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Homeland Security Director Defends Real ID
An anonymous reader writes "Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff is defending the upcoming rollout of the national ID card as vital for the nation's security. Chertoff reminded reporters of the importance of the initiative after this week's uncovering of an ID-forging ring. The Real ID Act of May 2005 dictates the uses and requirements for the documentation, which by 2008 may be required for everything from travel to banking. Just the same, the HSD has yet to dictate how exactly the cards will work. " From the article: "The Homeland Security chief, who is nearing his two-year mark with the agency, was likely trying to quell rampant skepticism about the IDs voiced by some privacy advocates, immigrants and other groups. Some have said they fear that the IDs are a stepping stone to a veritable police state, complete with ready surveillance of individuals. Some have argued that the idea of creating more tamperproof IDs is only a marginally better way to screen out those intent on committing terrorist acts because ID cards don't even begin to tackle a core crime prevention challenge: determining a person's unspoken intentions. "
Speaking for all college students out there (even though it's been 10 years since I've been one), I say "down with national ID cards!" How are our college students supposed to enjoy the company of their elders in fine drinking establishments without easily forged IDs? Punishing the resourcefulness of underage drinkers that are no threat to national security is just a crime.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
Can't remember the name of the book, but I know how this ends. Some guy who doesn't like me steals my ID card and/or replaces it with an invalid one, and I end up in jail because I can't prove who I really am. Federated identity is important; we can't have a single authoritative source for IDs or this sort of abuse will definitely happen.
mandelbr0t
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
Who are we kidding? We already live in a police state.
So how exactly would these new ID cards be forge-proof? If people are already forging IDs, what's to stop them from forging these new ones? And what problem does this national ID card solve?
It is only a matter of time before more of our rights are bled from us. The amount of gov. intrusion over the last 5 years has been frightening. No doubt some far rightwinger will be backing this and even responding to me that this is full of shit. My bet; that they will shortly find some unique reason to want to track everybody who is leaving this country (and not just entering it), just as this unique raid on swift is being use for rational for IDs.
I feel safer already.
When I was younger, I rejected the need to track who I was. I was clinging to an ideology that felt natural.
/opinion
Now that I'm older and I've been damaged by identity theft ($1k and counting, not to mention the credit damage and IRS audit)
I can't wait.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
We have Driver's licences, SSN cards, Concealed Weapon Permits, Passports, Birth Cirtificates...and a whole host of other types and forms of ID already floating around. There are differences among them all, such as, Driver's Licenses are accepted in all 50 states, at least for a limited time, but Concealed Weapon Permist are not. Driving is a privilege, while Owning and Bearing firearms is a Constitutionally protected Right. SSN numbers are not used withint the Guidelines set by the SS Administration. Birth Cirtificates are supplied by the point of origin, not ba a national agency, so there are many difficulties in obtaining replacements. Passports are time consuming and it could be "fatal" to loose one and have it find its way into the hands of a terrorist (or other identity thief)...
So, where are we now? Creating yet another form of ID, one that can be used for everything and may be required for everything? What happens if we loose it? What happens if it is forged? Will it be good in all 50 states? or on a state by state? Can states refuse to participate?
Will it take the place of all other forms of ID?
If not, then what is its purpose?
Government is a necessary guardian of freedom, but the natural enemy of freedom is the government. What the government should be doing is protecting the right of the individuals(The right to free speech, freedom of religion,etc), therefore for the good of society. Enemy combatants are not the only one to be a threat to freedom, but also fear, corporate interest, ignorance, and other factors. Remember the quote "There is nothing to fear but fear itself". I believe the enemy combatants(Islamic extremists) won when USA become a police state. However, I don't it will be. Remember the "Red Scare"? We're still a relatively free country after that.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-RMS
Homeland Security Dude? If you're thinking of the Department of Homeland Security, that'd be DHS.
Seriously, though, I'm 19 and I don't have any government-issued ID. If they're going to make this mandatory, it had better not cost $20 like a Washington state ID card.
☠
Quotes from article:
"With RealID, we can easily track down minorities and poor people."
"You know when someone shows you a RealID, its real. I mean, its in the name."
"To stop people from making fake RealIDs, we called it 'RealID'."
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Where does the federal government claim to derive the power to mandate federal IDs? Are they using the interstate commerce clause yet again? There's one part of the Constitution that has been seriously misused time and time again and is in dire need of fixing.
http://www.aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf
Some have said they fear that the IDs are a stepping stone to a veritable police state, complete with ready surveillance of individuals.
Others argue that the police state is well underway already, complete with surveillance of individuals firmly established. A national ID is merely a finishing touch. Please present your papers and step into the processing booth. Nothing can go wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. Thank you for your cooperation.
"Homeland Security has yet to issue congressionally mandated recommendations for the cards, so it's unclear how, exactly, they would work."
How can you argue for a system which doesn't even exist? It's pie-in-the-sky: have Chertoff come back when he has something to show.
They were going to title this project "The Number of the Beast", but it didn't do so well in the focus groups.
Meta, Meta, Meta
Comment removed based on user account deletion
even if they printed super fake proof IDs with a little dancing hologram Bush in them and they were perfect, it still wouldn't stop any sort of anything they're trying to stop by using them. You'd still have people committing crimes and entering the country illegally. There are much more effective ways of stopping each of those. Plus, they either have to force everyone everywhere to be super strict and basically arrest anyone who can't present it on the spot or people will just let it fly if the person says they forgot it at home or something. Or they could just say they're not from the US and are just visiting if asked to present it. It's really pretty useless. We have SS cards now and that hasn't done anything...isn't that already a universally unique identifying card? They'd be better off just trying to build a mind reading terrorist detector or future predicting quantum device.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Most forgeries aren't perfect, in fact I'd say the vast majority are actually pretty shoddy comparatively. The problem comes when there are tons of kinds of IDs you need to recognise. Think about driver licenses. There are 50 different state variants and within those states there are often different types. I have seen not less than 4 variants on the Arizona license in the last 10 years, all of them still in circulation. That means that often those checking the IDs aren't able to do much more than a cursory job and make sure it's nothing something obvious like a paper picture glued on top. They aren't aware of all the security features to look for.
If there's a single, universal ID then the forgeries need to be much better. If you only need to learn about one ID, you can learn all the features on it and become quite familiar with it. Likewise any machine that checks it can be tailored to check all the security features to a high degree. This raises the bar a ton as now you have to produce essentially perfect forgeries and there aren't a lot of forgers that can do that.
Now please don't mistake this for an endorsement of the national ID concept, however it is a legit point. I can tell you to a very high degree of accuracy if an Arizona ID is real or not, at least if it's one of the newer ones, since I've looked at them quite carefully and gotten a list of the things to look for. However you give me a California ID and basically all I can do is look for stupid mistakes. I've no idea how it ought to actually look.
oooh ooh, and when you swipe it at a card reader, it goes
asdf2349qu0sadifjafsld@3290### buffering...
How would "Real ID" stop "identity theft"? Particularly since "identity theft" is basically fraud.
If anything, it will make it more difficult to "prove" that you did not apply for those loans, run up those credit cards, etc.
Nothing will stop fraud until the banks start having to pay for it instead of dumping the expense on their clients.
And the more a single piece of ID is accepted as "proof" of identity, the more valuable it becomes and the more people will try to forge it. Or just get a job in the office issuing them.
http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/23/researchers-hac k-rfid-credit-cards-big-surprise/
. html?tw=wn_tophead_1
Seeing as companies don't really care about a consumers privacy (they sell the data as fast as they can anyways) its no surprise that the government wants in on the action.
GET YOU NEW IDENTITY HERE! NO APPLICATION NEEDED!
The tinfoil hat idea may be passe, but the tinfoil wallet may be the wave of the future.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,61264,00
So long as the RFID signal is kept weak, atleast.
http://www.epic.org/privacy/dv/real_id.html
And of course it was added as a rider, and got through, as the REAL ID act was put into a "must pass" bill appropriating money for tsunami relief and defense. Pub. Law 109-13. REAL ID was added to this bill without any hearings.
Sometimes I -HATE- the fact that little bits of law can be added in as a rider and passed with otherwise "must pass" bills, even if the bits added in as a rider never would have passed on its own.
...is your habits. In a small town, "Joe usually buys groceries on Tuesday. Velma is the cashier". This is the only reliable form of ID I've ever seen. Velma knows a lot of people. She knows what a "stranger" is. This is less true in large cities, but even here in DC which is considered a transient city, I've become a "regular" at a few establishments, and at smaller mom-n-pop stores that don't have high employee turnover, I recognize most of the cashiers. I even recognize some patrons that have similar habits. I recognize people in my building, and I'm sure they recognize me.
But guess what? ID doesn't matter. If Joe goes nuts with an automatic weapon and blows Velma's brains out, her family doesn't care that much if it was Joe, a stranger, or Bin Laden himself. She's dead. ID does nothing to stop it. In other words, to the government: GET OVER IT. There is no silver bullet in security, and ID isn't even a silver bullet. It's hardly even a round lead ball.
On the other hand, most forgeries are bad precisely because there are so many types of IDs. Therefore, forgers must use fake base materials. All this will do is provide a single set of legitimate base materials that can be stolen anywhere and will be considered "trusted" everywhere. So now, instead of faking the materials in a local forgery ring, they'll buy the legitimate raw materials on the black market from someone who stole them in another state. Once that shift in operation occurs, all fake IDs will be almost indistinguishable from the real thing, making things worse than they are now, not better.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
You do realize that one of the reasons Social Security numbers make for terrible ID is because once your Social Security number is compromised it is extremely difficult to change.
Guess what problem the new system also has?
But that's what happens when all you see is (does something) and fail to distinguish between (does something smart) and (does something stupid). Politicians and internet trolls are famous for this failing.
The enemies of Democracy are
first they used my social security number for everything it wasn't meant it be used for next they used my drivers license for everything it wasn't meant it be used for the article tells ya the next stop when will we stand up ...after we lose all privacy???
What if a system is implemented to validate that the person presenting the card is the person listed in the database? What if when the card is read, the system displays the picture on file for the holder of the card (for an example of this type of system, except on a much more privacy-reduced scale, I'd recommend reviewing the DNA ID system in Gattaca)?
A card in any form is far more easily forged than a secured database. Use the information on the card for trivial matters (such as establishing patronage at your local drinking establishment or cashing a check at your bank) and connect to the database when it really counts (any government matter)
And regarding RFID use (for anyone who really cares, and there are plenty of people who do), encrypt the data so that it is useless without actually seeing the card (multi-key encryption)
Right now, the only government assigned ID system (in the US) is the Social Security Card, which is just a number and a name (which is not enough to validate the true identity of the person). The state issued IDs are not actually mandatory, so it is entirely possible that a US citizen has NO photo ID.
because ID cards don't even begin to tackle a core crime prevention challenge: determining a person's unspoken intentions
Let's make that a bit clearer, shall we?
because ID cards don't even begin to tackle a core crime prevention challenge: determining a person's thought crimes
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
The problem you experienced was in fact that of having too much identification!
