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Australians to Get Compulsory Photo ID Smartcard
syousef writes "The Sydney morning herald reports that a new national ID card will be issued in Australia."From 2010 people will not be able to receive government health and welfare payments without a card. People may choose to have other information stored on the card, such as health and emergency contact details which, for example, ambulance officers could use.". Your papers please."
If you've ever seen the famous German film M (which is made by Fritz Lang--the same director of Metropolis fame), you would recall the scenes in which people are asked for their papers and arrested if they don't have them or they are suspected to be fake. This is in an attempt to crack down on a child molester/murderer.
Why do I pick M and not some modern day movie that reflects this? Because as I watched M, I realized that Fritz Lang was probably commenting on the futility of that system of law enforcement although his audience probably watched it with a "that's just the way it works" attitude. How profound it was to see an act of injustice only to realize that when and where this movie was made it was not at all out of the norm.
I was born in 1982 so I'm sure I don't know the half of how 'papers' work but I do know that I have a social security card, two birth certificates (state and county) and a driver's license. Are these my papers? Maybe they could be construed as such but I highly doubt I would be arrested should I lack any of them. You will, of course, argue with me and tell me I would be considered an illegal alien without the birth certificates. I know this is true most places and I do fear for my country, the United States of America.
The article was very concerned with how much this would cost versus save the Australian government. The article was also very concerned about whether this would crack down on identity theft or make it easier to steal an identity. What I'm concerned about is what happens when you're a suspect of a crime that happened in proximity to you and you don't have your ID card? I'm also very concerned to see whether or not the Aboriginal peoples of Australia will be forced to carry this card.
Are the laws surrounding this card being mandated such that it would be very easy for law enforcement to abuse it? Will this give them an excuse to arrest whom ever they so choose? Identification is easily abused by both the identifiers and those being identified.
My work here is dung.
What happens when a wallet gets stolen? How many hoops do you have to jump through to prove that you are who you say you are, so that you can get a new card? If I lose my credit card, I make a phone call and they cancel it and send me a new one - surely it wouldn't be that easy with some form of national identification.
And like the previous poster stated - how much longer before this really does turn into compulsory chipping (except in Wisconsin)? While I am not afraid of the government, and have nothing to hide, I'm not exactly enamoured by the idea of being required to have some form of absolute ID on me (or in me) at all times.
Where does this all end? Gattica had the nifty system of checking DNA for everything...will the Police officer someday just ask for a strand of hair? I like my bodily fluids, and I don't want to give them away, especially not for something as mundane as identification...it would be okay to give them to the proverbial "female".
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
As has been repeatedly pointed out about the UK government's (well, a handful of senior members') insistence on introducing a 'voluntary' ID card, it's going to be a windfall for IT consultants if the debacle of the NHS patient database project is anything to go by. I'm polishing my golden wheelbarrow as I type. Quite fancy six months or so in Oz too.
My work here is dung.
Bruce Schneier wrote an op-ed a couple years back on why a national ID doesn't offer any more security. Interesting reading, to say the least: http://www.schneier.com/essay-034.html
Fine by me -- as long as I don't have to pay for others to get those government health and welfare benefits as well.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Much like the UK ID Card coming soon. The Gov said it would be optional to have one, then tried to rail-road anyone getting a passport (new or renewal) into having one. Luckily, the Lords put a stop to that, and initially at least it will be optional for you to take the ID Card when you get your next passport. Of course, you will still be charged for it, and all the information will still be logged into the central database whether you take the card or not.
I renewed my passport this year so I won't be forced into having an ID Card for 10 years! I'd strongly suggest that you consider doing the same!
Of course, first it's optional to have one, or too many people would object! The next step is obviously to make it a legal requirement to own such a card, but it would never be mandatory to carry it. Give it a couple of years however, and a new law WILL make it an offence not to carry your ID Card.
It's common sense (for the Gov!). There's no point having ID Cards unless everyone has them, and there's no point having them unless everyone carries the damn things. Of course, what's the point in carrying them if no one ever asks to see them ...
Papers please
It won't help the public with their normal everyday lives, but it will help the Gov. control you.
Just Say NO!
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
I live in Belgium and I have with me my identity card and my "SIS" card. The first has been asked by me once when police where looking for somebody. It seemed they were looking for somebody who looked like me.
Instead of taking me to the station and all the tests, they just chaecked my papers and all was well.
