Slashdot Mirror
Some States Say National ID Cards 'Make Life Easier'
VE3OGG writes "Some places, like Maine, have outright rejected the idea of a nationally mandated ID card amid privacy, legal and security concerns. On the other side of the fence some states, such as California and New Jersey, have said that they welcome the National ID card and that it will make 'life easier'. One New Jersey official said 'All you are getting in e-government for the most part are things that don't require strong two-factor identification,' the official said referring to security that requires something beyond a user name and password. 'But as we move forward and start to deliver more and more complicated services, I think that people for the most part will want to know their government has implemented strong measures [with National ID cards]'."
Modern politics is just too bizarre. The Republicans used to be the ones who were for less government involvement in an individuals life, then the Democrats appeared to have taken up that flag, but now with the National ID card (papers please), both parties seem to be endorsing this movement.
.50 cal rifles illegal, they will be able to track purchases of ammunition and deliver jack-booted thugs to your door to take you away, or at the very least, prohibit you from doing any business across state lines or within states that ban those rifles if politicians decide to play that game against individuals. You can also kiss any anonymity away when dealing with private corporations as the National ID card will enable any and all transactions through banks, individuals and more to be closely monitored.
For all you extreme left wing whakos start hollering, think about this: How much longer will it be until we have to present a National ID card to take out a loan, open a bank account, cross state lines, and more? Already it is being proposed that you will not be able to board a plane unless you have a National ID card. So, what about those who can afford their own planes? Will they be allowed more anonymity than those with fewer resources? What about purchasing items like automobiles? Those who can afford to pay cash for an automobile in its entirety would be able to do so while those who have to take out a loan are again restricted to using a bank and thus the National ID card again. How about healthcare? Those that can afford to pay for services completely will not have to worry about health care insurance and therefore will not be tracked.
Before any of you ultra-right wing neocon folks start bashing me for this, how about realizing that a National ID card will essentially enable all sorts of purchase related tracking to take place. You can now welcome federally mandated and controlled tracking and access to guns. For example, when other states decide to buy into the fear and make
What happened to common sense and the political middle road?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I have no problem with a centralized two-factor authentication card.
I have SERIOUS problems with the "use your SSN for everything" society we have now.
Give me a card that I have the ability to password/passcode protect, with a physical chip in it.
Oh, and make sure it requires a friggin warrant to get the "logs" of its use. Warrantless searches make me sad.
And the USA is fast becoming a Police State:
l
http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/PoliceState.htm
... to at least include a picture.
What was that? You managed to get some service(s) without giving out your Social Security number?
Well, that was just plain UnAmerican!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
i remember, about 2 years ago the 'real id' act was attached to some military spending bill (so no politician would vote against it) and i recall reading somewhere that the first state to adopt it would be alabama, which is where i live. i recall reading also that the 'real id's would have rfid tags embedded in them.
/. just asked me to type is 'redneck' :D
about 4 months after it passed, our state IDs were revamped.
my question is, are these new alabama drivers licenses tagged?
hahaha, funny sidenote. the verification word
Give me convenience, or give me death!
I have mixed feelings about a national ID. I'm all about the small government. The national government should be there to take care of our boarders and maybe a couple of other things. National ID's are another way the Federal government is just taking away responsibility from the state. On the other hand, it could be helpful to have one national standardized ID. On the other hand, it gives big brother more power. On the other hand, it can technically make us more secure. On the other hand, how much are we willing to pay for security? On the other hand, do I even really care? Am I even on topic anymore? hrmmm...
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
It is against the law for a man to knit during the fishing season.
It is illegal to transport an ice cream cone in your pocket.
There is a law that makes it legal for a farmer to sleep with his pigs, cows, horses, goats, and chickens.
When two trains meet each other at a railroad crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed until the other has gone.
