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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."
These politicians trying to push this through are
just playing on the fears of the people who really
have no idea what happened on 9/11!
They KNEW exactly who was getting on these planes!
Not one of the terrorists used a fake identity or alias!
All of them were suspected terrorists, and they all
used their own identity.
The government is just trying to shift the blame
away from themselves for failure to actually block
these terrorists from boarding the planes ALL AT
THE SAME TIME.
Same goes for the cameras with the face-recognition
software... they're POINTLESS, except they allow
the US government to track it's own citizens!
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
Seems they haven't gotten the word that ID cards are a bad idea
I'm sure they said the same stuff back in the day when drivers licences came out, but now everyone has it, if not a drivers licence at least an ID so they can still get their beer.
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
How ironic that they don't know how bad national IDs are, considering that the Bush administration are conservative Christians!
Here's why national IDs are bad:
Revelations 13:16-18
16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
"internal passport".
Okay, maybe that's not what they're doing *quite* yet... but if I've ever seen a slippery slope, that's where this one's heading to.
The problem that needs to be addressed is how will the system fail? What safegaurds will be in place to protect you if your card is lost or stolen? What recourse will you have to remove false information about you from the databases? What are the ramifications of someone successfully couterfeiting one of these cards?
I don't think the idea of a national ID card/database is inherently bad, but there are a number of question that need to be addressed to make sure the system's cost in loss of freedom does not outweigh its benefit.
Brevity is the soul of wit
-- Polonius
While the TSA scrambles to secure airports terrorists will likely just find another way to accomplish their goals while the rest of us stand in a "security" line designed to make us feel safer.
Does anyone else remember the bogus Pan Am security screening fee from years back? They didn't actually do extra screening but the impression of doing more made the passengers feel better...
On a clear disk you can seek forever
The idea is to positively ID people working in the transporation business.
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 is bad for several reasons. First, it won't solve anything. All it will do is further infringe upon the privacy of people working in this sector. The terrorists did not strike at us by impersonating workers, but just regular travellers.
It also won't do any good if/when it's used on people just going from place to place. Once again, the terrorists did not forge any identification. They didn't have to. Replacing one form of ID with another in this case is just stupid.
Nonsense like this is just bringing us closer to a locked down state where you must have your papers in order to go anywhere. And to think, at one point, this nation mocked the Russians for this kind of crap.
Why bother.
Hey pompus "security and safety conscious" jerks, unless you are a Native American, then someone up your family tree came over on a boat/plane too. It is true, some people from other countries do actually like to visit america, and they're not here to hurt us, though I'm sure there is a little poking fun at our "traditional ways".
get some culture...
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Oh, wait a minute.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
if you aren't doing anything extremely wrong you've got nothing to hide.
Such as finances, credit, family problems, etc? I have not committed crimes, and I don't ever want to have an ID system that can provide a ton of information about me. I do have something to hide - my personal life, because my life is my business, not Uncle Sam's.
If I can carry a piece of plastic with me that will help stop thousands of terrorism related deaths a year I'm all for that.
I have yet to hear an argument of how national IDs would stop terrorists. Another poster pointed out that the 9/11 hijackers did nothing that could have been prevented with the existence of a national ID. I fail to see how such and ID could help anything.
neurostarThe question for Americans isn't if an ID card is a good idea, the question is how many ID cards everybody should have and what the "good" guys do with all the data they collect. Let's see: driver license, social security card, credit card, library card, student ID, etc...
;).
Then the whole thing is neatly organized in commercial and government databases. All that supplemented by the nefarious census database. What else could the government possibly want to know about you, except perhaps your color preference?
ID cards are a fact of modern life; all of us already have half a dozen of them--unless you live you life as a hermit, or your one of the bad guys.
The real issue is controlling what the government and commercial entities do with all the data they collect. And in the U.S. it's pretty much anything goes. They even let convicted criminals like Poindexter play with all those databases; a guy who has already demonstrated a complete disregard for U.S. laws restricting what the government can do. Then again, he's proven himself trustworthy to his superiors, which is obviously more important.
I don't think the government wants ID cards any more than the people, because with an ID card, there'd be laws that restrict access to the information. Right now, all that information is available in a free for all--free as in access, not beer
Who gets to decide what's wrong here? The State, of course. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, you slavish lapdog.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Quoting bible scripture as an argument went out the around the Enlightenment...
If you would care to read the post, you would see that he was not arguing, but pointing out and inconsistency and contradiction.
neurostarID cards can be lost or stolen. Iris scanners take too bloody long (>10-15 seconds staring into one) and watching to see whether someone's going to grab an ID or a gun is tiresome.
