Slashdot Mirror
U.S. National Identity Cards All But Law
CompSci101 writes "News.com is running a story about the RealID Card legislation that's been attached to emergency military spending bills to ensure its passage. How soon does everyone think this system will be abused either by the government or by thieves ? The worst part is the completely machine-readable/automatic nature of the thing -- you might not even know you're giving your information away." From the article: "Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service. Practically speaking, your driver's license likely will have to be reissued to meet federal standards."
So how possible would it be to get by without one? Regarding
I expect that would cross the line of States Rights. Perhaps they could enforce it for interstate transportation, but within my state I think there would be a fight against such a thing.Might as well start writing the check out now to help fund the fight against this thing.
Geez, you'd need to have spent half your life on drugs and alcohol to think this is a good idea and sign it into law.
"Aus Passe!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I bef of you. Please RTFA.
i d=11799450>2, but it didn't serve his agenda).
The worst part is the completely machine-readable/automatic nature of the thing -- you might not even know you're giving your information away.
Um. Huh? With the exception of RFID, how in the living hell would you not know you're "giving your information away"?
If, again, the argument is "ease", thanks to a technological change or technology itself, then why do slashdotters always argue in favor of technology elsewhere, but against it here?
- The card will still be issued by your state motor vehicle agency. It will merely be a federally approved, standardized version of your state Driver's License or state Identification Card.
- The process to obtain the card will be more rigorous, and you will have to provide more documents to prove your identity.
- The House *already approved* a standalone version of the Real ID bill, so the fact this is attached to military spending is irrelevant
- IF the standardized "machine readable technology" (which almost all state issues IDs already have in the form of a bar code, magnetic strip, etc.) ends up being RFID, you must at least concede that this standardization is based on consistency, functionality, and ease of use, not a desire to build a nationwide network of centrally administered RFID detectors for the purposes of tracking every citizen
- All of the information on all of the cards is already accessible to any entity that requests identification, such as banks. However, the information will now be presented and stored in a uniform manner.
- If you think that all of these actions are designed exlusively to institute a 1984-style police state by evil conservatives, you probably don't see the illogic in opposing simple standardization of ID cards that already exist.
- All of the items listed - opening bank accounts, collecting social security checks, travelling by air, etc. - already require ID (and if you want to get retarded about the whole air travel thing, go for it. John Gilmore already found he could travel without ID (a href=http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=140827&c
Look. I don't mind vigilance for the sake of privacy and individual rights. In fact, I think the vigilance of privacy advocates, the ACLU, etc., is necessary and important. But you must realize that extreme views are almost always not the correct ones. It's the interplay and balance between both sides of a reasonable debate that is important. The people who think a national ID card with a DNA fingerprint and everyone implanted with GPS are wrong, and the people who think that every single bit of legislation like this is part of a corporate/government/Republican conspiracy to control them are also wrong. By all means, fight for your convictions, but if you do it from a not-so-tinfoily perspective, you'll have more chance at convincing others of the validity of your position.
Nazi Germany, here we come. Where are your PAPERS!!!!!
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
It will do little to stop criminals, because criminals have never cared about the rules, but decent American citizens will have to jump through hoops and come to accept presenting papers to travel in-country just like those Soviets we looked down on.
We never had real freedom here in this part of europe. People used to dream of travelling to the USA, the land of the free.
Americans had freedom and are willingly throwing it away. All it takes for evil to triumph is for a few good men to do nothing. WAKE UP!
Wow, is anyone else surprised CNET put this in here:
> Why did these ID requirements get attached to an "emergency" military
> spending bill??
> Because it's difficult for politicians to vote against money that will go to the troops
> in Iraq and tsunami relief. The funds cover ammunition, weapons, tracked combat
> vehicles, aircraft, troop housing, death benefits, and so on.
The Republicans control congress and the executive branch now, and they wanted to have this National ID bill. By attaching this to a wholly unrelated military spending bill, the so-called advocates of small government will get their national ID card wish.
As an interesting aside it's funny that they chose to stick this into a military spending bill for Iraq. Anyone recall that the Bush Administration told us told this war was going to cost? I thought this was was supposed to cost between $10 and $100 billion? We're already more than three times the high end figure, with no end in sight. This is the fourth emergency allocation of money Bush has asked for for his war "on the cheap".