Your stolen identity only became a problem because such services rely on identification so much. Adding another card won't help the situation. It'll just give a potential identity thief something else of yours to steal and use against you. As such, the only way to prevent identity theft is to completely reduce the reliance on such information by essential and unavoidable services.
If you own and carry a gun, there's a chance somebody might take it and shoot you with it. But if you don't own or carry a gun at all, you thus have no gun of your own that somebody else could shoot you with. Likewise, the only way to truly protect yourself from the effects of identity theft is to avoid having to rely on your identity as much as is possible.
But, if people enter the US from other countries, they'll be using their passports for ID, not this thing, so... um... what was the point again?
Ah, but if they made everyone, even people visiting from other countries, get one of these, then it's much more secure than showing the passport. And how would they get one? They'd need some other ID first... like, for instance, a passport...
So, what possible good can this do? Well, I guess it'll make it harder for underage kids to buy beer. Other than that? Nothing, really...
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
... and says "Can I see you Real... buffer...buffer...buffer...buffer...buffer... ID please?"
"This is America... where the will of the few outweigh the outrage of the many..." - Unknown
I say we just tattoo everyone with a unique number using some kind of magnetic ink that can't be forged, like on the forehead or some place it wouldn't be easy to remove or forge somehow.
...over here in EU. I'm not sure if they help with anything but the simplest things, but they don't hurt nearly as much (if at all) as most of you paranoid people think they will.
There is no law (and in my opinion, should be no law) determining what companies are allowed to do with information you freely give them.
If that scares you, simply don't give away your information.
I'm not exactly in favor of a national ID card, but this new program for implementing one makes me marginally happy. Why? Because we already have a national ID card, and it's a terrible one, trivial to abuse, trivial to forge, and used in contexts where it makes no sense: the Social Security Card. When the SSN card was first introduced, it was derided as a national ID card, but the proponents promised it wasn't. Well, it was, and we can see that by looking around us now. Do you want a driver's license? Well you better have a valid SSN card because one is required to get a license (this is a new rule as of summer 2006, so many of you might not realize this yet). Do you want a bank account? Need one. You need one for everything. My local video store demanded my actual physical SSN card before they would rent me a video. (I almost refused but I really really wanted to see Weekend At Bernie's II.)
So, shit, even though I don't want there to be a national ID card, the one coming soon is sure to be better than the one we have now.
I just really hope my new Social Conformity Number is 54601.
relevant to this issue:
http://www.no2id.net/
http://www.papersplease.org/
Think hard about whether you really want to trade the last shred of privacy for a little bit of 'added security'.
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Unless you are terrified of losing your job because someone from Brazil can come here and work for half of what you are making.
I live in the Phoenix area. Read the article about how you can get a fake SSN + drivers license + immigrant ID for $160 on the street corner in Phoenix.
Today, it is barely possible to verify the "credentials" of a prospective employee. DHS rules (as stated on the I-9 employment documentation form) says employers are not supposed to attempt to verify the validity of documents presented. So, if someone comes along with a driver's license drawn in crayon we are supposed to accept this.
One quick step to ending illegal immigration and "undocumented" workers is to make employer's liable for hiring people that aren't supposed to be here. A year in jail would go a long way towards ending it and there would be a mass exodus southward. The problem right now is there is no central authority for validating documents. There isn't even a consistent method on a state-by-state basis. If someone shows you an Illinois driver's license in Arizona as far as I know there is no way whatsoever to know if it is real, faked or "borrowed".
This also has an effect on just about everything else that today requires some kind of identification. If I go into a bank they want a local driver's license. One from another state isn't good enough. Why? Because they have no idea how to validate out-of-state identification.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with "terrorists" since many of them are state-sponsored and have access to whatever resources are required to defeat this kind of thing. However, we can all be concerned, if not terrified that today it is easier and cheaper to hire an undocumented worker than a citizen - because the citizen wants a fair wage and benefits. The undocumented worker wants nothing except more money than he was getting at home - which is an incredibly low bar to meet.
>So, what possible good can this do? Well, I guess it'll make it harder for underage kids to buy beer. Other than that? Nothing, really...
Back in my underage days, I never used a fake ID to buy beer (or wine or liquor). I never used a real one either, for that matter. I actually looked sort of young for my age, as well. I figured out that getting caught with a fake ID got you in Trouble. My technique was to go to a Mom and Pop grocery when they weren't real busy and just put a six pack up on the check out counter. If they asked for ID, I would just smile and tell them I didn't have it and walk out. That didn't happen much, as those places were always looking for any kind of sale. It was actually easier to get by the owners than any hired help they might have. Once I found a place that would sell to me, I became a regular customer.
Bars were a different story. You couldn't get into any of the popular college places, especially those with bands, without ID. On the other hand, there were lots of fairly classy places that never carded me. A couple of us were sitting at the bar on a Friday afternoon, having a beer and talking with the bartender when a guy walked in and sat down on my right. He turned to the guy on his right and carded him. Turned out he was an ABC agent. He sat there for about half an hour telling us all stories about fake IDs. I just about peed my pants.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
They know they need these kinds of measures because if the US economy starts hardcore tanking and people cant feed themselves or get work, they know that they will turn to revolution out of desperation. This is also why they contracted halliburton to start building massive prison camps. Sadly, this is one of those chicken and egg things. When the americans realize what has happened, they will already be poor and hungry. Before this time, they (will be)/(are) too comfortable to care.
A hungry man is an angry man. If I was american, I would stockpile guns like in terminator 2. Thats the next right to go.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Can we make Bush's number 666?
i'm tired of wasting tax money on bullshit like this
When (not if, but when) the database for these cards is hacked, the bad guys get everything. If they hack UCLA or Citibank they only get a portion of the US populations ID info. When they hack this database they get it all on everyone.
MULTIPLE DIVERSE SYSTEMS OF LIMITED COMPATIBILITY ARE REQUIRED TO PRESERVE LIFE, LIBERTY, AND FREEDOM.
One more step towards the future
Imagine that you are a US Senator, elected to that position by the legislature of your state. A bill is proposed that will demand that the same legislature enact a certain law, and the state executive branch enforce it to the satisfaction of some national executive agency, or have funds withheld. Now imagine you want to be re-elected by that legislature. How do you think you're going to vote?
The result of these changes is that more and more decisions are being made in the US Congress and by the faceless mass of bureaucrats in national agencies, rather than in state capitals, county courthouses, and city halls. The concentration of power favors well-funded lobbyists who represent powerful interests, for whom the return on their investment can be huge; against diffuse interests of common citizens.
Instead of 50 different 'distros' of government, with the chance to learn from each other and merge improvements that succeeded elsewhere, we get stuck with a single implementation. Any flaws in that monoculture are global and potentially catastrophic.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
It doesn't matter. Suicide terrorists couldn't care less about people knowing their real identities, it isn't as if they would have to repeat their crimes and worry about being recognized the second time...
The DHS is run by over promoted bureaucrats who know absolutely nothing about security. We all know this, here is why this time:
:)
First lets talk about passwords. One thing I run into that people who set corporate policies for passwords often do not understand is that the password strength is very rarely the weak point in an attack. Quite often the requirements will be sent to something crazy like 20 characters, no repeating characters, enforced alphanumeric, (you all know the usual strong password requirements) and they feel that is it. Oh, but to reset a forgotten password all you need to know is your mother's maiden name or some such. THAT is the weak link, you have effectively made every user's password their mother's maiden name. All of the other password strength requirements are irrelevant.
"How does this relate, finkployd, you arrogant prick?" I hear most of you asking. Simple, how does one get one of these super duper realID cards? I strongly suspect it is by showing OTHER, PRE-EXISTING forms of ID. How else would it work? The problem of how to distribute these cards in such a way that you know they are being generated for and sent to the proper people pales in comparison to actually designing the damn thing in the first place. It will certainly depend in some way on existing forms of ID, meaning it is absolutely no more secure then them.
Of course the government and financial institutions will inevitably consider it to be the absolute last word in authentication, so expect that if your identity is ever stolen via a false realID card, nobody will ever believe you. YOU will be financially (and likely criminally) responsible for anything done if your realID is spoofed. Good luck everyone, we are screwed
Finkployd
If there's a single, universal ID then the forgeries need to be much better. If you only need to learn about one ID, you can learn all the features on it and become quite familiar with it.
That argument works both ways. If there is a single universal ID that needs to be forged, all the forgers will focus on learning all of the features of it and become so familiar with it that the quality of their forgeries will also increase in proportion.
Plus, this whole "real id" thing is just a modification of all the state driver's licenses to contain a baseline level of information in a semi-standard format. It does not really address the forge-ability of the IDs at all, allowing the states to continue on with their own unique styles and implementations, it is just standardization to a minimum level to make centralized databases easier. It is really the worst of both worlds.
Darn, what a shame that the police should have to be able to recognize 50 different types of driver's licenses. Have we so lost touch with our history in this nation that we think that it's the job of the citizenry to make it easier for the State to "police" us? Take a good look at the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and you won't find anything in there that indicates that Americans should be required to make the job of the police easier. In fact, it's just the opposite, which is why there isn't supposed to be unwarranted search in this country (President Bush's illegal NSA domestic spying program notwithstanding), it's why the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination exists, it's why jury trials are a right, at it's heart it's why the 2nd Amendment exists. Face it people (and I know that a lot of /.'ers already understand this) the government is the enemy of freedom, no matter what it says about "promoting liberty", just look at what the State actually does and open your eyes to the fact that the government is a far greater threat to your life and liberty than any numnber of terrorists.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Impeach Barack Obama for violating the Constitutional requirement to be a "natural born" citizen to hold the office of P
Please
suck it up.
What *I* mostly care about is this: Is it going to be as fast and easy as it is to obtain that fucking thing as it is to obtain legitimately a DL in Oregon?
In 2003, I moved there, got my apartment and had utility billing (showing proof of intent to reside there, not mooch or drift), and had my former CA DL (valid, non-expired) and auto insurance and my car smog-checked and in good condition, plus new tires and engine upkeep.
Closing in on the 30-day reside or leave law thing, I studied a few days for the test. I went to DMV by appointment (or, was it a drop-in? Yeh, by appointment since it was late when I first arrived). I sat before a computer. Answered maybe 20 questions. Passed.