A national ID system while expensive would be a great thing to phase in over 10 years or so. Law enforcement could verify IDs easier with mobile identification systems. State Troopers would have an easier time tracking criminals. ID systems could be created for businesses that sell controlled substances. Not to mention the cleaner National databases. The list goes on.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
When America finally breaks apart/joins the North America Trade Union our National IDs will allow those of us who love freedom to flee to other countries that still have some sense of Freedom (I like Kenya personally, even though there is corruption, it's small enough to be fixed).
A national ID is somewhat silly when one exists.
If you mean, by criminalizing all civil libertarians like myself who would refuse such an ID card, yes, I suppose it's much easier.
When are we going to officially change our flag to red white and black as it is increasingly being designated?
BLAUSCHEIM BITTE!!!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
--"But as we move forward and start to deliver more and more complicated services, I think that people for the most
part will want to know their government has implemented strong measures [with National ID cards]'."
I don't think we want more and more complicated services nor do we need them. We don't want to be tracked,
x-rayed, data-mined or subpoenaed by email. Actually we want less interference in our lives.
34 States have turned down a national ID card.
Coming soon on "Miami Ink"...
:) }
"Pimp My RFID Tattoo"
{...feel free to discuss among yourselves...I'll wait
A goal is a dream with a deadline
If you were to dig down, I think you'd find that the level of resistance to the initiative is directly proportional to the cost of complying. Those states that have more modernized digital systems that they could more easily adapt to comply are going to be the ones that resist least.
There is an element of states' rights here, and the federal government has become larger and more intrusive into the afairs of the states than the original framers of the Constitution intended. The original colonies, when they formed a federal republic, were very conscious of reigning in the power of the national government and how much influence it could exert over the states. Over time, the independence and self-determination of the states has been constricted. So for some states, this could be a line in the sand over principle. But for most, I suspect, the real issue is expense.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Seems like the answer to getting something through Government bureaucracies is play on the fears of others. Don't worry about your privacy rights we are careful not to trample on them (I'll believe it when I see it as a law). But if you don't let us do this national card with 'strong' security we can't ensure you identity won't be stolen. Your choice. I'm pretty sure the states can implement the same security measures as this card can implement. Not to mention two factor authentication is the end all of security counter measures. All you are really doing unless you get into biometrics (which only work in person biometric devices over a network are just as easy to send false data as a password or whatnot) is adding a second password, if they can get around the first they can get around the second. Ma'am enter your password, ma'am insert your usb token which can be captured just like any other password. Etc... This isn't the best explanation of two factor problems but you get the picture. BTW, the two factor solution will be a proprietary one from Diebold which will be used to secure your vote placed at Diebold e-voting paperless voting machines in 2010
It will also make Americattle easier to round-up, when the Evil Alien Warlords reveal themselves. I, for one, welcome our new master-cards. ;)
Let's make sure that when the card is counterfeited, it's totally convincing.
More people need to pay attention.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
I for one will NEVER carry any papers that the Government tells me that I must carry just to walk around and breath the air! They can kiss my lilly white ass.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
http://www.schneier.com/essay-034.html
That's what I'm here for, to make their life easier.
This is probably a point that's been made elsewhere, but the most disturbing thing about the National ID is not just that it's an egregious encroachment of our freedoms, privacy, and right to stay out of federal and commercial databases, but that it's all these things AND absolutely useless as any kind of security check. All ID card systems assume that identity proves security, that if I appear to be who I say I am, that means that I am no longer a security risk. This is just security theater. Even under the National ID system, there's nothing preventing forgery or fraudulent usage of the base documents used to get an ID card (social security card, birth cert, whatever). There's no reason Achmed bin Terrorist can't roll up to the National ID store with some real documents that, for example, aren't his but also haven't been used to generate another National ID, and get a card for himself.
There's also no reason to assume that, unique among all other ID cards, the National ID will be unforgeable, or that even if it is, the staff employed to verify that an ID card is legit will do their jobs. Government employees are the lowest common denominator in the best case, and ID checking unskilled zombies aren't likely to be any better.
Identity is not security, and LACK of identity is not a lack of security.
Gang members, mafia, etc. don't typically buy their guns from licensed vendors. They either steal them or buy them under the counter from someone else.