Anyway, make no mistake about it. The Republicans are now using their complete control to railroad this bill through, by sticking this thing in a military spending bill. It's a perfect catch-22. If the Democrats voted against it, they would have been accused of being against our troops (John Kerry, please take some time to describe how that feels). If they voted for it, it miraculously becomes a bipartisan bill so the Republicans can pass the blame around to evade responsibility. Even after this, the Democrats can be accused of "flip-flopping" since they voted against the national ID before, and now they're voting for it when it's buried in a military spending bill (Senator Kerry, your turn again). Wow, it's a win-win-win situation for the Republicans.
Of course, for the Democrats and the public in general, it's a nice lose-lose-lose situation though. Maybe a brave Democrat can filibuster this bill so it doesn't get railroaded through. Oh, wait, the Republicans want to get rid of the filibuster, too.
I call upon all the Democratic senators and representatives who read Slashdot to stop this as soon as possible! There. I've done my part.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Soc. Sec. Cards have been used for years as a form of National ID, I welcome this, just wish it was more secure and private.
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
Might as well start writing the check out now to help fund the fight against this thing.
But why would you want to do that?! This is all about freedom and safety and other comfortable words.
air and light and time and space
FTA:
"Practically speaking, your driver's license likely will have to be reissued to meet federal standards."
What standards doesn't my driver's license have? Again, FTA:
At a minimum: name, birth date, sex, ID number, a digital photograph, address, and a "common machine-readable technology" that Homeland Security will decide on.
Checking my driver's license:
[x] Name
[x] Birth Date
[x] Sex
[x] ID Number
[x] Digital Photograph
[x] Address
[x] Machine-readable technology: both a magstrip and a barcode.
What states are issuing driver's licenses without this information on them?
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
Why can't they just pass a law that only allows one law per bill. I'm tired of this kind of political bs that they can get away with - attaching these types of little things at the end just to get it through. I can imagine there will be a "preferred" vendor of these cards/equipment and they amazingly increased their spending in congressional pocket lining... err.. lobbying this year to get 'er done!
The real tragedy here is not the use of a national ID. There are legitimate merits to both sides of that discussion, and I will not address them here. The real tragedy is that this is an "Emergency military spending bill" which a HUGE rider on it.
This is why the line item veto was popular, despite being blatently unconstitutional. A few congress persons sitting on a committee can completely disrupt the validity of a bill. Nobody is going to veto a bill that gives money to the military and be responsible for leaving them high and dry. And the bill also gives tsunami aid. Nobody will veto that either.
It should be unconstitutional to place this type of stuff on a bill. It is also highly irresponsible of our congress people to not flame anyone who tries to do this stuff. I don't know how to word the ammendment, but it would probably do a LOT to clean up some of the obnoxious laws that sneak into place.
Yes.
Government officials almost never go to jail.
Those who give up a little freedom for putative security neither deserve, nor shall receive either.
This ID card will NOT make you any safer in any way whatsoever.
Let's use the old NRA argument here. One of the main reasons the NRA is opposed to gun registration (excluding their interpretation of the 2nd Amendment) is that criminals will not register their guns, thus only legitimate gun owners will be registered and potentially tracked.
This national ID is exactly the same. Do you really think that the Terrorists will go to the DMV and say, "Hi, I'm Osama Bin Laden, I'd like my Driver's license today. Thank you?" Do you really think they won't be able to get fake credentials that are as good as these IDs or can be used to get a legitimate ID?
And finally, do you really think that the government won't abuse this new power (i.e. knowleged of your every purchase, move, travel, etc.)? Who do you think will hold and compile these data? My guess is an Oracle based system. Do you really think that our corporatocracy will keep this information away from corporations?
Can you imagine how much corporations would pay to know your every move, flight, purchase, hotel reservation, rental, etc. etc. etc? These data are worth billions upon billions and they won't be sitting idly in some database in DC doing nothing.
We were starting to get to a point where using social security numbers as identification was actually prohibited, and this prohibition was actually being enforced. For example, note how many colleges had previously used soc#s as student IDs but who have been phasing that out in the last five years.