Why not implant a chip in the forehead of everyone? A little stick and *bam* you're done. Serial number of chip keyed to your DNA/fingerprints/ass prints. Or you can simply use a barcode tatooed on the back of a hand in invisible ink that shows up under UV. A simple *bleep* with a barcode scanner and you've identified Citizen X or Criminal Y.
</sarcasm>
Your ignorance of recent American history is astonishing. Ask the victims of COINTELPRO whether they had anything to hide or not. What are you going to do if what you've done wrong is merely disagree with the government's abridgement of your civil rights as guaranteed under the Constitution? It's happened before, right here in the US of A. Did you know the Bush administration is floating the idea of an internal spy agency? Read your history, people. We are in bad trouble.
"No matter where you go, there you probably are." -- Buckaroo Heisenberg
The need is not to make transportation safe against terrorism. The need is to find all the places where a terrorist act could kill thousands of people and work to harden up such targets. Utility infrastructure, nuclear plants, chemical facilities, and related operations need tighter security. That will save more lives than IDing travellers.
The cornerstone of our loegal code and our constitution is that you do not have to demonstrate to the government that you are innocent of crimes. I'm not saying that the presumption of innocence precludes government IDs, but it does mean that law abiding citizens should not have to carry a piece of paper to prove they are law abiding.
If you are doing nothing wrong, and have nothing to hide, then *no one*, ESPECIALLY the government, should be asking.
*Only* if there is cause for suspicion should anyone ever be questioned, period. Even then, that's often just a flimsy excuse.
That is the basis of a free society. Once *innocent* people are subjected to this on a regular basis.. then society is no longer free.
And once the populace accepts this sort of 'presumed guilty' treatment, then its all over.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So then, register in the system. Take some un-eventful trips then pack the samsonite with semtex? Past behavior and plastic cards are no insurance against future actions. Remember most of the 9/11 hijackers had valid ID.
Besides while the US may not have a National ID, it does have a unique identifier for everyone, the SSN#, and each State does require an ID that must be presented to law enforcement on demand or to receive any services from that state. National ID in the US would be redundant.
"But really... if you aren't doing anything extremely wrong you've got nothing to hide. I know the idea is that the more power you give the government the more it will abuse that power, but honestly, nobody cares about going 5 miles over the speed limit, your saturday night poker game, or equivilant crimes and nobody ever will."
Please reply to this message with your full name, qualifications, home and office address, home and office phone number and social security number and I'll mod you up as "Insightful".
National ID cards chill organised opposition government policy. That's what they're for. Who says the US hasn't learned anything from Vietnam?
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
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.
... NOT. I have a friend who flies 737s for United, and while he occasionally gets annoyed (and has some absurd anectdotes from) going through security, he is quick to point out that allowing one group to bypass the security checks creates a catastrophic point of failure, where all a terrorist has to do is get a job doing grunt work for an airline, and they can walze right past security.
... if it hits me, I die, but the odds are very good it won't hit me, and I'm not going to waste time and energy being afraid of it.
... and I fear it much, much more than I fear some illiterate fanatics from camel-fucking country (apologies in advance to the moderate majorities of those places for my tongue in cheeck jab at American prejudices).
Not yet. But we already know, indeed have it on public record, that they want a national ID system, that that is their ultimate goal, and while they may not admit to this being a first step, it certainly appears very much like a first step in that direction.
"Those of you with our voluntary ID will have convinience, while those of you without our voluntary ID will be stand in line, be thoroughly scanned, perhaps even patted down or more invasively searched. Welcome to the New World Order, citizen!" How many will choose the latter, because the former is even more distressing than being tracked everywhere, particularly if you travel frequently?
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
Great idea
Even now it is a problem, with everyone going through security, but at least the existing system, while imperfect, makes the logistic of smuggling weapons and expolisves on board very non-trivial.
This approach isn't going to improve security, indeeed it will do the opposite, by creating an exploitable exception to security.
What it will facilitate is the government tracking (some) of its citizens. Frankly, I'd rather suffer a 9/11 event once each year and take my chances (my car would still be 17 times more likely to kill me), than to turn over that kind of power to my government.
Indeed, terrorism doesn't particularly frighten me (and I work across the street from the Sears Tower, a big target if there ever was one). It is like lightning
Now, our government on the other hand, is ubiquitious. The odds of its behavior impacting me are 100%
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
If I've done nothing "extemely" wrong, I've nothing to hide?
