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Brill's Contentious ID Card
pwackerly writes "The New York Times (illegal kidney sale required) is running a story on a private venture funded by the man behind CourtTV to sell ID cards that let you bypass security, both national (airports) and private (your business's lobby). Outside of the standard national ID concerns, now we'd have to worry about a terrorist stealing our super-secret ID from our wallet. Don't these people learn anything from reading 'Mostly Harmless?'"
is that Terrorist groups will start recruiting people who are not on a watch list and who have not convicted of a felony. If airlines use it for easy check-in, then you may as well call it the Shoe Bomb permit.
It seems those who are influential enough in government to fund quicker security at airports are the same ones who'd receive these ID cards.
So, you let all the influential people slide by quickly, and they'll never realize there's a real problem. I say let the influential people deal with the wait the same way we do, and then hopefully they'll do something about it.
How, though, do they intend to verify that those applying for these cards really have the "credentials" being given to them? Background searches on that kind of a scale would be an extremely intensive undertaking for any organization. Furthermore, there is no way this could be done for the $30 or $50 mentioned in the article. They could, I suppose, require the applicant to submit proof that they meet the requirements for obtaining one of these cards, but then that raises a new problem: falsified records/information. "He said that the system was probably unworkable." I'd say so.
"Aye, and if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon!" -- Montgomery Scott, ST:III
This would open the door to other companies selling ID cards. Eventually there would be enough producers of these cards to allow disreputable produces to slip through. A few of these would be discovered thereby reducing the credability of them all. Causing the government to take over.
In short, this is just a step in the road to government issued ID cards.
A single identity card that would allow you to bypass invasive security screening. Because obviously, if you've never done anything wrong in the past, you clearly won't in the future.
I have to agree with all the people who are pointing out that this introduces a single point of failure into any system that honors it, but what's worse is that it seems to ignore the point of security checkpoints, which is not so much to merely identify people as it is to prevent the entry of weapons into a vulnerable area REGARDLESS of their identity.
And not for the tinfoil hat security reasons, but because it undermines the ideals of equal justice under the law for all. Rich people should NOT be able to buy preferential security treatment. If the law is "everyone gets their anus searched for bombs", then we all get in the same line and have the same kind of search. Simply having the money to buy an ID card that "proves" you've got a clean anus isn't equal protection under the law, it's preferential treatment for sale.
And the same goes for people who claim that they should have it because they're frequent fliers -- that's just a way of abstracting the fact that you have a lot of money.
Any law should be applied as equally as possible, ESPECIALLY if the law is some national security measure that happens to be a major invasion of your privacy and a general pain in the ass like airport security.
NO special rights for the rich, ESPECIALLY no special security rights for the rich.
I fly a couple of times a month and I am always "randomly selected". Every single time. And the reason is that I fly:
This is the profile. Everyone knows this is the profile. Which is why the 9/11 highjackers flew:
...and this is the really nasty bit...First Class. Even fllowing the airlines current policy, there is no way the 9/11 highjackers would be subject to extra searches currently. Because they don't fit the "highjacker profile".
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Agreed. The best security I've ever seen is at the Tel Aviv airport. Before passengers can check in, they are subject to an intensive interrogation by two security guards (think military intelligence officers rather than rent-a-cops) who are trained in asking rapid-fire, pointed questions. I was in Jerusalem attending a scientific conference, and had a letter of introduction with me from the organizers (remember this is *leaving* Israel). The set of questions went something like this (my answers are left as an exercise to the reader) --
... and so forth. It was the third degree.
Why were you in Israel?
Where was the conference?
Did you present at the conference?
Do you have the conference program?
Please give it to me.
What did you present?
Is your name in the program?
Please give us your presentation.
Yes, now.
(I spoke for perhaps 2 minutes and was then interrupted.)
Were you invited to the conference?
Why would they invite you?
Are you some kind of expert in this field?
Where did you stay?
How did you know where to stay?
Who arranged your hotel for you?
Where did you get your taxi this morning?
How did you know you could find one there?
They are smart enough to have about as many interrogation stands as there are check-in counters, so there's plenty of bandwidth. Once you pass through security, you walk 10 meters to the counter and talk to an airline employee to check in, rather than the other way around, and the path from interrogation to check-in is controlled. The idea behind the interrogation is to make sure you are legitimate, and have a solid, believable story (I do not for a moment think they cared about my research into an arcane corner of neurobiology). They are checking the person rather than his belongings (although they do this as well). That's security.
American airports don't have security, they have inconveniences to placate the general population into thinking they are secure. I'd much rather the Americans implemented a system like the Israelis have.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
This is Isreal, and you are free to not answer their questions. It's very simple: You DON'T fly. Isreal has a large problem with suicide bombings, and they'll be darned if one happens on their airplanes. If you tell off the security guards, you're in for lots of questions.
People in Isreal are normal people. They just don't like being blown up. Wben you're flying a US airline, you get security-searched, even though they don't have 'evidence'.
I'm sure their security system has been challenged in court, and it's stood up. Isreali airline security is second to none, and the US needs to learn some lessons from them.