Well, so much for that.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
If they outlaw those devices, I'm pretty sure the good old microwave oven would do the job.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
So, any /. folks old enough, like me, to remember how we would react with derision and scorn at the horrifying stories of people in the USSR being required to have "internal passports" for travel and always carry identity papers? Well, just for giggles, how would you define "internal passport" and how is that different from this?
"What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the government and the people...And it became always wider... ...or, rather, provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway... ... by the machinations of the 'national enemies' without and within) and the government's 'responses' to them, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us... ...
"The whole process of this disconnect coming into being was built around diversion...
"Nazism gave us some other dreadful, fundamental things to think about
"Nazism kept us so busy with continuous changes, accusations and 'crises' and so fascinated
"Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted', that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures' must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing...
"Each act curtailing freedom... is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow...
"You don't want to act, or even talk, alone... you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble' or be 'unpatriotic'...But the one great shocking
occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes...
"That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring: the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit (which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms) is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.
"You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father... could never have imagined."
Source: They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1955)
__________________________________
"We will not wait as our enemies gather strength against us. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action, and this nation will act." G.W.Bush, West Point, June 2002
"In this new world, declarations of war serve no purpose. Our enemies must be defeated before they can harm us. I will never declare war, but will take action!" Adolph Hitler, June 1940
"Not too many people will be crying in their beer if there are more detentions, more stops and more profiling. There will be a groundswell of public opinion to banish civil rights," Peter Kirsanow, Bush's controversial appointee the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights
"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people, and the West in general, into an unbearable hell and a choking life."
Osama bin Laden, October, 2001
How does knowing one's identity really make us collectively safer. I've yet to see a good answer to this question.
... again, my question is how does requiring ID make us safer?
Requiring identification is basically a way of tracking people; fishing expeditions.
Scanning for explosives, etc is what they should concentrate on... most, if not all?, of the 911 terrorists had valid licenses; many of them had no criminal records
Ron Bennett
we must work to make sure that WE can read the information on our own cards, to ensure accuracy, with a low-cost device owned by US and not some agency (to prevent the trivial programming of reader devices to omit information that agencies don't want us to know they've encoded there). We must not accept any form of encryption of the data that we don't have a key to (encryption is OK to prevent trivial theft of the information, but the owner of the ID card should own (at least a copy of) the decryption key).
I get emails from this organization: www.downsizedc.org. They've been working against this for a while, and they have tons of information about *exactly* why a national ID card is a bad idea.
They have a very easy form to contact your senator on this issue.
They are also working on a law proposal that would force lawmakers to read the laws before they get to vote on them. A good idea and well presented.
You are a terrified, easily manipulated idiot. There is no nice way to put it.
How wil this stop a hijacking? None of the previous group used false ID. And neither will the next group.
You obviously have no idea of how they were able to crash those planes and why it won't happen again. The reason they succeeded was because in the entire histiory of domestic hijacking the best way ti survive was to sit down and shut up. The hijackers wanted money, travel out of the country, the freedom of a comrade, or some other goal that only power outside of the plane could grant them. The passangers were hostages and the plane was a convenient container to keep them in. The 9/11 hijackers played a completelt new set of rules. The passangers meant nothing to them. They wanted the aircraft.
Do you get that? The rules changed and only the hijackers knew it. But now everyone knows. The next time someone tries to hijack a plane they are going to get the shit kicked out of them by people who don't want to die. Just look at what happened to the "shoe bomber".
But this begs the question: "how much of your privacy are you willing tio give away?" What will you give away when terrorists find a different way to attack us? And what about the attacks after that? At what point do you declare that you've had enough?
The brutal truth is that there is no way to stop terrorists completely. If they really want to hurt us they will. They will find ways to attack us that we haven't thought to defend against.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
hahaha.
Since this works with all the states, the crooks need only go to a state with a broken education system and take advantage of the people to get in the system.
And as pointed out, the system is as weak as the state with the weakest system.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
I entirely agree. First of all, it is worth remembering that almost all of the 9/11 terrorists had valid, DMV-issued IDs. There is nothing that I can see in this bill that is going to fix that. It will also screw up the effort in some states to give limited driver's licenses to (possibly) illegal immigrants, in the interest of seeing that they actually know how to drive, have insurance, and so on. Since, statistically, your chances of dying in an auto accident are much higher than in a terrorist incident, I don't think this is a trivial concern.