THis is one of the main gripes a lot of Canadians have against the federal gun registry, which, after over 10 years and BILLIONS of dollars has yet to be fully implemented, and has done nothing to lessen gun crimes.
They've now started adding biometrics to the physical ID card. Fingerprint instead of pin code. The idea is to use it when boarding an aircraft or buying groceries etc with essentially no need for human involvement.
The question however isn't if it makes life easier or not. The relevant question is if the cost associated with it is worth it. Having a permanent unique identifier attached that can be traced, well, anywhere is not a good thing if governments or corporations abuse it. It requires privacy laws and trust that the privacy laws will be respected. Ultimately it boils down to the question: do you trust the government not to screw you over and to protect you from corporate interests? My own answers are perhaps and probably. Right now there are some worrying ideas being floated by the politicians about wiretapping and Internet traffic sniffing so my first answer might change.
Still, at this point they haven't dramatically screwed up - I mean like a patriot act level of breach of trust. So right now I'm agnostic about how good this system is.
It is in fact convenient and efficient with an axiomatic foundation of trust that can be used for communication and exchange of services at many levels of society. One just has to hope that the foundation isn't rotten.
Makes life easier for whom exactly?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Are you afraid of capital letters and punctuation? Go ahead, use your shift key. The Illuminati aren't monitoring it.
One thing that I think people overlook is that it will be easier to spot less-than-perfect forgeries if there is a national ID in place. It is one standard with one format that everybody down to the lowliest liquor store clerk can remember.
Honestly, if I need to use a fake ID, it would be a lot easier to try to pass off a forgery of a NY driver's license in another state simply because they don't know what they _should_ look like. As long as it looks official enough, who cares?
Will it stop professional terrorists (if such a thing exists) or other people with a lot of available resources? Probably not. Will it stop or discourage wannabe terrorists? Probably.
"i'm obviously a tool of the emerging world order of secret police sent to slashdot to cast aspersions on you brilliant wise slashdotters"
See, he even admits it. Quick, mod him into oblivion.
(seriously, how you weren't immediately labeled a troll is beyond me. Maybe all the mods left work early or are already getting drunk)
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
One more use for a national ID card is as some sort of electronic 'yellow star'.
godwin'ed
The point is, you could explain those apparent inconsistencies using fashion lingo and it'll all make sense.
Like, for Republicans: "Big is the new small". The pitch is easy and gives the GOP some fresh marketability. In fact, call them the GNP because "New is the new old" (that'll appeal to the 'new' voters).
And so on...
It is called a passport.
It identifies you, it is used all around the world.
The problem is a lot of people do not have one and a lot of people/places in this country don't know what they are. Some bars don't like it for id. I have tried I didn't live in the state and had a different state's drivers license. The sign said only instate ids were allowed. Lucky for me the owner knew a US passport was a valid form of id.
I love the idea of everyone being issued a smart-card signed through a federal PKI. If such a system were open so that anyone with a smart-card reader use it, you could use that one card for EVERYTHING from unlocking hotel room doors to making credit card purchases to signing email messages!
Pop in a card and you can be sure (via digital signatures) that card really is Joe Citizen of Example, NY. Ask Visa if Joe has a credit card account, if so, bill to that with almost no risk of fraud.
Listen: This is a great idea if it is done right. You ALREADY trust the government to identify you. Let them do it properly and we could have some truly awesome benefits.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
that's alright slashbots: label me a troll, label me flamebait. i don't tow the lowest common denominator line around here, how dare i, right? mod me into obvlivion! f***ing sheep
i'm not a troll
what i say is the truth:
you hear about how it's the american sheeple who give up their liberties for security because of fear
yet the only fear and panic and hysteria i see are in the comments on slashdot
it's a simple prudent unremarkable bit of efficiency, a national id
and yet to hear it on slashdot, it's an orwellian nightmare
right now the tags for this story reads:
"privacy, usa, bigbrother (tagging beta)"
bigbrother? oh really?
is this maybe a little panic-ridden? a little fearful? basing your opinion on fear and distrust rather than intelligence and wisdom and simple f***ing faith in your fellow man and your government?
well no, excuse me, it's much more obvious to talk about george orwell's 1984, right?
look, slashdot morons:
science fiction...reality
TWO. DIFFERENT. THINGS
but i'm just a troll right?
pffft
no, i'm not the troll, i'm the only one here who isn't a f***ing paranoid schizophrenic pissing in their pants over a f***ing national id card
OH NOES!