Shocker? They told me to sit about 12 minutes and my ID would be ready. I thought I mis-heard the clerk. Huh? What?! 12 minutes? Hell, in California, I'd have to wait a month, maybe two (and mine have in CA been lost in the mail once or twice, when time was critical and having an ID for contract work was mandatory... not paper temporary vouchers...).
I concede that Oregon has a FRACTION of CA's population, but give me a BREAK! Are Oregon homeless or con artists any more crafty than those in California? CA is one of the most HIGH TECH states in the US, and if CA were a country, it'd have maybe the 3rd or 4th largest economy in the world (a good reason for CA to say FUCK DC and secede, heheheheh), so it ought to be EASIER and faster to obtain ID in CA. It should be possible to get the frackin' thing within 20 MINUTES of proving ones identity or passing ID and passing the DMV test.
The brouhaha over internal passport and threat to privacy and such may be well-intentioned, but as long as the ID has no wires, trace capability, or the like, then it's probably a GOOD thing that the ID information will be centralized. I am not speaking about "keeping out migrant workers". I'm talking about putting a crimp in the asses of those who legitimately obtain multiple IDs but who then go on to ABUSE the multiple IDs across state lines, defraud the IRS (I don't mind PAYING taxes; it's the LEVEL that I am bothered by at times), and evade paying bills, tickets, or child support. If you MAKE a kid, PAY FOR IT! Owe a debt, PAY for it, or stay in the loop until it's discharged or someone picks up the bill to give you a clean slate.
All this bitching about the ID is good and some of it is not. Another GOOD thing is that some back-jerkwater-ass hobo-run sheriff or PO-LEASE in parts of the US can't (hopefully can't) ding passers-through on D/L issues. (Broken turn or signal lamps can still cause you problems if they want to detain you or scrape a few dozen dollars out of your wallet before telling you to come back and visit our little town again....)
Hell, many countries, due to historical and formation pains, have had national IDs from their START. We, here in the USA, had it good for a while. The criminal types will still evade; the good types will comply; the cottage lawyers will bitch up a storm and get paid up the ass and smile for the make-work. Cops (good or bad) and bars and certain businesses will love it because they won't have to memorize, train others, or keep annual books on valid forms of acceptable ID.
(*** It *ought* to be a *win* for a lot of people. The cell phones and pagers, NIC cards, and roaming login accounts tell more about us than the damned RealID would. I am pretty sure a number of states are afraid of losing control not over states' rights, but over the cottage card-printing industry (like presidents' and governors' wives painting and selling junk art so DC and the states' frame-making industry can be artificially propped up....) ***)
Anyway, some states permit individuals to possess more than one state ID as long as there is no sign of fraud. Frakin' California would punch a HOLE through my Oregon ID but I had to rationalize with the clerk that I HAD to not have my Oregon ID SCREWED WITH by some arcane process that could be double-checked by a simple inter-ag
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Here's what you should ask them to strike down:
1. REAL ID Act of 2005 (Introduced in House)[H.R.418.IH]
2 . REAL ID Act of 2005 (Engrossed as Agreed to or Passed by House)[H.R.418.EH]
3 . REAL ID Act of 2005 (Referred to Senate Committee after being Received from House)[H.R.418.RFS]
Google can help you find your pretty fast.
If all these questions and comments were sent to your member of congress instead of slashdot...
this would seem to be primarily an american problem .. although britian and the rest of the colonial world do seem to be fallowing along nicely ..
.. is disputed .. i hold that it's truth is valid regardless of anyone famous having been the author of this quote ..
..
.. their fallowers .. their dream life style and their ideals inside america .. and leave the rest of us alone .. you do only represent less that 6% of the world population after all ..
.. european colonialism and the rest of their bastard offspring suffer a swift .. and complete demise .. never to arise again in human history ..
whether Franklin actual said it or not
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
the real problem for the rest of the world
is how to keep americans
may the british empire
The better question is how to keep people from forging the documents on which the "RealID" is based? The article does not say that authorities were busting rings of people forging state-issued drivers' licenses (although I know that happens as well), the article talks about forging birth certificates and social security cards.
So, what is to stop people from applying for a "RealID" based on forged credentials, even supposing the ID itself were unforgable? Given that someone else has an ID in your name, how do you prove who you are?
So, even if this is a problem worth solving, it looks like overhauling birth (or naturalization) certificates and social security cards is a better approach. But what do you do when someone loses their birth certificate? What do you do when someone needs more copies of their birth certificate? (There are several processes which require sending copies of birth certificates to various folks). These are harder questions than DHS likes to admit.
California may be getting better, or I was just lucky. Went to the DMV to get my license renewed, they said I would receive it in the mail in 2 weeks, and it showed up a week early. Still not 20 minutes, but compared to the 1.5 months I waited the time prior, I'll take it!
I had no idea it took that long in other states ... here in PA I went in, filled out a short form. Once I gave them the paper, the picture & printing took all of 2 minutes and I was out of there.
Hey, this justification is wrong - try applying it to paper currency... :-)
How is this not a total violation of civil rights?
So you going to need an ID card to leave your house, get a burger, and take your next breath?
Oregon in known throughout the entirer world as the easiest place to get a DL.
That is why half of Mexico comes here every year, no SSN required, just sign a paper. Really, no shit.
Also a law that forbids law enforcement to ask if you are a legal citizen.
Your Oregon DL is worthless in states like Florida, that knows anyone can get one and it is not reliable. Florida will not take an Oregon DL as legal proof of identity.
To put a blunt point on it, Oregon sucks ass in this department, and the govt idiots that foster this crap need to have the fingernails ripped out.
Of course he is going to defend his own program. I for one am solidly against this. The government has too much power now with The Patriot Act. Something needs to be done to make government again accountable to the people.
CA is one of the most HIGH TECH states in the US
Do not confuse the state government of CA with the private sector, or state as a whole. State government bureaucracy is incredibly slow there.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
When a politician is thinking of what regulations to make, most (thankfully not all) think not about how to help the country but how to maintain there power. In a democracy, maintaining power=being popular (note: popular not smart. Dont confuse the two). You can't be popular if you tell people to suck it up because there is no reasonable way to prevent some security threats and so you do crap like national IDs.
Similar delusions make it hard for people to acknowledge censorship etc.
I once lived in an openly oppressive regime, sure your rights got trampled, and there was severe censorship but at least you didn't live in a fool's paradise.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Today with this story, it all makes perfect sense.
Gwen Ifill asks great questions, too bad nobody answers them.
Scary Times.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Alaren,
:)
You have indeed placed the blame in exactly the right place. I've been saying this for years, the only difference being that I always called it "DoSumthin'" I wonder if that will count as prior art to defend against any allegations of trademark infringement.
Seriously though, the urge on the part of politicians to provide simple answers to inherantly difficult and complex situations (The "Do Something" mentality) is far more dangerous to the freedoms and way of life of Americans than many of the possible actions of terrorists and criminals. I often wonder if Bin Laden isn't sitting back, laughing his butt off every time our own government knee jerks away another fundamental liberty for the sake of the PERCEPTION of a bit of temporary security.
~sigh~
The Digital Sorceress
Under The Real ID Act, though, the state ID authority (usually the DMV) will be required not only to examine your birth certificate and social security card, but also to scan and create digital copies of them in their system, as well as collecting further information on their forms.
So here's another shoe to drop:
This is exactly the information necessary to use the IDs and related databases as the foundation of a system to insure that:
- Voters are real people.
- Voters are qualified to vote, i.e.:
- Are citizens (in states that don't explicitly permit non-citizens to vote)
- Are of age to vote.
- Are residents of the place where they vote.
- Are not barred from voting (for instance: By felony convictions in states where felons aren't allowed to vote)
- Voters are only registered once, in one place.
- Voters vote no more than once.
Half of vote fraud is bogus counting (such as the black-box voting flap). The other half is bogus voters (such as the cemetary vote, the virtual voters created en masse by the combination of motor-voter "vote drives" with no-excuse absentee voting, illegal alien signups, multiple registration, and so on.)
The data collected for this national I.D. card is exactly what's needed to purge the voting rolls of fake voters. Once it's collected and federalized the Fed can check it for authenticity and lack of duplication. Then:
- include a "where registered" field in the database entry for each federal I.D. record
- open that field for checking and update by voter registration clerks, and
- add a federal mandate that the federal I.D. number be used, and checked, for registration for federal elections,
and you've got a solution for the second class of ballot-box stuffing (modulo corruption in THIS system, which could be construed to be a "security" crime as well as vote fraud).
So if you want to oppose this, bring up this "benefit". You'll immediately have a rush of machine politicians to vote against the whole I.D. scheme. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Look at Western Europe. ID cards are ubiquitous, but no one complains. That's because they actually have checks and balances in government. Sure, this won't stop terrorists, but it makes conducting a fugitive search very easy. The problem is we love our Business-owned government so much we don't think that abuses of power should or can be curbed. Because of the unique idea that Americans have about politics being nice there is no partisan division of government like in Europe. Look at the Netherlands: A top leader was accused of lying on her refugee status application, leading to her replacement. In America nothing would happen, because there is a real benefit to being one of the boys. But that could be changing, thanks to Howard Dean. His fifty-state strategy lead to a diverse party bloc and this means that European-style coalition building could happen in America. Sorry for being OT, but I think that when checks and balances return we can finally be safe and free.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
National id's that dont seem to solve any real world problems given to us by the people that gave us the war in IRAQ and who lose notebooks containing our vital data all the time. Lets not forget the entire wiretapping scandal.. So we have a hidden or missguided agenda given to us by people who lie and can not be trusted to maintain our privacy and may use the data for what ever purposes they want... Sign me up mofo's!
Now apart from a the lack of mass killings, the USA is beginning to resemble nazi germany... However at least hitler was honest about what he wanted,
USA, land of the free, well it might have been, now were moving on to version 2.0 and the freedom bug has been removed.
There is already legal precedent, which is apparently holding up in court, to punish individuals for their thoughts, and/or words.
It is called "hate crime" punishment - which generally adds time to a sentence for some other criminal act. The whole concept of hate crime is ludicrous; who cares why someone beat me over the head with a stick - give them some jail time for it! If you don't think the sentence for battery is long enough, make it longer, don't make up thought crime penalties! What? some murders are worse than others because the victim was or was not called names just before the deed was done?
Seems to me, "hate crimes" just a step away from "terror crimes", after all, don't the terrorists "hate us"?
How is the following logical?
Scenario 1:
1) Yell racially tinged epithets at someone.
2) don't commit any battery, assault, etc.
3) Nothing happens, it's free speech.
Scenario 2: ...while robbing the kwik-e-mart.