Second, the whole concept of checking IDs against a list in order to fly is stupid. If we know who the suspects are, it would be much more efficient to spend the resources investigating what they're doing. Does anyone actually believe that potential terrorists are so dumb that they'll not try flying before they do the real thing? Or that they might not consider just blowing up a shopping center or a sports stadium?
These data are worth billions upon billions and they won't be sitting idly in some database in DC doing nothing.
Even assuming I trusted the government 100% not to misuse this data, one class of people to whom it would be very valuable are identity thieves. I suppose the argument will be that the database is so secure it can't be hacked.
Right.
My gun club is populated by a lot of right-wingers, some of whom are pretty far right. The guy I buy my ammo from used to regale me (because he knows I'm a lefty) with tales of how the liberals were trying to institute national IDs which would stomp on states rights. He used to say stuff like "The liberals are gonna take away our freedom to go where we please when we please without having to show papers. It'll be illegal to just be walking down the street without anything in your pockets. Then they'll take away our guns." I laughed at him then and I confess that it's still pretty funny to me. Nobody's going to take away our guns, after all.
It's especially funny that the same righties that used to holler and crow about how those liberal treehugging twits were gonna take away our rights are now the same ones that want national ID cards. Now that's ironic.
It's funny also because I used to think that conservatives were for smaller federal government that leaves more responsibilities to individual states and doesn't spend so much money. Yet, these IDs are very much a big-government imposition on the states, the federal ban on gay marriage is one more such example, the Terry Schiavo fiasco proves that the fed is even willing to bypass the states to step on individual rights, and I've never seen an administration spend so much borrowed money since the Reagan years. Do republicans stand for anything conservative anymore?
I'll probably garner some flame for this post, but there just seem to be so many examples over the past couple years where the supposed "conservative" parts of the legislature and the admittedly conservative executive branch have taken stands that are so completely at odds with conservatism as I've always understood it. Honestly, I'm not intending to start a right-left flame war -- some of my best friends are republicans, not to mention folks in my family -- I'm just trying to figure out what being a conservative means at this time.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Um, no, you are most certainly NOT required to carry ID or a driver's license. You are required to carry a driver's license when you are driving, but that's it. If I'm a passenger in a car, or walking down the street, there is no requirement for me to have identification.
Also, Declan's article was misleading on this point:
Steinhardt predicts the federalized IDs will be a gold mine for government agencies and marketers. Also, he notes that the Supreme Court ruled last year that police can demand to see ID from law-abiding U.S. citizens.
Police can demand all they want, but you have no obligation to show them ID. The case was about a man's refusal to identify himself, not refusal to show ID. You are required to identify yourself, but that can be as simple as saying "my name is [insert name here]." If a police officer wants to take you down to the station because you won't present an ID card, that's false arrest.
But to answer your question, why do I care? The first reason is that having to present this ID to board an airplane is a hindrance to both interstate commerce and freedom of assembly (note the environmental activists who were prevented from flying due to the secret watch list). But John Gilmore does a much better job explaining this point.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
You're already required to carry ID or a driver's license, this bill doesn't change that fact.
That's 100% false, for starters. There is currently no requirement to carry any form of ID on your person unless you are engaged in certain regulated activities, such as driving, hunting, fishing, crossing a national border, etc.
Do you think the government will find sonething out about you they don't already know?
Perhaps.
Are you afraid you'll be watched somehow in a way you already aren't being watched?
Tracking everyone by ID cards is a way of watching me that isn't already happening. Why shouldn't I oppose that?
Are you afraid it violates your rights? Which ones?
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." That's the first half of the 4th Amendment, and is one small part of the right to privacy that we are all entitled to.
This is bad and wrong because it is easy to abuse by its very nature. It's bad and wrong because it will cost us all money without benefitting us in any appreciable way. It's bad and wrong because it will make identity theft even easier than it already is. It's bad and wrong because IT'S SO OBVIOUS THAT THE PEOPLE DON'T WANT IT THAT ITS SUPPORTERS HAD TO SNEAK IT THROUGH CONGRESS UNETHICALLY.
