Slashdot Mirror
A Look Into National ID Cards
mr.buddylee writes "Last month Slashdot reported a Popular Science story on your privacy. This month the magazine has a couple different articles about the future of security after the attacks on 9/11. Included is a very interesting read on National ID Cards which looks at possible technologies integrated into the card. For instance, how would you like a memory strip containing a digitized image of your fingerprints, your photo, your medical history and flight history stored in your wallet? All secured with what could be a less than secure Smart Card."
as there is a federal law that states I dn't have to use it if I don't want to and that its illegal for any non medical person to see any more then my photo, and that anybody who wnats to get my fingure prints needs a search warrant, and there are no repercusions for not using it, and I don't have to use to move around the country, I have no problem with it.
oh yeah, I also want a pony.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I can sign you up.
Please email me your name address ssn bank acount numbers, mothers maiden name, a copy of your finger prints.
Not only will sending me this info get you signed up, it will also increase your penis size.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Your papers please.
Would it be possible to include a biometric in smart credit card so that it won't swipe correctly unless my thumbprint has been put on it recently? That would stop a pickpocket from buying $200 worth of gasoline before I notice it's missing.
You could also have a home bio-scanning device that would be needed (maybe in addition to a password) to contact your bank for skinning off disposable numbers from your credit account to shop online with. It would be worth it to people who do a lot of online purchasing, and partcularly for small home businesses.
Bio-metric based identification systems aren't going to solve national security problems any time soon, but some of them are close enough that they could have useful applications for individuals andprivate organizations. Or are they?
The background was California had a law requiring ID. A man was stopped by police while walking down the street and for no reason ordered to produce ID. He had none and was arrested. The subtext was that he was black and the neighborhood he was in was a rich white area.
I strongly suspect that its nearing the time to invoke our moral right to alter or abolish a government when it has become destructive to the end for which it was created, a la the Declaration of Independence.
the problem is, why do you need to show your ID to a police officer?
But what happens when you have to show it everyplace you go? what happens if you change a pattern of behaviour and it sets of a red flag and suddenly your being investigated?
This sort of stuff happens in russia. Back during the cold war, the USSR would do this, and that was w/o computers.
eyeballs change with time. Plus the same way you would fake an eyeball, is the sameway you would fake a thumb print, by changing the data on the card.
We, are a country of Independent states, with, what is supposed to be, very specific guidlines on what the feder government can do. Are fore-fathers knew that a central government that controls everything is bad for personal freedom.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why do we need to have a national ID? Why not just a federal minimum standard for ID cards, like data field locations, orientation, picture type, etc?
funny munging
Whether the information is on the physical card makes no difference. In fact, most likely you would not want to store much information on the card. Only the basic: name, address, physical characteristics, digitized picture, and that sort should be stored on the card. Just enough to make it roughly equivalent to a current ID, but a bit stronger.
For any effective system, the DB should be centrally managed. Both for revocation of ID's, and for security of the sensitive content.
The card has the person's private key, stored in a physically secure chip. That key can be authenticated against the government's issuing authority (as can the validity of the data on the card).
Then, data can be accessed from the central DB, according to the privileges allowed the requestor of the data, on the authority of the cardholder.
There are obvious security / privacy concerns. Particularly if the entity you fear abuse from the most is the government. But, it has the potential to offer a lot more privacy and security than current completely insecure systems.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I remember the brian washing that went along with the "duck and cover" program that was going on until the early '70s in southern Florida. One of the reasons that the Russians were so evil was they convinced kids to turn in their parents. A line in a move made about that time (The Presidents Analyst) had a line from a Russian spy to the American spy "Ever year you become more like us, every year we become more like you. Soon there will be no difference". This is a very good movie and I expect anyone that is reading this topic is likely to enjoy it.
The problem is... having a national ID does not lead to the other effects that you mentioned!
What happens when you have to show it everyplace? What happened was that *something else* changed, not the existence of a national ID, but a more significant survillance.
In other words, you take what *may* be a perfectly reasonable measure for *personal security* (it might greatly reduce identity theft) and conflate it with police state behavior and then use that to condemn the technological measure.
Besides, we already have a national ID card in the US. It is called your drivers' license. Oops... it isn't national. BUT... that problem IMHO hurts the citizenry more than having a national one! It allows all sorts of fraud, because of its lack of standardization. And... it doesn't protect you one bit unless you are a criminal... because all of those drivers licenses are in the same database (or accessible through the same switch) just like a national ID owuld be.
Let's not get too knee-jerk about security measures. Some are important. Furthermore, we are in a new age - where a single individual, through technology, may be more dangerous than an entire military fleet or division was in the past. In a world like we now live in, we may need different security measures than we have had in the past.
The key to avoiding totalitarianism is not simply attacking every change in policing and security techniques. It is in fighting those which have no value, and more importantly, it is in fighting those who would actually engage in totalitarian practices.
The ID isn't the problem. Someone who would track innocent people for nefarious purposes is the problem. Prevent the latter, not the former. P
The only good weather is bad weather.
Never seen this many disinformers spinning in the ceiling before(joshki, C0LDFusion etc.). Damage control galore.
Points awarded for every lie found in their rhetoric.
Oh btw, here's one to get you started.
joshki wrote:
"I don't agree with the patriot act either. It was an ill-considered, knee-jerk reaction to a horrible situation."
The Fact is that an act like the "Patriot Act"(sic) takes more than six(6) months to put together, even if you have a dreamteam of lawyers working around the clock.
So, a "knee-jerk reaction" is NOT the proper wording here.
The Fact is that the "Patriot Act" was introduced and clubbed through over night!
NOT A SINGLE ONE of the people in the Congress were allowed to read through it before they had to decide on it. Mighty democratic!
I suggest that some people go back to school since it will take a little more than that to fool people that everything that happened on 9/11 and afterwards has just been coincidents.
Finally, for those who don't believe that there are criminals in high places in the US. Just take a look at the "Operation Northwoods" docs. JFK happened to get wind of the operation and stopped it before he "coincidentally" got his brain splattered all over his wife. As an educational excercise into corruption, compare the people involved in the Warren Commision and the people involved in the "commision" that has been put together to "bring light" into what happend on 911.
Points awarded for every correct match.
Bonus awarded for every correct answer of who's dad's name appears in that investigation too.