1) Yell racially tinged epithets at Apoo...
2)
3) get 10-15 years for robbery.
4) get an additional 5-10 in jail for name-calling??? WTF!
Sometime in the near future...
Scenario 1:
1) Illegal right-turn on red.
2) Almost get a $250 ticket.
3) cute chick gets a date with the police officer.
Scenario 2:
1) Illegal right-turn on red.
2) Get a $250 ticket.
3) Bearded man gets an additional 5-10 years in jail for "hating red lights".
Skip to the chase:
Scenario 1:
1) Get jail time for what we think you think.
Gee, that slope wasn't slippery a minute ago...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Here the liquor laws state that acceptable forms of ID for the purpose of purchasing alcohol must be gazetted. At present the only ID that can be used are a New Zealand driver's licence, a photo ID card issued by the Hospitality Association (only useful for buying booze), an NZ passport, or a current foreign passport. Service ID (eg: military or police) and firearms licences (which have photo and DoB) or any other ID is not acceptable, and there is no defence available if that is what was used to gain a person entry - as opposed to a faked ID of an accepted form.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
3,030 Americans died on 9-11.
16,000 Americans die to murder each year.
In spite of the impact it made, 9-11 had 1/5th the impact of a single year of murders in the USA. Somehow, for 200 years, we managed to uphold the constitution in spite of murder rates. 9-11 is a sorry excuse to change that now.
Therefore, it seems timely and appropriate to recommend that the administration and members of the department of "homeland security" read the constitution, and that THEY adjust to the CONSTITUTION, rather than the other way around.
9-11 already happened. Unless they intend to invent a time machine to stop 9-11, the DHS should just disband itself, b/c chiselling away at our rights hasn't done a damn bit of good for the country.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
are probably the same ones who will yell about how stupid we are for letting Bush gain the presidency and all of the ridiculous things that he's done.
So, yeah, we're all paranoid and nuts for not wanting something like this card. And it has *nothing* to do with any of the other laws and removal of rights that we've gone through lately.
So, just keep being cooler and smarter than us.
The only thing that will come of the RealID program is that someone's friend will become very well off by providing whatever resources are needed for implementation. Of COURSE Mr. Chertoff is going to defend it - I expect he wants to avoid the fallout associated with a friend (and possible political ally) that wasn't given what was promised.
While I think that those of us who work in technology need to feel free to speak up when we see a flawed idea, sometimes I think that perhaps we lay our concern on a little too thick. The vast majority of us in the United States already carry some sort of government sponsored ID (and in many cases, more than one kind). These pieces of paper or plastic are for the most part, old technology. They provide limited information that may prove helpful to authorities who need to know something about you but that is about it.
Perhaps it is time to develop a more useful document. One that is far more difficult to forge, that can provide authorized people with access to the information that they need while at the same time keeping your private information out of reach to unauthorized individuals. As a bonus, the document should be able to be remotely invalidated in the event it is lost or stolen.
The document itself would actually have to have far less information on it than our current identifications do, that means that in the event of loss or theft, it would be harder for the common criminal to turn it to their advantage. Additionally, a centralized repository could log every request for information allowing authorities to look for patterns that would indicate abuse of the system.
Perhaps RFID would play a role, but so could barcodes or mag stripes or a printed code of some sort or maybe a combination of all of these. The card would still have a photo and basic information about the person on it but any authority with the need to could check the database for a digital photo and additional information. Depending on the authorities need, they would have access to different information. Homeland Security would see different information than the cop on the beat and so on.
Of course all of this means that we have to trust our government. The truth is, we already have to. The government already knows anything and everything that it wants to about me and different agencies within the government know different things about me. I'm sure if the need exists, that they already share "my" informaton. If the FBI wants to know something about me they can go through the channels and ask the IRS and low and behold, the FBI will know where I work, what I do, and how much I made last year.
We could already be living in a virtual police state and not even know it! My parinoid side says we probably already do. But then I look at the intellegence gathering that I know our government does about "bigger fish" and I know I really have very little to worry about. We can't find Osama, we had a hard time finding Saddam and, we always have people on the ten most wanted list.
I want a safer country. If the powers that be say a new and improved National ID card will help them fix some of the problems, why would I argue? Still, I don't expect it to fix much of anything. It is another hole into which our government will pour money with dubious results. That is what I expect. Even that may be expecting too much.
Plus there are plenty of confirmed cases where the person checking ID's doesn't know even the basics needed to judge - i.e. there really are some cops in the 48 contiguous U.S. states that think an Alaskan driver's liscence is from some other country, and not valid for driving in "America". There have been several cases recently of customs officers that refused to let people cross back from Mexico when they said they were Hawaiian, and the number of reported cases where someone in authority assumes that being from the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands or the Marshall Islands makes some person not a U.S. citizen grows literally daily.
Yes, some, maybe many, of these cases involve just plain dumbness, but some of them are the result of inevitably inadiquate training - for example, there are by my count at least 78 possible 2 letter postal codes for state abbreviations, all of which have appeared in just that form on some kinds of ID, and all of which, at times have been unaccompanied by the full name of the region to explain them. Does anyone want to guess what the 28 that aren't for US states are? What's PW? AE? MB? SK? CZ?
Try this one - Why should a U.S. cop stop and hold for investigation a driver showing a liscence with the code CZ as part of the address? Why shouldn't that same cop hold up one showing MB? (Here's a hint (that should make it even worse) - CZ is created by the US, and MB is of forign origin). No fair googling.
How much of a training program would it take to clarify this particular bit of esoterica to the people who all theoretically need to know it? How many other areas of expertese do our law enforcement agents need to know to this level, but don't? How many of those other areas are more likely to be immediate life or death issues for LE personnel? How on earth would we afford it all?
Like you, I don't support a unified ID, even though at first glance, it looks like it might make things easier. I don't, because in part, it won't really simplify complexities of law like these, but it will soak up a lot of money that could be spent training law enforcement to cope with them. Those complexities aren't going to go away because of a unified ID. They are still built into our legal system, and some of them are built into the world at large.
Who is John Cabal?
The Revelation, Chapter 13:
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.
well in my opinion this is just going to be another tool of the government, and it will slowly twist itself into another shackle basically.
pretty much all these things are proposed to be so beneficial for the people, when in reality they just become a system to manipulate the populus.
in 1935 we got the social security program, by the time most of us retire, it will have been proven a failure at providing income for the elderly, and disabled and such that it was made to provide, however well be left with the legacy of the social security number, in which the word security has also proven to be pretty ironic.
now its main purpose is for tracking everything you do, and not just the government. no, we all have credit scores, since when did i agree to be ranked for credit cards, and how the hell did they get my social security number anyway? i dont even have a credit card, although surely credit card companies will require this. so of course now every purchase you make will be trackable. the government uses this to thier advantage too, making it easier to incriminate you for whatever. even though credit cards are ridiculously insecure.
then they started putting up cameras all over the place and no one complained, its for our own safety right? im not doing anything illegal so why should i care, etc etc.
well this is the next step as they slowly tighten the shackles, everythis is such a small step, so innoccous that nobody cares enough to argue with it. under the guise of the public good.
None of these things serve the best interests of the citizen, theyre just tools for prosecuting, incriminating, and supressing them, thats it. The cops arent your friends, they are just waiting for you to do something illegal so they can arrest you. the politicians arent your friends, they just want to further thier career, and make money. THESE THINGS ARE DIRECTLY IN OPPOSITION TO YOUR BEST INTERESTS. same thing with the any hierarchy of power, its just natural for them to oppose each other which is fine, its just sickening that everyone lays down and accepts it or even worse applauds the government for protecting them you know. same thing with corporations especially, thier relationship to their employees who want to be paid more, while the company wants to pay them less. the customer demands high quality, but they want to spend the least money making it. not to forget the fact that they get all sorts of tax breaks, they write everything off, they have huge spending power lobbying for all sorts of laws that directly oppose the consumer, basically buying laws. tacking them onto some totally unrelated bill. they make you consent to a background check, drug testing, during hiring, sometimes after. these are violations of your rights, but your consenting, why? because otherwise you wont get a job anywhere, ever. because everyone just said, ahh well, im innocent why should i care etc etc. and now its commonplace, and therefore ok.
so back to this stupid id thing, how long before somebody bastardizes it, giving themselves some new power over us. violating our frigging rights, because we are so stupid we agreed to the useless thing years ago. then a few more years go by and this new violation becomes widely adopted and pass some new law to further control us.
really whats the difference between medeival fuedal societies, and the present state of things. now corporations are the lords, and our working class are the peasants, and the government is the weak militant arm of the lords, making sure they work the lands productively. besides a slightly higher standard of living, however we still work the majority of our lives, at least they could work till they died since they didnt have such good medicine. bs bs bs bs bs
Chertoff, as Michael Brown / FEMA's boss, also defended the FEMA and DHS response to Hurricane Katrina. That's his job: force the worst government programs on us, for the benefit of his corporate cronies. Especially if he can lie about attacking our rights (like privacy, or staying dry) by describing them as protecting us.
Chertoff is hoping to stay on the team even after Bush is done running the show. He's Giuliani's protege. We should purge that dangerous blowhard before he becomes a permanent infection.
--
make install -not war
This system is already in place. It's a bit more clever than the old "papers please" type of travel control in that only requires you not be on some Mysterious List. All air travellers show their papers and their names are checked against the "No Fly List". Even Greyhound sometimes asks for ID. Why I don't know, but I suppose they might be checking a similar sort of list. The national insecurity apparatus already checks our papers at node points in the transportation network, it's just that most folks don't realise that's what's happening.
And that guy in the White House actually says he believes in this. How ironic that he should be the one to make it come to pass:
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
I'm not 100% sure where I stand on the citizen ID but, were one implemented, the arguments about the ability to detect forgeries apply to peace officers' badges as well. Thus I would suggest that there also be a single national ID for anyone with a certain level of peace officer authority, the design of which should be clearly recognizable and universally known. I was once challenged by a man who said he's a detective. I asked for his badge and got some piece of metal with badge number 2. Yes, I kid you not, Officer Number Two. Now, how am I supposed to know that this person is for real? (He was, but that's not the point.) On the libertarian side, I would claim that there is an even greater duty of the government to positively identify its peace officers than its free and honest citizenry.
So? Is that twenty dollar bill in your pocket "real" or not? And you can prove this... how?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
"... so much we don't think that abuses of power should or can be curbed."
More the later, I think. So if abuse will occur, then I'd prefer their ability to do so to be as limited as possible.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
that much should be obvious; i'll be able to financially rape terrorist organizations and mexicans when i figure out how to forge them
I would worry about all the other crap that is happening around it. I live in Belgiam and have an ID card. Till now it was asked only once by official instances and that was when they were looking for a criminal and I looked VERY similar.