The other I use if I am at a docter, or buy prescribed medicene. It is there so I get money back. Both are now with a chip set. Want to read what is on them? http://www.belgium.be/zip/eid_datacapture_fr.html Indeed, source code is aailable.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
why not just create a Certificate Authority for the Federal Government? Then mandate that all driver's licenses and passports have a smart chip with a certificate signed by the government and your own personal public key, also signed by the government. A separate card could be issued with your private key on it. As a backup, encode the certificate for the ID card in a barcode on the back, so your ID can be verified even if the chip fails.
If you want to get rid of the separate card for the private key, come up with an algorithm for hashing other biometric data to make a private key: retinal scan and/or thumbprint.
If properly implemented, there would be two virtues to this system. The first is, after the initial check by the issuer that the issuee is who they say they are, no central database query is need to authenticate the ID. Each ID reader just needs a copy of the government's public key. After almost 10 years of Web Browser PKI experience, this system should be well-understood. The second virtue is, if every citizen has a public and private key pair, then check and credit card fraud could be eliminated. Those systems currently rely on insecure methods like written signatures, very short pins, or codes on the back of the physical cards. It would also be possible to easily encrypt e-mail, keep phone calls private, and transmit legally binding electronic documents.
Bruce Schneier points out that any ID card system will be flawed from the start because there is a human element in issuing and checking ID's. Biometrics and PKI would help, but perhaps not enough. At the very least, my proposal wouldn't be a worse ID system then we currently have, and actually provides two possible benefits we didn't have before. On the other hand, governments don't like strong encryption in the hands of citizens, so we would have to watch for backdoors in the system. There may also be a concern with the fact that your public key can now tie you to your various activities. Of course, this is pretty much the case now. Though, there are many virtues to a world where PKI is widely used.
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In X-Windows the client serves YOU!
if you dont think that kind of thing goes on here in the USA, read this story about a women who was put in jail because she did not show her "papers" on a public bus while not breaking any laws... http://www.papersplease.org/davis/index1.html
Don't discount how polarizing this will be for many Americans. The groudswell of resistance will cause the idea to fail politically before it can be implemented.
I used to manage a company in the mid-South. When we tried to eliminate physical paychecks and go to mandatory direct deposit, there was a near-strike among the workforce. Main argument was biblical - "linking me with all those numbers is the first step toward being marked with the sign of the beast."
Yeah they forgot that even with paper checks the company reported pay data to the IRS. But the resistance was emotional, visceral, and strong.
This is a very specific plan to require people who are receiving government benefits to be able to demonstrate that they are who they claim to be. Don't like it? Don't participate. If you want the benefits, you have to play by the rules.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
The funny thing is, can you imagine if passports were a new idea?
They are a relatively new idea, and people just have a short attention span. They were only introduced in WWI (to the horror of just about everyone) promises were made to eliminate the documents after the war (which weren't kept) and it wasn't until WW2 that you really needed one to travel worldwide. (Quite a lot of the immigrants to Ellis Island had not a piece of paper on em.)
I cite the passport, and the ensuing cult of documentation to travel, as the biggest loss of liberty and freedom in the 20th century. Our acceptance/resignation of the idea that you need documentation and permission to cross borders is shameful.
I may add though that the original justification for passports during WWI was to "prevent espionage." Apparently spies couldn't get valid documents. Having done quite a lot of research into photo ID cards, the justifications for them usually range from stupid to assinine--and today we would be much more sophisticated (thanks to security knowledgeable audiences like Slashdot) to weed out the dumb arguments.
Or Driving Licenses: "New Compulsory Photo ID required just to operate vehicles!"
Photo driver's licenses are also fairly new and weren't as uncontroversial as you suggest. Most Americans didn't have one until the early 1980s. The justification for the photo license was also flimsy (the Ohio BMV, in 1974 said it was for "better identification" though police in Ohio didn't feel it was necessary.)
Well into the late 1970s there were a variety of attempts to make the photo optional on the Ohio license or to eliminate it completely. There was a pretty good amount of unhappiness about it. Several states maintained photo optional licensing until after 9/11 (like Vermont, Tennessee and New Jersey, though only Tennessee retains it today for the elderly.)
Like passports, attempts to introduce photo ID cards today would be met with much more sophisticated arguments against, particularly because the justification for them was so lackluster to begin with.
I hypothesize, based on factual and anecdotal information, that the creation of the photo driver's license coincides with the push by Polaroid of its instant color photo technology, which was too expensive for most Americans, but which they could sell successfully to state DMVs for ID card issuance. (An ex Polaroid employee, who founded a group against National ID cards, told me that Polaroid's color instant photo process, was given a special national security exemption, and its patent lasted twice as long as normal patents do.)