To turn it around: what good will this new id card do?
To any extent that it facilitates better tracking (or whatever), it's not too hard to come up with a scenario where that greater tracking is abused.
More generally, this intiative smells like any of a number of garden-variety post-9/11 "anti-terrorist security" notions that piss people off because they're showboating in the name of security while in fact simply taking away freedoms (and yes, anonymity is a freedom). Our "greater airport security", for example, deters nobody from hijacking or bombing airplanes but the stupid and impulsive, and the folks who pulled off 9/11 were neither. Don't even get me started on the patriot act.
Rest assured that your complacency about this issue in no way placates me.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
You are not required to carry an ID or a driver's license (though you may be in order to go about activities like driving). That's your first mistake. The USA is not the land of "papers, please". You can *choose* to do it (my job required a full background check, drug test, fingerprinting, but if I needed it just to exist I'd be pissed).
The argument "Law abiding folk have nothing to fear" is used time and time again by oppresive governments. It's not the American way.
That said, I'm pretty sure a national ID card is largely inevitable, and if they can implement it correctly (which this is not), it probably won't be used to violate civil rights left and right.
I care because it's a bad precedent, a step towards a land that is less free and more monitored. Have you seen some of the stuff that is illegal in some places? Certain sex consensual sex acts are just the start.
I also don't think it's a problem with the *current* government, but a potentially evil *future* one.
It's inherently a bad idea to build an infrastructure that a Hitler or a Stalin can immediately exploit should such a villian cease power, and this is a step in that direction.
see those things that you listed? Those aren't necessarily bad things. I think safety nets like those are kinda cool just in case you ever need them.
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
We care because there has never historically been a government power that has not been abused at some point.
Imagine, for a moment, if your worst enemy--the person you loathe more than anyone in the world, and who makes no secret of the fact that he delights in doing things that hurt you for their own sake--is placed in a position of authority over federally-mandated security cards.
He can make sure you never get one. He can place you on all manner of government watch lists preventing you from doing just about anything. After making sure you don't have an ID, he can give the cops a tip to pull you over and get you arrested for not carrying one. Don't laugh--I have personally KNOWN people like this.
Power is dangerous. Authority is a form of power. What does a law like this do? Well, it lets them punish (read: Cause harm to) people for not carrying a card around; a card over which they have complete control. And when it comes down to handing out harm, they're not going to care whether the situation was justified or whether they're doing anyone any good; to most people, the fact that it's "The Law" is excuse enough to cause all the mayhem and real life hurt you want.
As such, you must assume the law will lash out anywhere it is able, because people who are petty and corrupt will actively seek out positions that allow them to indulge that pettyness and corruption. If through law we create those positions, they will be filled by those kinds of people. If you do not have a clear, present, and pressing need for a law, it is dangerous, irresponsible and, if I dare use the term, un-American to pass it anyway.
And in my mind this whole "Rider" bullshit is unconscionable--it is intentionally undermining the democratic process by end-running around it. People who see democracy as an obstacle should not be our leaders under any circumstances. I wouldn't mind if they declared it treason.
And if they're willing to shitcan democracy for the convenience of their personal agenda, their motives should be PLACED VERY HIGHLY IN QUESTION.
All Hail the Maggott Show
You're right: at the current moment, there is somewhat of a universal requirement to show state-issued ID under certain circumstances (e.g airports). However, these IDs are manufactured to disparate standards and even the machine-readable cards have different formats. This soon-to-be-passed law requires any state-issued ID to be machine-readable vis-a-vis the federal standard.
Sure, the powers-that-be could "track a person across the country" with today's relatively low-tech ID, but that's expensive for all but the big players. Post-RealID, this cost will decrease dramatically, and it will be trivial for any of the players to monitor a person's movement and behavior.
This is essentially my fear. The cheaper it is to acquire "real-time" information about the whereabouts and habits of people, and cross-correlate said info with at database of attributes, the easier it is for the powers-that-be to engage in "pre-emptive policing", all in the name of fighting terrorism.