IT'S 1984!
EVERYBODY PANIC
f***ing pantywaist idiots
IT'S JUST A FUCKING NATIONAL ID CARD
NO
BIG
F***ING DEAL
now go ahead, mod me into oblivion assholes
i'm not cowering in the corner in fear out of goosestepping fascists poppping up out of nowhere
air headed nitwits
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
A national ID card would offer so many benefits in the long run. Photo ID just does not cover the needs of today's at-your-fingerips information society. You want a secure banking transaction at an ATM? You want someone to offer better security at the airport? You want to decrease fraud? Time to add general, large scale adoption of a better system of identification, as a biometric system would. It has to be done on a large scale to reduce costs.
Start with the ID card. If businesses and agencies adopt it, good, but it is an option. Add some bar code that equates to a retinal scan or some other form of unique ID. Put it on the back of the ID card in place of that stupid 'I can make you walk the drunk line, or else' warning. If agencies want to use it, they can scan it with their cuecat. If not, no major cost has been expended.
While parts of California make Nazi Germany look like a paradise, I'm surprised to see that the our state politicians have hopped onto the National ID bandwagon.
One of the provisions of the Real ID act means that illegal citizens won't be able to get ID. This has been a very hot topic in California. Allowing illegals to get ID almost passed a couple years back. And, while our current Governator came into office opposed to it, the political heat has been such that he's starting to lean towards it.
So the only thing I can figure out is that our Hispanic population hasn't realized that the Feds are about to slam the door shut in their faces on this issue. This is surprising, as this segment has been very politically active.
It will be very amusing to see what happens when they figure this one out.
Is this a troll, or are you hoping that if you rant against mistrust of the government for long enough your shift key will start working again?
I am not a crackpot.
slashdot whines about the american sheeple giving up their liberties out of fear and panic
but the only fear and panic and hysteria going is in the typical slashdot maltrust of simple progress in efficiency with national ids
but to hear a slashdotter tell it, a national id card today, enslavement in mind control chips tomorrow
oh really?
a little paranoid schizophrenic, don't you think?
it's hilarious: slashdot is the bastion of fear and panic and hysteria, not the other way around
that's the simple truth
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Take organized crime as an example. The Gambino family and the Genovese family have their own interests, but they will collectively go after anti-mob activity or petty gangsters encroaching on their turf. It's the same with the republicans and democrats, and it's why you don't see anyone from parties like the Greens, Libertarian, Constitution, etc making it anywhere in politics.
Does anyone else see the irony in this article being submitted by a Canadian?
I cannot understand the paranoia about ID cards. An ID card is just another form of identification, just like the driver's licence or the passport. You're not required to use an ID card any more than you are required to use the driver's licence or passport - as a form of ID they are interchangeable and any of them is legal ID in the real world.
In addition it has the added benefit of securely housing a private key pair, issued by a trusted third party, which cannot be snooped, at least not without physically obtaining and irreversibly and obviously destroying the card. This allows for extremely neat online services, since you (as a service provider) can securely identify a client for services that require privacy and identification, without ever seeing him in person and checking his ID. You could open bank accounts, do taxes, buy guns, display their phonecall or credit card logs, all the kind of things that you'd normally need to see the person in the flesh and check his ID for -- without ever meeting the person, or knowing anything at all about him beforehand, as the government has already done the identification for you.
It's strange that people are afraid of the government somehow learning more about you, or being able to track you somehow more than they can using credit cards. The government already knows you from when they issued your birth certificate, driver's licence and passport -- how do you suppose you're even considered a citizen? An ID card is just the same, except it has a key pair which you can use to identify yourself on websites that today would require in-the-flesh registration and code cards.
