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Registered Traveler ID Initiative
Broadcatch writes "At the coming CardTech/SecurTech
in Washington D.C. the Transportation Security
Administration will make their first public announcement of the Registered
Traveler ID Initiative . Seems they haven't gotten the word that ID
cards are a bad
idea."
Reading the story you find out this is not a national ID system. /. already (ie: retinal scanning) they can pass these people by so they can do their jobs quickly, rather than waiting in a security line everyday just to go to work. We do that enough on city "expressways" already..
TSA has made important progress in selecting a uniform system of identification, a card-based biometric information system, that will support positive identification of individuals working in the transportation sector and encompassing the aviation, train, shipping, and trucking industries.
This system is not for you, the everyday individual. This is for making sure people like stewards on airlines don't have to go through security checks everyday to see if they're carrying a bomb. Using new authentication technology that's been discussed on
The argument is necesarially that these measures would have prevented past terrorist attacks, but tht it might help prevent future ones. It doesn't get to the root problem of what happened on September 11th (there's a lot of people who really really really really really hates us), but that wouldn't be a reason to not do this.
Of course, the more security you put in place, the more secretive nefarious people will try to be. I wonder if it's more likely to catch a terrorist who knows there's extreme security so they're very delibrate in their actions and extremely careful, versus catching a terrorist who thinks there is minimal security so is less likely to be so secretive and careful.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Even though there are no visible problems with the nation ID system in Russia, that doesn't mean there aren't problems. The things that people should be worried about (abuse of power, theft, fraud) are, for the most part, crimes that will be kept secret.
Abuse of power will be kept secret for the obvious reason that the government will not want people to know about it. The other types of crimes relating to the IDs (theft, fraud, identity theft) will also be kept more secretive because the government will not want to provide evidence that the system is enabling more crimes.
I think we should sit back and take a long while and think about ID cards. As another poster pointed out, the terrorists of 9/11 didn't do anything that could have been prevented by having national ID cards.
neurostarThey're not talking about a national ID card system.
The page (which is a poor one, since it's really just an agenda for presentations) covers two topics. One is an ID system for transportation workers, so that they have some way of verifying that the guy in the tarmac in a blue jumpsuit really is an employee who is allowed to be there. That is arguably a good thing. Many professions have this. I go to a hospital and my doctor is wearing an ID badge, and that makes me feel good, because if I trust the badge, I'm reasonably assured that this main isn't some psycho pretending to be a doctor. The TSA is looking at a way to unify the many different systems under one, so that rather than having 50 different types of identification depending on where you go, everyone will have the same types of ID. They're not implementing a new system. They're making an existing one more standardized.
The second is the Registered Traveler ID. This system is a voluntary system for frequent flyers to bypass the tedious and sometimes invasive security procedures at airports and train stations. Basically, you go through the background checks, etc. once, and then you can skip all the feel-down lines and breeze your way to the gate. Basically, they want to make it easier for people to travel. If you, as a citizen, don't want to be registered, don't get the card. You can go through the long lines with other unregistered travelers and your "privacy" (or the illusion of it) is safe.
The suicide theory counter argument by the Muslim press is that a Muslim would never commit suicide as it's against their religion.
Maybe this argument has lost a bit of weight lately.
Help fight continental drift.
- Reports the existance of a list of about 1,000 travellers who are to be singled out for "special treatment" by airline security
- That so far the evidence is that people who are being singled out are simply those in high profile positions in non-mainstream politics. Examples include prominent members of groups like Amnesty International.
- Abuses have included "suspects" having to drop their pants in full view of the other passengers, and one individual, an advisor to Ralph Nader's election compaign, being interogated for several hours - long enough to be forced to miss his flight - for calling President Bush "as dumb as a rock" while waiting in line.
When our governments can be trusted to fight terrorism rather than dissent, the innocent may have less reason to hide. But not before.You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Is this related to the ID card controversy?
You don't have to learn to drive just to get an ID. Most states have an ID card available. In many states it is a driver's license with a limitation listed stating that it is not to be used for driving.
Social Security cards do not work as identification. They are required to get a job but you must also supply proof of right to work (e.g. proof of citizenship, valid visa), and you also must supply your employer with proof of your identity. So in addition to the social security card you need one or two other documents.
Can a Florida cop check an Alaskan's drivers license? Yes. Almost all cops have access to a database that verifies the validity of the information. Many better equipped forces have cars equipped with terminals that'll return the address, photo, and other pertinent data. Others radio the info in to the dispacher who retrieves the data.
You say you are pretty sure your government does not track your habits. Much of the resistance against a national ID card in the US is that most folks want to be more than pretty sure, they want to be damn sure.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
A landmark legislation is being railroaded through after the past elections where the repubs took control over the gov.
You Are a Suspect
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
ASHINGTON -- If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:
Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend -- all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."
To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you -- passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance -- and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen.
This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks.
Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at the Naval Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose to national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He had this brilliant idea of secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom for hostages, and with the illicit proceeds to illegally support contras in Nicaragua.
A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony counts of misleading Congress and making false statements, but an appeals court overturned the verdict because Congress had given him immunity for his testimony. He famously asserted, "The buck stops here," arguing that the White House staff, and not the president, was responsible for fateful decisions that might prove embarrassing.
This ring-knocking master of deceit is back again with a plan even more scandalous than Iran-contra. He heads the "Information Awareness Office" in the otherwise excellent Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which spawned the Internet and stealth aircraft technology. Poindexter is now realizing his 20-year dream: getting the "data-mining" power to snoop on every public and private act of every American.
Even the hastily passed U.S.A. Patriot Act, which widened the scope of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and weakened 15 privacy laws, raised requirements for the government to report secret eavesdropping to Congress and the courts. But Poindexter's assault on individual privacy rides roughshod over such oversight.
He is determined to break down the wall between commercial snooping and secret government intrusion. The disgraced admiral dismisses such necessary differentiation as bureaucratic "stovepiping." And he has been given a $200 million budget to create computer dossiers on 300 million Americans.
When George W. Bush was running for president, he stood foursquare in defense of each person's medical, financial and communications privacy. But Poindexter, whose contempt for the restraints of oversight drew the Reagan administration into its most serious blunder, is still operating on the presumption that on such a sweeping theft of privacy rights, the buck ends with him and not with the president.
This time, however, he has been seizing power in the open. In the past week John Markoff of The Times, followed by Robert O'Harrow of The Washington Post, have revealed the extent of Poindexter's operation, but editorialists have not grasped its undermining of the Freedom of Information Act.
Political awareness can overcome "Total Information Awareness," the combined force of commercial and government snooping. In a similar overreach, Attorney General Ashcroft tried his Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS), but public outrage at the use of gossips and postal workers as snoops caused the House to shoot it down. The Senate should now do the same to this other exploitation of fear.
The Latin motto over Poindexter"s new Pentagon office reads "Scientia Est Potentia" -- "knowledge is power." Exactly: the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over you. "We're just as concerned as the next person with protecting privacy," this brilliant mind blandly assured The Post. A jury found he spoke falsely before.