I noticed that they asked a person tw days later who was dressed the same as I was, had a similar build, skintone and hair. It took about 1 minute. This was the only time I have witnessed such a behavious, so they must have been realy, realy realy looking for him.
What would their other options be as I apparently was very close to looking to that guy theyw ere looking for?
a) Ask me and believe me
b) Take me to the policeoffice and actualy arrest me to check my identity to se that I am not the person
c) Wait for the person to turn himself in
d) Do a fast check so I can either be cleared or arrested
I prefere D. Belgium also is putting a chip on the card. You can find the sourcecode on how to read the cards on this site and aln on this non-official site.
The card is not an issue, yet you must understand that it won't be solving anything, exept speed up some work where you need to ID people. Then on the other hand, Belgium and Europe are much more privacy concerned anyway, so THAT is where you should focus on.
What could hapen is dat they will not get the ID card, yet get a system that links everything else together that you have now. I would say: make such a card AND make it so hard to use it, that no person actualy will randomly ask it, unless there is an extremely good reason. So what I am saying is that you should work on privacy and the right to privacy.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Oregon should attempt to fix this problem by using the an evictions/criminal background database service (like the one my apartment ran on me about 20 minutes before they approved me for leasing) in conjunction with the state's own database. This would blunt discrimination by states such as Florida.
Other states or businesses also could run the checks that could validate rather than discriminate individuals just because OR has a Swiss-cheese ID card process. But, every state needs to have SOME kind of ID. And, since state and States' (nations) ID's (even countries') paper currency are counterfeited (some countries' paper money so vastly superior to US currency... I saw in "The Color of Money" how a certain European country's banks by LAW throughout the day or at the end of the business day scan all bills; the bar-coded bills are checked against a master issuance database and any bills flagged as counterfeit trigger a rewind of any shop or store or bank security cameras where so fitted. Just makes paper money a physical proxy for e-cash. I wouldn't have a problem with this, since e-transactions/ccard transactions already remove anonymity, and cash only still exists so that corrupt governments and corrupt state officials and a number of businesses can carry on their traditional models of money laundering, propping up certain ventures and so on... even politicians prefer less-than speedy tracking of their hooker and massage parlor or dubious country-club activities during and after official working hours...), then until it becomes foolproof, Florida either should not discriminate against the OR ID, or it should (and probably does) use alternate verification that is not normally faked, or is easy to trust once an answer comes back.
But, using these eviction/crime/whatever databases costs money, the government ought to step in and (with a gun to the head of the database operators) say, "You will receive a contract payment per year and don't ask for anymore money", and then make that data available to the businesses and agencies efficiently and affordably. Theoretically, any one of us should be able to pop in or walk up to a terminal and find out what goods are on us. Many of these won't let us see what they were told. Some might just be "no negs to report, but don't hold our service responsible if your renter turns out to be a serial rapist Mengele or Daumer type" or some such response to the subscribers.
And, finally (really? finally?) many of these same databases likely are tapped every time we apply for a job. I've been wondering (my credit is NOT pretty, thanks to the down-hill slide I've had in unstable gainful employment since being laid off January 31, 2001 --only about 2 permanent jobs, and 5 or 6 agency-related contract jobs, all ending, increasingly worsening my ability to pay back my debts in any meaningful way; of course I made some bad decisions, but Karma or fate must have it in for me big time, seeing me kicked when I'm down or say the wrong thing...[obviously, I won't survive in government, union, or most corporate environments....Outside of Customer Service Window working hours you get raw, quick (right or wrong, but non-shirking, non-kiss-ass answers from me]) if any of you out there get LOTS of inquiries about availability for work, then nothing. Zip, nada, zilch. They don't even return YOUR calls. Could be creditors posing as employers... what's that (new?) term going around, the one related to HP investigating its employees by using stand-ins?....
HAH!: what an appropriate captch: "reinvent", and speaking of my self and HP (I need to REinvent myself); HP says "HP. Invent!"
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Will I only be able to buy and sell with this ID card? Cards seem to easy to fake/loose. Why not implant it in the right hand, or forehead for those without arms?
http://www.granitestateid.com/
The concept of an ID card is not bad unless you're a fascism. The problem is with fascism, not with ID cards. If you think your government tends toward fascism, solve that, not the problem that you're worried what would a fascist government do with ID cards.
I have to say I'm completely dumbfounded about the SSN practice in the USA. Here in Hungary, most official business require an ID card, which has personal details, like b.o.d, current address(actually a separate card to make it more easier to move and stuff), a photograph and a numerical code on it.
The numerical code is only for the rare case where someone lives at the same place with someone else with the same name and B.o.d, so to serve generally as an unique identifier. You cannot do anything with that numerical code in itself. You have to have the card. It is pretty forgery resistant and if you need a fake id badly, you could just bribe an official in the ministry of internal affairs to give you a new identity anyway.
So there's that. It is useful for the common person, because it proves identity and every adult has it.
Yeah, it can be misused, but everywhere it is grossly misused by the government, it is not a democracy anyway and you've got bigger problems than that anyway.
I don't get why people in the anglo-saxon countries think of the nazis immediately when the issue of national ids came up, I don't think of nazi germany when driving an Audi.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Why? Far better to have a vigilant, armed citizenry willing to report and/or act upon abarrent behavior. Something like 9/11 will never happen again simply because the attackers will get kicked to a bloody screaming pulp before being dropped out of the emergency exit after landing.
And, finally (really? finally?) many of these same databases likely are tapped every time we apply for a job.
The data in those databases are often from unreliable sources and out of date. Good enough for employers, maybe, but not good enough for government that *cannot* be seen as discriminating. Also, I've been freelancing for the past 2 years. Not one of my clients has checked my ID, they've always gone on my past references and my word. I don't imagine that they ran me through a DB search either, since most of them didn't take my SSN (I put my Federal employer tax ID# on the 1099 instead).
-b.
If there's a single, universal ID then the forgeries need to be much better....This raises the bar a ton as now you have to produce essentially perfect forgeries and there aren't a lot of forgers that can do that.
But the problem ends up coming around full circle. Instead of forgers in all the different states concentrating on just figuring out their own state's designs--then all the forgers nationally will be working simultaneously on the national ID card. It's not like they work alone--there is a certain amount of information sharing and synergizing going on (in fact, this happens already. While there might be 50 different state driver's licenses, there's only about 3-4 card manufacturers. If you can figure out how to do a good job on a New York Driver's license, you're 80% there for a California license.)
California has probably the most complex card to forge, and yet, it's suprisingly easy to find forged well. It's a simple problem of the fact that there is more forging effort thrown at the California card than any other state card. The more brains working on the problem, the more solutions will be found.
European acceptance of government intrusion into lives of private citizens notwithstanding, ID cards do nothing to prevent crime or terrorism. All they do is make it easier for an increasingly oppressive government to track those citizens whom it doesn't like, for whatever reason. As our Founding Fathers understood so well the history of government is one of the erosion and eventual elimination of civil liberties. The REAL ID initiative is nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to get the American people to accept the government's having the power to determine whether or not they can travel, open a bank account, or who knows what else in the future. This is directly counter to the principles this country was founded on and needs to be opposed as vigorously as possible. Allowing REAL ID to go ahead will put in place the final piece needed by the Bush administration to turn America into a police-state. The previous pieces of the puzzle include the PATRIOT ACT, which allows the government to declare any criminal act as a terrorist act if it decides, without any judicial involvement, that the crime was committed with the intent of attempting to change government policy; the redefinition of torture was another piece as government agents may now use any amount of coercion to obtain information from "suspects"; the Military Tribunals Act of 2006, which allows the government to arbitrarily declare any U.S. citizen to be an "unlawful enemy combatant", will allow the government to disappear its opponents into miliitary prisons (called concentration camps in other times and places); and REAL ID will put in place the technology needed to allow real-time tracking of anyone the government takes an interest in. Which part of police-state do the American people not understand?
Just my $.02,
Ron
Impeach Barack Obama for violating the Constitutional requirement to be a "natural born" citizen to hold the office of P
Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff is defending the upcoming rollout of the national ID card as vital for the nation's security.
Define vital.
Will it likely make the job of security - and therefore delivering a little bit more security - easier? Most likely, yes. Is it worth the cost? Well, given the U.S. was founded on the notion of restricting government intrusion on grounds of security, probably not.
All sorts of things are vital to improving security - but just not worth it when the costs are weighed against what may well be a "vital" benefit.
It's like the old joke about the only way to truly secure a computer is to unplug it. Even with this latest intrusion, bad stuff will still happen. The only way to secure the nation entirely is to move every last person out of it, nuke it down to glass and then have satelites monitor any further heat/movement and nuke that too for good measure. Is that ridiculous behavior "vital" for absolute security? Sure. Is it worth it? Absolutely not.
All kinds of things are "vital" to achieve their end result - but it's a false assumption to think that end result itself is vital when compared to the cost of getting there.
Think of the numbers... In the last average American's lifetime's worth (~70 years), maybe 5,000 U.S. citizens have been victims of terrorism on U.S. soil - out of a population of 300,000,000. That's a one in sixty thousand chance, over an entire lifetime, of falling victim to terrorism if we don't secure things any more than they are right now (what media hype would have us believe aside). Removing a one in sixty thousand risk during my entire lifetime merits a tiny, tiny, intrusion in to my liberties. Whilst all kinds of things may be "vital" to removing that risk, the risk is actually so damn small that the slightest intrusion from any of those "vital" things means it's far better to suck the risk up and live with it. And that's before you consider that this is a major intrusion in to civil liberties for something that won't even remove that tiny 1:60,000 risk and will, at best, just add another zero on the end of an already negligibly small number.
The crazy thing is, we're hundred, if not thousands, of times more likely to be killed by the crap we eat - yet suggest curtailing our liberty to buy junk food even the slightest bit and you get a political shitstorm far in excess of the people who blindly accept we need to curtail liberties far worse to simply tweak a 1:60,000 risk. Yay for disproportionate responses based on media and political hype.
They told me to sit about 12 minutes and my ID would be ready.
I consider 12 minutes unacceptably long. Here in Ohio, the time after the picture is taken to when the license is printed is less than 45 seconds. (The printer has a 4 color ribbon--so it passes over the license 4 times and then attaches the hologram overlay.)
Ohio and Oregon do over the counter issuance, whereas California (and a few other states) do centralized issuance. Each has their advantages and disadvantages.
Over the counter allows for immediate issuance. Centralized allows for easier upgrades to the card (all you have to do is change the machines at one location.)