Illegal immigrants will be first, because it is hard for anyone to make a case for their civil rights. Sex offenders have already been taken care of, but I'm sure some aspect of the "sex offender flag" will be rolled into RealID. Then the fun starts when insurance companies, probably with bipartisan assistance from Congress, decide to reduce rates for companies/buildings that refuse association/entry to persons with a "high threat index". Arabs and Muslims will be next, especially those who reside in "certain zip codes". Then the leftists, later the conservatives who still believe in freedom with a capital 'F'.
No one else will care.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
It begins with airplanes and cars. All they would have to do is require the ID for trains and buses, which wouldn't be hard to lobby for, and in effect you will need ID papers to cross state lines.
Not only that, they could combine it with bank transactions, which require the ID card for an account, and track the movement of everyone travelling. If you drive to another state, you have to buy gas. If you bicycle or walk across, you have to eat and sleep somewhere. Not many people are going to carry $10,000 in cash.
This will have far reaching consequences, but for the moment I can only forsee denying political critics and unacreditted reporters / blog journalists the right to travel to events. David Byrne has pointed out in his blog that it's becoming very difficult for legitimate foreign entertainers to be granted entrance into the US. There's also copyright extensions, which are prevent us from learning about history because it's too controversial or the owner cannot be located. Who knows what affect these will have on our ability to make educated decisions?
We already HAVE a federal ID card called a passport. It's expensive because it is designed to be an identity document. Why don't we just make a passport the required document for traveling between states? This is what - in effect - we are doing, only it's more politically palletable to the ignorant, and an unfunded state mandate, too. I remember when we used to make fun of Russia for requiring papers for in-country travel. Now, we're doing the same thing.
It could be argued that, by the standards of their time, the Founders were terrorists. The tactics of the Colonial armies often violated the rules of war common at the time.
That depends on the definition of "terrorism". But certainly attacks on civilian populations, assassinations, bombing (Guy Fawkes plot) and the use of mass indiscriminate destruction (burning cities) were known 200 years ago. The founder's solution was the same as it was for more "conventional" threats: a population prepared and willing to defend itself.
(And if we'd stuck with that rather than standing armies, we'd have been much less likely to fall into the trap of foreign adventures in imperialism that has made us a terrorist target.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
And may I add my my 2 cents on "airport security". The whole thing is a sham. I understand that they don't ever want to let terrorists turn an airplane into a bomb again. I don't want that either.
But even without all the added security, it can never happen again. EVER! You see, back before 9/11 the thought was that if a terrorist was to hijack a plane, they wanted to go somewhere, maybe land and hold hostages for a while, negotiate, and eventually, if you were quiet and did what they said, you would go back to your family after a frightening ordeal.
Now that whole paradigm has changed. If a terrorist takes a plane, every man woman and child aboard will know that they WILL DIE if they do nothing. See the difference?
Before 9/11 - do nothing during a hijack and live
After 9/11 - do nothing during a hijack and die
The terrorists used a one-time window of opportunity to do what they did that day. But now, were it to happen, the terrorists themselves would die before they ever took the plane down. Every able bodied passenger will fight for their lives if facing death. How can a terrorist take a plane if there are 30 people willing to die fighting to re-gain control of the plane?
Using a plane full of passengers as a missile will never happen again. So all the airport security in the world, searching for box knives and zippo lighters, is only to make frightened people feel like they should be frightened, and more importantly, to take away more liberty.
The people of this country have got to figure out that the only way to loose the war on terror is to let your life be changed out of fear of terrorism. That's the whole goal of terrorists, and our government is simply letting them win.
Ok, more like ten cents than two...
Heck, the US Constitution gives the feds the right to regulate interstate commerce. Saying something is a hindrance to interstate commerce can hardly be interpreted as a good argument against a federal law.
That's literally the same as saying the Constitution doesn't give the government the power to "provide for the common defense".
That's not a winning argument.
Besides, if the feds have the right to run a national retirement program which involves a national ID system, they sure have the right to require state IDs to meed federal requirements for specific federal reasons.
"You may want to check with your state, but most states require everyone over the age of 18 to carry a state ID/DL/Passport/etc. If you do not and a cop stops you, he can cite you (possibly arrest you) for not carrying ID. Yes not many people know this,
I am one of the many people who don't know this. Can you cite just one state's law which backs up this claim?