If implemented properly how is a National ID a bad thing? Before you start warming up your keyboard to start flaming me with your rants from one side or the other think about it objectively for a second. A few points to consider:
"But what about Big Brother?"
Does anyone here honestly think that any Federal Law Enforcement Agency can not access all of the information tied to your Drivers License?
"What about my privacy?"
Once again, how does this lessen your privacy? You willfully submit all of this information to your State to obtain an ID card or drivers license. Once again do you honestly think the Feds can not access this already?
"What about my guns?"
Once again when you purchase that weapon depending on the type and or State you reside in, you willfully fork over all sorts of personal information to the government.
Ok now lets think about convenience for a few minutes. Having lived all over the Country for work I have had to switch my drivers license from State to State. I moved from one State to another and getting my new license was a breeze $15 and 10 minutes of my time, however when I moved back to my home State a few years later I was forced to pay a large fee and retake the written exam over again; then wait 6 weeks for the new one, even though my out of State license was valid. What if you never had to do that again?
What if when a police officer makes a traffic stop on an out of state vehicle he was actually able to, with a high degree of certainty, identify the person? There are numerous accounts in law enforcement of wanted criminals going unnoticed because a small local agency was unable to identify the person.
States who object to this aren't trying to protect your privacy or security, they are protecting the revenue that they generate through licensing fees. If you disagree with that, please before you rip on that point I encourage you to take a walk over to the DMV and grab a copy of the fee schedule. Look closely at the number of various fees and the amounts. All of those fees are set by each individual state. A unified system would also mean level fees across all states, which would be set by the Feds and not the individual States.
Just a little food for thought...
"But as we move forward and start to deliver more and more complicated services,..."
THAT'S THE FRIKKIN POINT!! We don't want more "services". We want less goverment.
Is anyone else weirded out that a piece of paper Certifying your Birth, your License to Drive and your Social Security card are the main means of identifying you? It's all cobbled together in a strange and nasty web of connected requirements. I need all three to get a Passport, but then I can't use my Passport to get a Driver's license.
Now logically you should be able to get one from the others.
But I digress.
I know we all fear the national ID number... but we already have it. If you have a passport, it's that. If you have a SSN, it's that. Driver's license? These are all ID. If you Nationalize ID's, then we can put limits on what they can and can't be used for, but right now these other numbers are unprotected. Take your SSN and post it as a reply and you'll see what I mean.
- Must not use information for another purpose than collected in the first place
- Must provide the entirety of collected personal data upon request from the "collectee"
- Must correct/remove the data upon request
- Must not store the data beyond a reasonable period
- Must not use IDs to cross reference between system
Of course, we don't have the convenience of being able to use our driver's license when we forget our library card, but identity theft is typically not a problem. So we do carry ID cards to prove who we are (ie citizen), because no other piece of information proves that much.I would bitch if I were a US citizen, but I'm not, so I can't. It belongs to you get your privacy rights sorted. That national ID thing is just a bone thrown at you to make you feel you're in control of your privacy.
I tell you another anecdote: Someone once hit my car while it was parked. An anonymous person left me a note with the description of the car and license plate. The note was written on a receipt from CVS. The purchase was made the day before at CVS, paid by credit card, but the person who wrote the note didn't leave his or her name, and blacked out the credit card number.
I showed the note to cop, who wasn't fazed: He told me he could just go to the store where we purchase was made, and lookup from the items purchased what the credit card number was, and from there find who left the note.
You guys have no privacy. National ID cards or not.
...for big brother to spy on you and for criminals to more easily steal your identity.
I don't know why people freak out over this, you already have an id, a drivers license, how does giving this id to the federal as opposed to the state government some how infringe on your civil liberties? If someone can give me rational reason's I could change my mind.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
--Thomas Jefferson
Time to feed the troll, we all enjoy it. :)
The government should never be trusted!
