Slashdot Mirror
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) -
"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
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>
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 ----
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!)