Small time fraud is just as easy in an over the counter or a centralized state. However, centralized issuance makes big time fraud easier. From my calculations, California issues 25,000 to 30,000 cards per day. If you have someone who hacks the system well enough, the California DMV would never know an extra 1000 bad cards were added to the daily batch. An extra 1000 cards in an over the counter state would be very complex.
For what it's worth, compliance with the REAL ID act would basically require all states to switch to centralized issuance.
I do not remmember whether it is said in such PLAIN wording, but it comes more or less down to "are you a criminal we might want to arrest on the SPOT as soon as you land, or not ?". Can't remmember on which form it is, the white cartonned one or the green one (or both) which are given for visa waiver country citizen. I think I had to feel something similar also to get my special B (B1?) visa (normally I would have a visa need waived but I have an old not machine readable passport so I need a stupid visa).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
-b.
Wow, did you really simply miss the entire point of that presentation, or are you so mind-blowingly stupid that you can't understand the difference between GIVING information freely for one specific purpose versus having it collected and compiled without your permission, then having it shared with people/companies that have NO REASON to need it?
If you think the idea of a pizza joint having access to your medical records and shopping patterns is no cause for alarm then you must miss the Soviet Union terribly.....
...just look at what the State actually does and open your eyes to the fact that the government is a far greater threat to your life and liberty than any numnber of terrorists.
In fact it is because of government and their actions that we have so many terroists and other threats.
PGA
I didn't know the details of that event. It shows for certain that PEOPLE have learned what to do if their airplane is threatened.
y /Missile-Not-Flight-77.html
For all they were going to lose in the crash, they might as well have taken a few box cutter hits than "remain seated for the remainder of" the 911 flights. I really can't blame them, though. They had no idea they were going to be used as cruise missile ballast.
Of course, I'm one of those people who thinks the trade centers were probably loaded with explosives AHEAD of time, since the third wtc building collapsed according to the signature of a professionally demolished building. It imploded straight down, and it wasn't even hit by a plane. Demolitionists have to work carefully to get buildings to collapse that way. I don't believe there was enough aftershock to cause that collapse.
Then there's the pentagon, which had a hole the size of a cruise missile.
I've heard some people say that 911 was an inside job. It is a sin to bear false witniss, and I can't say for sure one way or the other. But IF it was, and I mean IF, I have to ask whether that's where the attacks were being coordinated, perhaps "in simulation only" from the perspective of unwitting coordinators. If they were left alive after doing 911 by remote control ("in simulation only" as they had to be fooled into doing it) they would have watched TV and realized what they'd done without knowing. The cruise missile hit on the pentagon erased the very last evidence, the very same team that coordinated the attacks by remote. IF. Who knows, but if I were Kenneth Star I'd be alot more interested in THAT case than in Clinton's sex scandals.
http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20Histor
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Do you realize that many countries already have national ID cards and in many of them there aren't any problems with lack of privacy or abuse by the authorities.
Really? So did Hitler and Stalin, East GDR and a whole bunch of nasty people push ID cards. This is exactly the sort of thing the French would do.
These ID cards can't work, because they can just be 'borrowed'.
Eastern Europeans dread the phrase 'pass please' for good reasons. Such a bad idea. In reality anyone challenged, and replies in Mexican will just be let off. Thus there will be no change, other than longer DMV lines for honest folk.
The potential for misuse and abuse of such an ID by the guvmint is rife, but what no one mentions is the sheer ridiculous logistics of this system. Have you actually read the requirements? First of all, this means no more automatic renewal, no renew by mail or Net, everyone will have to physically go to the DMV and stand in line, probably at least doubling or tripling the foot traffic in those already overworked, slow-as-fucking-molasses dens of bureaucracy. You need a birth certificate -- so older folks who don't have one and were born in East Podunk, North Dakota where the old records were wiped away decades ago when the flood happened -- well, you're shit out of luck. You will now need to use a verifiable physical address -- no more P.O. Boxes or mail drops on your ID. Great, now if someone is stalking you, they'll know exactly where to find you. And the most absurd requirement is that you must present some sort of photo ID. Um...excuse me...my driver's license IS my photo ID. How many people in this country don't have some sort of second photo ID? And even if they do (school, work, etc.), since those IDs don't have the same level of security and documentation as this supposedly uber-secure RealID, then what's the point? You're using documents that are insecure and easily forged to verify your identity for an allegedly secure ID. Anyone see the fallcy here?
RealID will not make ANYONE safer. But it will inconvenience millions of Americans, logistically and financially (I've heard talk of these things costing as much as $90-100 to cover the vastly increased costs -- how many poor people have that much to spare on an average day?); it will grind the machinery of state DMV departments to a halt (yes, even slower than now, if that is imaginable); it is an unfunded mandate that will cause states to either raise our taxes to pay for, or take money away from existing programs of far more benefit; it will leave millions in a legal limbo when they can't meet every stupid requirement; normal, everyday people who are not even remotely a threat to anyone will have their lives disrupted, maybe lose jobs or have bank accounts closed or be unable to travel on a plane or train, all because they cannot meet every jot and tittle of the requirements for an ID that won't do a dad-gumned thing to protect them from terrorism or ID theft.
Ah, America...land that I love.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
They're are no islamic terrorists[1], 9/11 was an inside job, and Osama Bin Laden is a CIA agent.
5 faketerrorism.htm7 1483512003&q=9%2F11+Mysteries6 86176230&q=terror+storm
[1] That is to say before the pentagon carried out it's plan to collapse Iraq and create terrorists who were inimical to the United States(see: 'P2og'):
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/august2005/22080
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-67081900
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=786048453
It's quite unlikely that anyone would be as familiar with all the different state-issued driver's licenses and id-cards currently in circulation in the US, and therefore unlikely to recognize even a mediocre forged one. With a centralized one, you get a larger and more attractive target for forgers, however, the quality of the forgeries will have to increase significantly. It's not like any given forger now has to offer all the different driving licenses - one is enough, and therefore the materials should be as difficult or easy to get as with a federal ID card.
Okay, not speaking on whether or not a national ID program is good or bad... Since when do FUCKING IMMIGRANTS have ANYTHING to say about US national policy? Until you're a US citizen, you are here as a guest of the United States, and like a guest in your home, have shit to say about how that house is run. Imagine your brother-in-law coming to visit, only to start complaining about the food you keep in the fridge. If you don't like the rules you stay by, get the fuck out. It isn't much harder to understand than that. But let's get down to the point of the whole immigrants-not-wanting-national-ids thing... Illegals and radical muslims. Oops! I'm a bad person! Spoke the truth, goddamnit. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to point out that those who wish to stay in this country illegally (and those who profit from it) don't want to be easily found or identified. And I certainly didn't mean to point out that radical muslims want to keep us vulnerable to jihadis. Remember the flying imams? Do exactly what terrorists would do, then sue when you get kicked off the plane. I think we should do what Mexico does--its illegal to protest the government if you're not a citizen. I know, suppression of free speech and all. Well, you can speak your mind, but it doesn't mean you can live your ass in my guest bedroom.
'"How does this relate, finkployd, you arrogant prick?" I hear most of you asking.'
Wow, that was uncanny. You should work in a sideshow!
And look where it got them. In the late 90's, early 2000's, HP (among others) produced printers that could print a perfect image of a dollar bill. And counterfeiters started using them. HP had to (or rather, was *requested* to) modify their printer software to print yellow dots on the bill, so that it could be recognized as fake.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Passports aren't convenient and they are also reasonable easy to forge. An ID card that contains an internationally recognizable unique ID with digital information in multiple security areas should be considered. The point behind using multiple security areas is that it should be reasonably tricky for forgers to forge the complete data.
Some areas that can be used:
- Public service identification. (Library loans etc.)
- Medical services identification and shorthand medical status. (known allergies, illnesses etc.)
- Company identification - Used for access control within one or more companies, different keys for each company.
- Commercial identification - good for shopping transactions.
- Banking identification - good for personal bank account transactions.
- General law enforcement identification.
- Specialized law enforcement identification.
- Border control identification.
- National service identification. (can be military security identification only accessible by the home nation's security services)
- Special services identification. (Diplomat, UN related etc.)
Note that the areas may overlap. There may also be multiple instances of some areas, useful when you are an employee of one company and is a consultant at another.And ways to identify a person:
And as stated in the article - the identity of a person and the intention of a person are two different issues. Mind reading equipment will be the next big thing at airports.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Recently one of my kids did a family tree project for school. We found and used her great grandfather's German Nazi era internal passport, which all Germans had to carry. /sarcasm on
I'm happy to see this wonderful idea has come back up...and this time for the same reason, to protect us from the outsiders (find:Jew...replace:Terrorist). /sarcasm off.
I'm preparing the kids for a world where being tracked is normal, not a sign of involvement in Criminal activity.
Why do people keep saying this? 1. How many other sole-standing-world-power in the history of mankind were not subject to similar attacks? I cant think of any off the top of my head... 2. Being this size, weight, and place in the world, the U.S. is a convenient tool (both via backscatter effects from being attacked and for propaganda reasons). We were attacked because an angry, crying, tantrum throwing America raises the visibility, power, and standing of others in the world, not because there was some horrible injustices we've committed that the rest of the world hasn't and we just need to be made to stop. At most, America's actions foster resentment among some, but those people are the suicide bombers and bullet-catchers...not the leaders and instigators.
Oh, and Kip Hawley is an Idiot.
Mmhmm.. It's kind of hard to do things these days without having a bank account.
A community-oriented lyrics site
I had to setup 50 new users in our corporate system for an external company to do business with us. I discover our wonderful system allowed me to "copy/paste" and just change the user name. The system generated password stayed the same! Hence all 50 users had the same password. Duh. Great security. It was not my job to assign passwords, only create userid's. NMP. (Not my problem)
, I still have the wallet with the other stuff in it, like cash, receipts, a condom and those little wallet-sized pics of the family, to just name a few.
So, you have a family, which I presume means some kind of mate that you regularly have sex with and possibly offspring of some sort resulting from said sex. Plus you carry a condom around in your wallet, presumeably for some kind of spontaneous anonymous sex.
Sir, this is more sex than many of us contemplate having in our entire lives. Hand in your nerd card immediately.
Seriously, man, you have no right to complain. I bet you'd give me your SSN in exchange for a crackerjack prize.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I for one am not welcoming your NWO - Cattle herding Overlords
I will not be handcuffed willingly by the American government just because they can't do their job right
We are supposed to have some of the greatest minds working for us
If this is the best they can come up with, I will be preparing my personal defense and security measures and do my best to save you all when you screw yourselves by willingly accepting less freedom for perceived security
No good can come of this
How many other "sole-standing-world-power in the history of mankind" (sic) were not invading other countries, throwing their weight around, acting imperialistically, and otherwise generally provoking said similar attacks? I cant think of any off the top of my head...