George Washington (1732 - 1799)
Government Like Fire
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force.
Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
It is not the governments job to ID me, tag me, or give a flying F**K what I do, provided I do not infringe on others rights.
What is the government's job?
Try this
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed.
The government's job is to secure our rights, not to remove them!
So, while you accept the ID cards, I do not! While you accept restrictions on your rights (To keep and bear arms), I do NOT! While you accept restrictions on your rights, I resist them! I will continue to resist them tell the day I die.
According to Prevent Genocide International, No other factor [than ID cards] was more significant in facilitating the speed and magnitude of the 100 days of mass killing in Rwanda. About 1 million people butchered.
From the same page:
In Nazi Germany in July 1938, only a few months before Kristallnacht, the infamous "J-stamp" was introduced on ID cards and later on passports. The use of specially marked "J-stamp" ID cards by Nazi Germany preceded the yellow Star of David badges. In Norway, where yellow cloth badges were not introduced, the stamped ID card was used in the identification of more than 750 Jews deported to death camps in Poland.
They also provide a 'nice' table:
Genocide: Nazi Germany (1938-1945), Rwanda (1990-1994)
Mass Expulsion: Ethiopia (Persons with Eritrean affiliation 1998), Bhutan (Lhotshampas, 1991), Vietnam (Hoa ethnic Chinese 1978-1979), France (Alsace-Lorraine 1918-1920)
Forced Relocation: USSR (ethnic Koreans 1937, Volga Germans 1941, Kalmyks, Karachai, 1943, Crimean Tatars, Meshkhetian Turks Chechens, Ingush, Balkars 1944, ethnic Greeks, 1949)
Group Denationalization: Cambodia (ethnic Vietnamese 1993), Myanmar (Rohingya Arakanese 1992), Syria (Kurds 1962)
In regard to the UK cattle tagging ID card system, The Times reported:
David Blunkett, was no better. On the subject of identity cards he once said: No one should fear correct identification. Those words always remind me of one the more distressing details of the Eichmann trial: how he told his executioner that the fate of those killed in the Holocaust was sealed by their answers to the 1939 census on religious background recorded on paper for a Hollerith machine, an early mechanical computer. Quite literally, their cards were marked.
Needless to say, lesser abuses than these are far more common.
The UK system is unbelievably scary. Going far beyond the punchcard Hollerith machine, our ID cards are backed by the National Identity Register, a database designed to merge all government databases and commercial data trails into a personal surveillance dossier that makes 1984 look respectful.
So scared is the Govt of the public finding out about this that they are secretly forcing passport renewers on to this Orwellian database from March 26th.
They are also forcing doctors to betray their patients' confidence and upload your private medical records to another insecure national database, again without telling you.
I'm sorry if you haven't been warned about this before: NO2ID has a budget around 1000 times smaller than the Home Office but you do still have a few weeks to protect yourself. Click the 3 links above and most importantly, read the NO2ID newsletter.
I remember as a little kid in sunday school being preached to about identifications of this type. And this was before most people even knew what a computer was and credit cards did not exist.
Maybe our elders had an insight that we lack? Or maybe they really understood what freedom should entail?
While the National ID sounds like a good idea If I had to vote I would go against it. I am of a mind that anything that makes things to easy makes people to lazy. The more and more lazy america has become the worse our society has become. Is it directly related? Maybe not but the timeline fits.
And if I am not wrong this is one more step to ending this modern day "Roman Empire".
How would the "National ID card" be different in the papers-please department from the "I need a government-issued ID to let you into the building"?
When I asked a security guard recently, how would seeing my out-of-state Driver's License tell him, it is not a fake, he explained, that one of the courses, he had to take to get the job, studied different IDs of the US-states, Canada, and a bunch of other countries — including Venezuela.
This changed my perspective on the issue quite a bit. A National ID card would just make life easier for these guys (and thus make their services less expensive)...
And if you are worried about central repository of personal data — well, you should never have let Social Security Number become, what it is now... :-(
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I could read the page and I'm even sitting behind the library's great wall of CyberSitter.