I'm sorry, but you're supposing a rule that does not now exist, or will exist. And who judges what is "extremely" wrong?
EVERYONE has done something wrong. If the laws of the nation were magically enforceable, and every "criminal" was brought in to serve sentence, there wouldn't be anyone outside of the prisons!
What this means, this ability to identify "criminals", is that whatever or whoever is in power will be able to reach out and harass or destroy selected people at will. I used to keep up on what Scientolgy used to do to people who criticized it; planted evidence, uncovered "crimes", anything works. Hell, to "get" someone, even if they are lily-white clean of taint, go after the people they care about. It's easy, and fun! Somebody you care about probably did something "wrong" once. If someone who has access to their superdata wants you miserable, they just bring the hammer down on your friend, and let you know that they are doing so because of you. You'll crack.
Not paranoia: I've watched it happen. But usually it's hired detectives and looney cultists that gather or plant the dirt (sometimes literally -- a cannibis plant in your backyard will send you to prison, or at least eat up all your cash reserves in defense costs). Now, all it will take is a call to a "Poindexter" for someone to get the data necessary to get rid of enemies. God, what a boon this is going to be for dirty business, politics and cult loons!
Poindexter did something "extremely" wrong: sell arms to our enemies to finance a private war. He got six months, total. And that was thrown out. Now he is the chief holder of all the information that is ever collected about anyone. He is now a data god.
A man with morality that slippery is now capable of datamining something "wrong" on anyone he damned well wants to. Or he can be ordered to do so.
Bit by bit, obsessives are gathering up tools to give them all the power they ever will want.
On Salon.com a couple of days ago (can't find the link now) it turns out that there is at least one, if not two, "no-fly" lists being compiled by all of the Homeland Security agencies. If you are on the list, you will be questioned and searched everytime you want to fly. Drop your pants.
Mostly the people on the secret list are Green party or left-of-center groups. Amnesty International, things like that. But an Eagle Forum conservative got on the list, and now its contraversial. Just talking down Bush in an airport may get you yanked out of line, and you get your file marked. No lie.
And, oh yes, you can't find out why you are on the lists. National Security. And you have no way of appealing the listing. You can't find out even who put you on the list! You are fucked!
Now they want to have all the data on everyone. Apparently, they tend to look for people who disagree with the government, especially philosophically, when they compile their badboy lists.
What's "extremely" wrong? What these political fanatics are doing to our world in the climate of fear they are generating.
There will be no way out of this forest once we go in it.
There is no sane logical argument that says that any of this police state power will stop one damned bomb from going off anywhere.
And even if it did, I'd rather a hundred WTC's explode rather than live in the world you all are creating.
Live free or die. Freedom sometimes means that people die. And there is no safety in letting Daddy lock you in the basement. Sometimes Daddy is psycho.
might help
Right. Where liberty and the propensity for government abuse are concerned (the U.S. has a very rich history of such abuse), might help doesn't cut it.
What the average American doesn't realize is that of all the alleged terrorist attacks that have been thwarted, none of these efforts relied on any of the proposed technology, the newly-created Office of Information Awareness (to be headed up by a convicted felon, no less), nor did it rely on the abrogation of liberty as American citizens. Although people like Ashcruft, Bush, and North might be foaming at the mouth at the opportunity to gain such a significant amount of control over the lives of American citizens, few people seem willing to ask a very important question: How much of this is necessary?
Aside from questions of necessity, any system is only as strong as its weakest link. Imagine the kinds of problems that can surface with access to critical parts of the system...say, a stack of blank birth certificates, the machines used to produce such documents, or a clerk, interested in making a few extra bucks by providing false - yet certifiable - documents to someone.
And one question I've never seen asked yet - what happens when the data being housed by the Office of Information Awareness is wrong? What oversight exists to make sure the data are accurate, and to ensure that any inaccurate data will be corrected? Those who who have had the misfortune of dealing with any of the major credit reporting agencies know the futility involved in this process. If people think we have problems now...just wait. "Security" could become our biggest nightmare.
Which may never have happened, if our foreign policy did not produce some real terrorists- but look at the responses to this, and who benefits! It doesn't even matter if there are any terrorists left anymore, or if all of Al Quaeda lies buried in Afghan rubble. Probably dozens of us slashdotter media geeks could fake new Osama videos just as good as if they were real. It's no longer about terrorists at all- ask the UK, or Palestine, about living with continued violence. At this point it is about a radical shift in the structure of United States government, and whether it meets resistance or not, THAT is the war we currently have. The terrorists are mere assistants in this process. They have been co-opted.
