnerabilities still remain. If you build the keys and display into the card itself, you may be quite a lot more secure -- especially if the card does good enough encryption internally and talks directly to the server, which is the only thing outside of the card which knows the key.
But then you've got the case of the Saudi terrorist (say) with a German ID (say), at a traffic stop in Maryland. Will the police car be carrying equipment that can query a database in Germany? Will results come back in a reasonable time? And even if they do, why would a German database show that the FBI wants this guy?
There is also the big issue of how identity is confirmed when someone is first entered into the system. Anyone with my birth certificate and social security number could get an ID in my name, and the SSN is in all sorts of records while you don't have to prove identity to get the birth certificate. If I'm alive and in the system, it should notice the duplication, but there are plenty of dead people to choose from. Internationally, there are many nations where records got blown up or never were complete, so you've pretty much got to take people's word about their identity.