In some ways I do agree about plain text content, though. I wistfully remember the days when signal to noise (actual text to protocol encapsulation) was still pretty high.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
We should fear a government with "underpaid", party-affiliated bribe-susceptible bureaucrats who find it "easy" to access information on citizens far more than any terrorist bogeyman. One is far more likely to have one's life made a living hell by such mouth-breathers transposing a digit than find death at the hands of a foreign zealot (local zealots^Widiots trying to ban Harry Potter books and otherwise interfere with daily living are something entirely different).
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
I was on Slashdot today and these people were attempting to make snide, insidious, or underhanded comments. I sometimes feel like I'm on Slashdot when I'm walking down the sidewalk.
The card just needs to contain a long unique number (digital encrypted key) and maybe a low quality image of the card holder (much like your drives licence).
Any use of the card by the government would allow them to look up the real card holder in a federally controlled secured database. The scanner could visually make sure your photo matches the one in the government database, which should match the one the card. Even most lowly paid civil servants should be able to see if the photo's match up and individual handing them the card.
The digitally encoded image on the card would allow other third party's to use the card to make sure you are the true card holder (IE BAR) - although if verification can not be done to the government database then fake ID cards would appear (much like the fake driver licences).
You could encode individual finger print and have each finger uniquely encrypted. The Government's database would hold the decode key required for the finger print. That way no finger could be decoded by some thief as each finger print would have a uniquely encryption key only known to the government's database. Of course you would need to set up strict laws around access to the database's files of finger prints prior to implementation.
Hell I would piggy back the ID card on the Driver's licence - that way you can make use of the built in infrastructure to phase in the cards.
Done right and with lots of pre-planning and implementation you could have a safe and secure national ID card. And for those of you who are paranoid with the government tracking you - they have already anally probed you and tagged you with a microscopic bio-powered GPS tacking chips!
Maybe if businesses stopped using the SSN as some kind of a secret password that only you should know, and actually required a driver's license or a state id card, there would not be so many id thefts here, and nobody would need a national id system with who knows what remotely readable things in it that anyone passing by can grab. Just a thought...
Require everyone to have a passport. Really, who runs this country?
...still, its already law in CA that we must have id with us at all times.
Although, having to show "papers" smacks of Nazi Germany.
-b.
In NJ, I showed my passport, an electric bill, and my social security card to get my license (they need 2 or 3 forms of ID according to a wierd system where points are assigned to each type of ID and you need over 5 points). A passport is certainly considered valid government ID.
-b.
A Social Security card is not and has never been a form of identification. The card simply shows that a certain name has a certain SSN, it does not show that the person carrying the card is the person named on the card.
Enigma
I only take my drivers license with me when I'm driving. If I'm walking I don't need it. Will this National ID Card require that I carry it on my person all the time?
Can I bum a sig?
The state movement to reject is large:
= 172792&page=all
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/local/story.asp?ID
Ugh. Previous link is now forcing a login. Better:
a inst_national_i_d__card
http://www.populistamerica.com/34_states_align_ag
There is an element of states' rights here, and the federal government has become larger and more intrusive into the affairs of the states than the original framers of the Constitution intended.
When the constitution was written, it would take weeks to travel from the northern end of the country to the southern end. And actually traveling, on a horse, from the northern end to the southern end, was the only way to get a message from one end to the other.
Now, anyone can get anywhere in the country in less than a day. You can send a message anywhere on the planet in milliseconds.
So it only makes sense that more an more things become standardized at the federal level instead of the state level, because the states are not nearly as distinct from each other as they were in 1798.
paintball
His objections:
1. It will evntually be forged, so it's not better than the existing system.
Right now we have at least 50 different kinds of drivers' licenses each state is obligated to recognize. Maybe it's so easy to forge ID because there's too many damned kinds of drivers' licenses. REAL ID has one standard of information contained, and has one standard of anti-forgery protection, all of which is at the high end of complying licenses right now. So, already effective licenses remain unchanged for no net loss of security, and weak licenses become harder to forge, resulting in net gain of security.