No, it's just more intrusive crap that they're piling on law-abiding citizens. It is unlikely to do anything but aid in the post-mortem analysis of what the terrorist ate for dinner the night before the attack, etc. You still might not even know who the terrorist really was, just that the same ID card was at that particular Pizza Hut.
ID cards can be forged. ID cards can be stolen. ID cards can be just blithely gotten and used appropriately by people who are more violent than you assumed they were.
The most obvious things to do, screen ALL bags, have bomb-sniffing dogs sniff all your stuff, and have gun-toting federal agents on ALL flights, has not yet been accomplished. I can understand the difficulty in obtaining more dogs quickly.
The inability to get more federal agents on flights is inexcusable. We could transfer to this job the numerous DEA agents who are currently engaged in our highly harmful and bogus War On Drugs, and put them on the planes. (Bam, fixed two problems at once!)
Because knowledge is power, and power corrupts.
Seriously though, it's hard to give a short answer without using catch-phrases, but your question is reasonable, so here goes..
According to many people, the specific problem with the proposed new database and ID number is that it gives too much power to law enforcement and intelligence services. How? Well, the value of a database increases combinatorically with the amount of information (about a given individual) in it. At some point it really becomes possible to know almost everything about a person... And that is scary, because that means that most likely you can now intimidate or control them. What if they are gay? You can threaten to cost them their job (or life in some places of the country). What if they are looking at porn? You can threaten to ruin their marriage. What if they have an expensive health problem? You can cost them health insurance. Or you can just plain make stuff up about them - and once it is in the system there may be little they can do. Imagine not being able to buy a car or a house because you can't get credit - because the computer says you are not credit-worthy. Or if you want to work at an aerospace company but can't get a job because you "aren't cleared". There is often very little you can do to clean up your reputation (If you've ever been a victim of identify theft you know what I'm talking about). The point is that it doesn't take much - maybe you don't go to jail, but your life gets hard enough that you stop worrying about improving government and just hunker down trying to keep a job.
Another example; the library may have a list of your reading habits, your ISP knows what you look at on the Web, and the credit card company knows what you purchase... Now, what if the government had easy access to all of the above? The point being "easy" as in they can go fishing (or data mining) for "suspicious" behaviour - as opposed to having to obtain a warrant for a specific individual based on probable cause.
This gets very interesting when you start compiling "watch lists", where certain people are singled out for attention. The recent airline security lists are a perfect example - they are apparently being used to harass peace activists, left-leaning activists etc etc. It really doesn't take much to have a chilling effect on political freedom. You may be able to shout your political opinions on the street corner thanks to the first amendment, but if it means that you'll be strip searched every time you travel, you may prefer to keep a lower profile. And that's all those in power want - for the opposition to just fade away.
The most serious problem is that it circumvents any checks and balances to the abuse of power. Imagine if the FBI started compiling files on the political opposition, and used blackmail to silence them? This is illegal (not to mention bad for the country because it destroys democracy). The courts should step in, right? Well, what if the FBI started compiling information on judges, and used that to keep the courts in line? Maybe some good investigative journalists will blow the whole thing open - or maybe they can be blackmailed too...(or nowadays the parent company can be convinced to shed "unprofitable" investigative reporting). You may think this will never happen, but do you really want to put that kind of power in the hands of a small group of people, with no insight into what they use it for? In case you don't know your history, look up Hoover and the FBI. Or read about the STASI in East Germany, and how to control a society using a primitive version of this kind of database. There it was sometimes possible to break up political protests by merely taking pictures of the demonstrators - they all knew what the consequences would be if they were identified.
I think history shows us that government works best when its powers are strictly limited. This past year has seen a tremendous increase in government power; it remains to be seen what will happen, but past experience isn't comforting.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
If I've done nothing "extemely" wrong, I've nothing to hide?
Indeed, and the argument is laughable. Put it this way; if the government of the time had the ability to check the movement of African-Americans in the 50's and 60's, do you think the Million Man March would have taken place?
Paranoid? Ask any African-American person who lived in the South at the time about being paranoid.
I realize that this comment goes against the political correctness favored by a significant percentage of the slashdot crowd, but Admiral Pointexter is not a convicted felon. True, he was a convicted felon for a time, but the conviction was overturned on appeal and no longer stands. I know that some folks don't like the way our legal system works on occasion, but that's the way it works. It doesn't strengthen one's treatise to pepper it with half truths and lies.
The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank.
-- Scotty.