I wonder what happens if someone is broke, and cannot afford to pay for the ID. These states would have an easy, legal way of tossing most homeless people in jail whenever they feel like it.
(In as troll-less a way as possible, I'm trying to say I don't believe the claim.)
Or try getting married to someone of the same sex in Massachusetts, see how many other states honor the marriage.
Or, try to get a state to pay you a debt (ie jury duty payment) in gold or silver coin, also mandated by the Constitution.
The Constitution exists only as long as people believe in it (much like the value of paper money, or anything else written on paper). Most Americans today have no idea what's in the Constitution, hence there is no consistent belief in its tenets. As a result of this, it basically does not exist past what people see on Law & Order.
Welcome to the USA.
Papers please, comrade.
Ausweiss, bitte!
We got compulsory ID here in the Netherlands first though (well, before the US...in january 2005)...funny thing is, that's the seconds time in 60 years we've had that happen.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
By the current standards, the founding fathers WERE terrorists.
This space available.
Recall that in a village everyone knows everyone by sight, a stranger is immediatly noticed. In the early ninties we talked about the global village, and now we see the down side of it, no anonymity. In a village no one is anonymous, and thats what we will have.
Your choices are soapbox, ballot box, ammo box. Which is it time for?
Well, let me summarize it for ya: we've been speaking out against the government's intrusions into personal privacy, the bill of rights, etc. And then there's the lack of representation of the people because so many congresscritters have sold their souls to the corporations.
After all the screaming and shouting we all got to vote with our hearts, but then we're stuck with a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario because of our 2-party system where both candidates aren't about to serve the best interests of the people anyway. Hell, has that really ever been the case with oligarchies like the US gov?
And to top it off, the 2000 election was not so quietly stolen by not so obvious voter fraud, thanks in part to Bush family ties to Choicepoint's owners (which is the company that eliminated the number of votes to give "W" the Florida electorate).
So, we've used the soapbox extensively, in fact I'm doing it now. We've used to ballot box, but that didn't seem to have any affect. So what's that leave us with?
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
Before 9/11 - do nothing during a hijack and live
After 9/11 - do nothing during a hijack and die
The terrorists used a one-time window of opportunity to do what they did that day.
Yes, and it didn't even take a day for people to realize this. It happened in *minutes*. As soon as the people on the fourth plane heard what had happened to the other planes, they went to try to take control of the plane, preventing it from being flown into a building.
How can a terrorist take a plane if there are 30 people willing to die fighting to re-gain control of the plane?
The sad answer is: terrorists will have smuggled weapons onto the plane. From the news reports, it's still surprisingly easy to do -- at least one person brought a loaded gun on board, by accident! And the honest passengers will have only their hands, because the government said they'd be safer if granny isn't allowed to bring her knitting needles on board.
4 hijackers, with weapons, who only need to keep the unarmed passengers out of the cockpit (and away from my pilot) for a few minutes in a narrowbody jet? If I was a terrorist hijacker willing to give my life for a Cause, I'd like those odds.
With all these sealed national borders and national ID card initiatives getting pushed through Congress, you may wake up one day and find you couldn't leave the U.S. if you wanted to.
Maybe we all need to take a breather and reread select chapters from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
Also: to make it look like they're Doing Something About It(tm). AKA looking busy. All these newly-minted petty dictators have to keep enacting new egregious violations of your libery to keep reminding you why their jobs are "needed". If they just do their jobs, they'll eventually be let go as an unneccessary and annoying expense. Instead, we get dire warnings, intoned in the most serious of voices, that fingernail clippers are not permitted. What? Ohhh, it's inconvenient and unreasonable? Izzat so? Well, why don't you tell us -- why do you hate America??
If our forefathers could see us now, we'd hide in embarrasment at the glare they'd give us. It's sickening.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
My point exactly. Security morons are assuming that the problem was that the IDs we had are somehow lacking [....] the problem is actually relying on IDs for security in the first place.
As far as I know, most of the 9/11 hijackers used things like their passports to get on the planes, and their IDs were accurate.
In other words, innaccurate IDs had almost nothing at all to do with 9/11.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.