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
If they really wanted to get to the bottom of this, they would implement rom chips which are flashed once and can not be changed once burned, with your personal global id, of course this would be implanted in your wrist or somewhere easily readable for certain access points. Then you would of course be part of a global movement of which many countries would participate in trying to obtain the lowest amount of crime. Hey wait....thinking about that comment, bush being the anti-christ, do you think he knows that the chip ids and the smartid cards etc... are all going to be going down this road eventually.....do you think he has a ring side seat in hell if it does???
None. How many other small countries would, given the opportunity? Every single one. Size just makes someone the most obvious and most useful target. There are no innocent countries or large groups of people, just those without opportunity.
Well, this is just the first step. To avoid loss and/or other confusion in the future, the ID number will be tattooed on the skin of the individual, with a later movement to the installation of a subdermal RFID chip. Pretty hard to lose or misplace that unless you lose a limb, etc.
You might think I'm joking, but it's really not that funny. Special identification and tattoos have been used before, albeit for certain classes of indivuals... there was once this place called Auschwitz.
Again, you might think I'm going a little too far in my allusions, but it seems more and more to me that the current government is reading the Hitler Handbook. Give the people an enemy (in this case, Arabs rather than Jews, and possible pedos etc), slowly take away rights, institute tracking and control measures, and stomp out all resistance. Secret camps, torture, it's all there... and I think that this particular slippery slope is getting steeper every day.
1. Read anything by Noam Chomsky, or similar truth telling gadflys.
2. Follow his sources, (bibliographies and such are wonderful things), which usually include testimony before the one or both houses by stunning luminous defenders of liberty directly under the control of factions within our government, acting in our supposed policy interest. You will find that folks have been admitting to supporting and at times directly engaging in the elimination of emerging democracies in South America and in other places around the world for quite some time. I think MMORPG Folks call this increasing 'aggro' or something similar.
Nor does the US's behavior excuse the behavior of terrorists and the like.
In fact, behavior on NEITHER side is excusable - we're all just a bunch of pathetic children throwing temper tantrums and playing grown-up. We really are quite sad.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
Sure. The US has and will continue to make momentously bad policy decisions and execute policy in a manner that ranges from incompetent to criminal. My only contentions are that: 1. We are no different than any other country, our stupid decisions just have more impact. 2. The victims of our bad policies are not the ones coordinating and fanning the flames. Rather, there are entrepreneurs out there with agenda's of personal power-gain using those disenfranchised by our actions to better their own positions. In other words, they behave in exactly the same manner as our own politicians do. Our big-bully behavior hasn't caused this, it's just providing a nurturing environment for the propaganda of people who want more power...whether those people are in the U.S. government or are "terrorist leaders".
I don't hold the government(s) involved responsible. They're just machines. I hold parents responsible. They raise ignorant, self-centered children who are supposed to grow up to guide the government-machines but instead abdicate their responsibilities and assume their lives are as comfortable as they are through some sort of natural law instead of through the hard work of rational, educated minds. (yeah, I know that sentence was running on...)
I am glad you said that. I couldn't agree more, and this point in fact is the real truth of the matter. But nobody ever seems to talk about this point.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
Well, our bad actions are singularly important in enraging folks that hear us spout our high minded ideals. The very ones that we don't live up to with our actions, and the actions of states we support. And guess what, you may not want to own up to it, not sure about you personally, but for the sake of debate I'm going to push your buttons there ;). You are guilty of the things your elected representatives do in your name. Especially if you realize that they do them, then try to rationalize away the liability you share by not seeking an alternative.
In addition to my earlier points I submit that the motivation of even these people certainly makes the leaders and instigators job easier.
True, but as far as I know not having the ID on your person at any given time is not sufficient reason to arrest you under what's been proposed. Am I wrong on this?
What good does having a national ID mean if you're not required to carry it? And who's to say it won't become illegal not to carry id later? Just because something looks reasonable now doesn't mean it can't become sinister later. And paraphrasing Benjamen Franklin, "Any one who gives up a little liberty now for safety will neither get nor deserve either."
FalconShould there be a Law?
You are correct. If you do nothing, youre guilty. Absolutely. I don't know about you, but I tend to live up to my ideals and take concrete action where possible that I know has had concrete effects in the past. And honestly, I haven't once in this thread tried to rationalize away a thing. I'm being very pragmatic in that I realize that no matter what I (under the flag of country) do, the motivations and reasons for attacking the U.S. don't go away. I can only affect how easy or hard it is for others to rally people to their side. Read: I don't diagree about the fact that our actions have impact, just about whether or not they have causal nature here. I don't believe they do, just an enabling one.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand what rights are violated by having to show ID.
Privacy for one. Some will say "but there is no right tp privacy in the Bill of Rights." According to a Supreme Court ruling in the early 1800s the right to privacy is encompassed in the First Admendment's right to Free Speech are free assembly, and the Founding Fathers believed in privacy as well. If there is no privacy then speech can not be free as what you say can be used against you. And if there weren't any right to privacy then those tracts written during the Revolutionary War, War of Independencem would not of been written anonymously. Image being dragged off by the gestapo, er FBI, because you spoke or wrote something Emperor George didn't like?
Privacy is a fundamental part of free speech.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If it was a rational world, the drinking age would be the same as the age at which you can sign up for the army to fight and die for your country. It seems pretty ridiculous that you could drive a tank at 19, but not have a beer afterwards. That said, you have brought up a good point: the negative consequences of accurate, reliable ID.
That is STUPID! I recall after I turned 18 I was legally able to drink 1 month before the legal age was raised to 19. Then in the army I still wasn't able to legally drink until a few months after I joined. It's absolutely stupid you can join the military and possibly dye in combat but you're not allowed to drink. I also think it's stupid that a parent can't order an alcoholic drink for their child(ren). While stationed in Germany I liked how they did it, while dining out parents could order a glass of wine to drink for children with the meal.
There are positives, too. I'll classify them as follows:
1 + Personal benefits of an ideal ID system.
2 + Benefits to companies from an ideal ID system.
What benefits are those? Businesses benefit being able to track people and their spending habits? Or benefits for a police state?
what do I mean by an ideal system? One in which you can prove... eligibility to work
Why shoud anyone have to prove they are elgible to work? As long as they show up on tyme, have any needed skills, and have the right temperment for the job they should be able to work.
Maybe what we need is an internal passport like the Soviets had? Forget that!!! As long as I'm not breaking any law no authority should have any control over me, and if I am a suspect then charge me with a crime, let me have my day in court, and prove I'm guilty.
FalconShould there be a Law?
i know the feeling of having a computer at a Cali DMV saying Now serving e92399 @ window number 431 only to have the dumb #$@$T at the window try to punch my Military id befor i told her if she wanted to keep her job she better give me My ID back... it worked for a second or two but her supervisor apologized long enough to say she had the wrong ID, she really wanted to punch a hole through my South Carolina Dl.. unfortunately i paid 25 dollars for a SC id that should have Lasted for 12 years... that stupid me.. i was too busy arguing over her trying to punch my mil id with her boss to see she was punching my SC Drivers License.. 3 years later i moved back to SC where i was lucky enough for the clerk to realize that California goverment is a different world of idiotz so idiotic in fact the failed to actually cancel my D/L from SC they just punched a hole through it... so i was able to file for a "damaged" id and pay 2 dollars to get it replaced.. The Clerk asked me if i wanted her to shred my Cali D/l or do i really want to keep attachments to that state... i asked her if she had a hole punch... which she did... i punched the id and then let her shred it
Hell right now we could get most of that with your SSN, a picture of you, and a thumbprint stored centrally that had to be verified against.
If fingerprint verification is required what of the person who's hand is burned then? Do they become a nonperson?
Weighed against that is the fact that we will never be able to secure our borders unless we have a national ID. And the risks of having non-citizens here are growing. When the likelyhood strangers will kill a couple million of us grows high enough-- we'll either give up the kinky sex or just say "to hell with it- I like kinky sex".
What Native American Indian Tribe are you a member of? The only reason there are "illegal" aliens or immigrants is because a government of illegal immigrants (Europeans) or their descendents who massacred those already here made stupid laws. And most immigration laws were specifically to bar some "undesirable" ethnic or national groups from settling in the US. For instance Benjamen Franklin wanted a law barring Germans from the US. Since then throughout history there has been more or more groups spouting how bad immigrant X is, one after another. For instance in the 1850s the Know Nothing movement wanted to prevent Irish Catholics from immigrating to the USA. The USA is supposed to be the land of the free and the only reason an immigrant should be barred from the US is when it can be shown they are a threat to the US or people living here.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Right now, the only government assigned ID system (in the US) is the Social Security Card, which is just a number and a name (which is not enough to validate the true identity of the person)
Social Security cars are not supposed to be used as id cards period. And have never been. When they are used this way they are improperly being used.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Without a photo ID, what means do you have to prove that you are who you say you are? Why should someone take your word over someone else's?
In day to day life why should you have to prove who you are? The only thing I see maybe is driving on public roads and for financial transactions.
FalconShould there be a Law?
We have SS cards now and that hasn't done anything...isn't that already a universally unique identifying card?
SS cards are specifically barred from being used as id. Of course this hasn't stopped it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
and remember - privacy is *not* guaranteed by the constitution
Though it's not specifically enumerated the USSC has ruled privacy is a right. In the early 1800s the Supreme Court ruled that privacy, anonymity, is a bedrock of the freedom of political speech. If remaining anonymous wasn't possible then free political speech meant nothing because your speech could be held against you. The Founding Fathers thought this too otherwise many of the tracts that supported the War of Independence never would of been published seeing as how most of them were published anonymously. One of the few that did publish under name was Thomas Paine, he published The Crisis while serving in the Continental Army under Washington. It was in "The Crisis" where he wrote "These are the times that try men's souls." Otherwise many writers wrote about the war anonymously.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If you think about it, the Federal government could set an authority up easily, in a matter of months
Can you show me where in the USA Constitution it gives the federal government the authority to create or require an ID? It's not there, constitutionally the federal government has no such authority.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Shocker? They told me to sit about 12 minutes and my ID would be ready. I thought I mis-heard the clerk. Huh? What?! 12 minutes? Hell, in California, I'd have to wait a month, maybe two (and mine have in CA been lost in the mail once or twice, when time was critical and having an ID for contract work was mandatory... not paper temporary vouchers...).
It sounds like CA is like where I live now, they mail you your DL, and Oregon is like the state I moved here from, they give it to you right then and there. You take the test, if getting a new license, they test your vision, then they take your mugshot and within a few minutes they hand you your DL with the mugshot. I don't see why it can't be done like that everywhere in the US, if it's mailed then it can be ripped off.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Think of:
-- fiefdoms
-- cottage industry support
And, as someone else replied to my post: slow government
Problem is, a LOT of people in government have it good and comfy, and as long as they don't make career-limiting-moves (CLM, as I joke/say), they can RIP (Retire in Place, as they joke/say).
I suppose CA will use the obvious excuse/explanation: We have better QA and ID/DL issuance security with a centralized system.
Hell, the IDs are STILL being faked, and apparently some pretty genuine-looking ones are out there. So, if they CANNOT make them non-reproducible, they, like you, I want to know why they aren't doing it like Oregon. I guess I have to refer to my two suppositions above. A conundrum.
DS.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Florida either should not discriminate against the OR ID, or it should (and probably does) use alternate verification that is not normally faked, or is easy to trust once an answer comes back.
I don't know where Florida comes in, but unless things have changed a lot since I moved from there there's no discrimination or difficulty getting a drivers license. All that was needed when I lived there was a birth certificate and a Social Security card. After testing, or whatever the requirements are, they take your mugshot then and there and within a few minutes you're walking out with your driver's license in hand. Heck, the only reason moved from there was because I needed therapy after being hit by someone who moved to the state because the state he moved from issued a warrent for his arrest. I was in therapy but had to stop when I couuldn't afford it anymore and I was promised if I moved I would get the therapy.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I want LIBERTY!!!
FalconShould there be a Law?
(b) the citizens need to have an active role. We need to have an armed citizenry with military training so that they can either recognize and report dangerous activities or even act on them.
This part I agree with, the US needs a citizen's army like Switzerland's. I'd change one thing, whereas in their's all adult males serve 'til the age of 55 if I recall right, I'd have it so every adult serves. I'm for equal rights. The military would be shrunk, with a smaller professional core, but then everyone would be part of it. I also agree with the part about civil liberties and privacy. Where I disagree is with border security and passports. The only reason someone should be barred from the US is if it can be shown they are a threat to the US or to it's citizens.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm sure Social Security currently requires the use of your state ID (typically a driver's license)
Isn't not, all that's required for the social security card is a birth certificate. And while not all states may require one at least some states require a social security card to get an ID. Under your scenerio this presents a catch22, to get an id an ssn is needed but to get the ssn an id is needed.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm more sure of it than money I hold from other countries.
I am starting to believe that "Homeland Security" is nothing more than a shield for unpopular programs that the current administration wants to push through. If there is likely to be opposition to a plan they simply drop it into the Homeland Security bucket and then explain it away as something that they can not divulge too much about for "reasons of national security."
I'll use the recent raid on Swift Company as an example -- but I would like to preface my comments by saying that I have no strong political feelings on wether or not these raids were justified. When I saw the television coverage of these raids (which were conducted by ICE - Immigration and Customs Enforcement) the most obvious things in the pictur were the giant busses that had covered windows and said "Homeland Security" on their sides.
A lot of what happened made sense. Our government has a right to enforce immigration laws and to deal with the identity theft that allowed these illegals to obtain jobs at the meat packing plants. Using a team of enforcement officers from various government agencies is a way of leveraging resources in a cost-effective manner. Both Customs and Immigration fall under the auspices of Homeland Security. I understand all of this and may even form an approving opinion of it if I were to spend enough time thinking about it (which I haven't).
Illegal aliens have become a significant problem in many states and from what I understand, their presence has risen to a point where they are now according to some, impacting America's "bottom line" because their children are being educated in our schools, they seek medical aid in our hospitals and, they are taking jobs from Americans and legal immigrants.
Clearly, if we are to beileve even a bit of this, the illegal alien probelm is something our government needs to deal with. It just seems to me that they way that they are accounting for it is terribly messed up. While I understand that Homeland Security has Customs, Immigration, and the Border Patrol under their wing I don't think that we exactly expected to pay for raids on mid-west meat packing plants with monies appropriated for homeland security. Who are we kidding by funding these raids with anti-terrorisim money? Only ourselves would seem to be the answer.
Like many people, I think it is a leap of logic to believe that the illegal immigrants working in mid-west meat packing plants are potential terrorists or even a direct threat to America. At worst they may be placing a demand on our infrastructure by using our schools and hospitals, and they may not be paying taxes. At best, they may be working at low-paying jobs very few other people want, the pay they earn is taxed but they can not file a return so they can not get their witholdings refunded to them so, in a way many of them are even paying taxes higher than the typical American!
As taxpayers, we paid for the raids, including the officers, the jails, the buses, and the airplanes that are used to deport these people. Frankly, I don't know if we are doing the right thing or the wrong thing but it does seem to me that the check is being written on the wrong account. It also seems to me that if we were to question it too hard, we would be accused of being un-American.
Yeah, "Homeland Security" is so interested in tracking American citizens with their Real ID act, an idea Big Brother would love.
But when it comes to something so straightforward and legal as tracking foreigners' entries and exits to the U.S., they show themselves to be technically challenged (what an immigration attorney had to say about it).
Reminds me of the New Orleans fiasco. The Bush Administration can't do anything right.
I think you are trying to hold our government to 1700's rules while dealing with 21st century terrorists. I think your path leads to a place where it is *more* likely that we will slam into fascism.
I see it the opposite way, it's big government that leads to fascism or to other authoritarisms, totalitarianisms, an dother forms of dictaterships. With small governments they have no power and can only exist when governments is big. As for dealing with terrorists, terrorists can't bust into your home with government knowledge or assistance, but in the 1700s the British could bust in at will, I bet you could find quotes from some Founding Fathers that the Fourth Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights because of this. I don't believe there has ever been as much a threat to freedom and liberty as in the 1700s, in the USA. Also it's government that are the ultimate terrorists. It's because of government support that some terrorists organizations have their power. For instance in the 1980s and early '90s, the US supported the Mujhadeen in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, then when the Soviets left gave them free reign instead of helped them to setup a working government. Some of those Mujhadeen became the Taliban or al Quaeda, such as bin Laden. And what you don't hear about regarding the Taliban, the current occupant of the White House, George Bush Jr gave the Taliban US taxpayer dollars. In two different packages, he gave the Taliban $10,000,000 and $43,000,000. That soccer field the Taliban used to behead those they didn't like? It was built by the international community for the Afghan community to play soccer not kill people.
As for the Middle East, throughout the 1980s the Reagan and Bush Sr admins supported Saddam, even as he was using WMDs against both others in Iraq and Iran. It was only after Saddam invaded Kuwait, a sheikdom and not a democracy, before he could do any bad. And Hesbola, before it was listed by the US and Israel as a terrorist org Israel supported them. The Israeli government started supporting Hesbola as a counter balance to Arafat's PLO. Israel registered it as a charity. Ever hear of Blowback?
I recognize that the US does bad things. You don't seem to recognize that on the scale of badness there are many people in this world that make them look like boy scouts.
And appearantly you don't recognize that just because someone else is bad or does bad things it doesn't give anyone else justification to do bad things too. Just because Hitler and the NAZIs massacred 6,000,000 or Stalin 20,000,000 doesn't give the US the right support those who killed 200,000. Ooh, and by the way, the US supported Hitler first then Stalin. Blowback.
But preventing the government from being able to perform basic law enforcement duties is not the correct path. We need to focus them to be more accurate and we need our society to be more forgiving of people who commit stupid crimes.
No where did I say the government shoudn't perform basic law enforcement, but listening to calls without a warrant and building databases of citizens' activities and such isn't how to do it. Heck Bush has at his disposal the FISA court where he can get a search warrant, he can even get one 24 hours after a search, and FISA court as rarely ever turned down a request. Doe he do that? No he just has the NSA, No Such Agency, vacuum all international between the US and somewhere else. And try to protest where he's supposed to appear, if you're lucky you'll be herded into a "freespeech zone" that's nowhere near anything. If you're not lucky you may just disappear or be held as an "enemy combatant" for years without ever even seeing a courtroom or having charges filed against you.
It seems Bush has learned from J. Edgar Hoover, and his FBI's COINTELPRO progam. He's turning my country, the country whose military I served in and I love, into a fascist or other authoritarian nation.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Small governments are no safer than large governments. Jim Jones and Kim Jong Ill in the Head show that. Your average lynch mob shows that.
Jim Jones wasn't about government per se with the exception that they leased land from the government in Jonestown, Guyana. Kim Jong Ill on the other hand is the government in North Korea. That is he controls the government and the people with his iron fist. And lynch mobs have as much power with big and strong as with a small and weak one. The mobs involved in Kristallnacht was government orchestrated. If the government hadn't been as strong it probably wouldn't of been as bad as it was. Afterall even government stormtroopers who helped Hitler rise to power took part.
However, this discussion was about a *national ID card*. I believe that a national id card is justified and reasonable and necessary for law enforcement in an age of terrorism. Right now we have defacto national id cards and a lot of problems because we pretend they are not. We also for the most part also have state id cards. It hasn't been the end of the world.
National ids aren't needed for law enforement nor is one authorized by the Constitution of the USA. If one were needed then how did law enforcement get along without one for so long? Afterall they're not that old as compared to law enforcement. As for whether a national id is the "end of the world", ask those who have had their id stolen what it means to them. Many have had their credit wrecked because of id theft. Your credit worthiness, FICO score, determines to a large extint if you can get a loan or get employment if you're not employed. People have even been arrested because they had their id stolen. A national id will only make id theft easier, instead of having to go different places id theives will have just one place to go to steal an id.
FalconShould there be a Law?
All these Hispanic groups screeming about the raids on work places is angering and amusing..Amusing because they screem the loudest that their "illegal" brothers are being racially tagged and targeted. Dah!!! It is because they are the most out there. I bet if you check ALL the illegals they find, there are others also..I agree that raids should be done. But let's go farther..Let's tell the businesses(such as Swift) that they will be fined to help finance the deportation, AND, then they will put to work all the lazy 3rd, 4th and 5th generation welfare bums. Also tell the welfare bums that they WILL work at these jobs or they will not get their checks. The gravy train is over. No more free lunches!! Work or starve!!! I am tired of working 6 days a week so some lazy bum can collect welfare when they are PERFECTLY capable of working!! I say to our Government, Suck it up, spend the money, deport the illegals, put the welfare bums to work!!! There is a war coming. It isn't black against white or rich againt poor. It will be us against the illegals! Let's quit letting the illegals and their 'friends' slapping the Ellis Islanders in the face for doing it RIGHT! If you are illegal, you HAVE no legal rights!! You are breaking the laws!! Therefore you should be kicked out!!