2. It doesn't actually prove who you are.
By his own admission, neither do existing licenses. Of course, the standard for getting them becomes higher, resulting in net security gain.
3. It requires the existence of a database, which can be exploited.
Well, it's not one database, but the standard defines how state databases must connect. The reality is that we already have this between many states, and it was coming whether REAL ID got passed or not, so how about we plan it instead of an insecure ad-hoc solution on a state by state basis?
4. IDs are worthless for catching people who haven't done anything wrong yet.
OK, so the Sep 11 hijackers had real IDs, but they took down a plane. Investigators used their ID information to piece together information on what happened, so I'd hardly say it was worthless.
5. Multiple IDs increase security because it has less theft/forgery incentive than a single national ID.
This is a case where convenience clashes with security, and while he is right, this is the kind of argument that frankly, nutty people have been making for years against every useful efficiency improvement for any system imaginable. I don't want to carry 20 cards in my wallet. I don't want the FBI and the CIA to not share information. I want better communication and I want better efficiency. EFFICIENCY AND EXPLOITABILITY ARE FUNDAMENTALLY ENTWINED! I can screw stuff up way faster with a computer than by hand. That's life.
Schneier's real problem is with the ID system we already have in place, and doesn't want it extended to it's next logical step. But the fact remains that whatever IDs do well now, a national card will do better, and whatever they do bad now is only somewhat worse under a national system, and in some cases will be better. There is also absolutely no explanation on his part on why there are so many countries with a national ID system and not a single one appears to have a problem with it.
Require the consumer to enter their "ID card #" for all online transactions so the government can properly assess sales tax.
Another reason the 'alternative' parties don't go anywhere is that most viable candidates(you know, the ones that are interested and electable) take a look at the situation and go ahead and run as a Democrat or Republican, even if they find a different party more attractive ideologically, because they figure they have a better chance of winning.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
In that respect, I would think that simply memorizing your SSN would be sufficient; it could be cross-checked with another form of ID if all that's required is to ensure the name assigned to the number matches the other forms of ID you have.
When I went for my learner's permit the first time, the RMV demanded the physical card (and then promptly yelled at me when I needed to have the local SSA office fax it to them...eventually that got straightened out). For various reasons the permit lapsed, and I now need a new one. The "acceptable identification" page of the manual states that a SS card is not required, yet a drone I talked to on the phone said they needed one.
Who says the states wont break away first? I think its time for the states to say.. "Hea Feds.. ya know.. it was a great 200 years or so.. hella good times and all that.. but ahh.. you guys are acting more and more like North Korea every day and.. umm.. we are gonna go it alone from now on a'right.. Good luck vs Iran with just DC."
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
I hope you get modded up. More comments like this would be helpful. And here in the USA, implementing REALID will be more expensive and intrusive, since the existing system of drivers' licenses already has a huge user base, and the Feds want the states to tie all these huge, wacky databases together. That will be costly and there will be leaks galore.
$META_SIG_JOKE
National cards, with this air of paranoia and terrorism, are forthcoming, pretty much whether we want it or not. The best thing is for someone to come up with an open system that not just proves that the cardholder is whom he/she asserts, but to also guard the cardholder's privacy.
Tim May (IIRC) came up with a system almost a decade ago which helped with this. It came in two parts. The first was the ID card itself, with a high security smartcard chip. The second part was a "trusted" PINpad that someone also carried with them. The PINpad allowed for the card to be unlocked without worry that the store's keypad was bugged or would log the PIN for use by a criminal.
I am personally working on this for academic reasons, but this is an extremely tough thing to do, because one can't just have the national ID structure rely on a single point of failure. Smart cards would have to be able to be changed, so one can't freeze a specification, as one never knows if some encryption algorithm would be broken in the future. For example, if the nation received smart cards with crypto algorithm "A", and someone found a way to break all rounds of it, the PKI and the cards used would have to be able to be changed immediately.
A national ID card system wouldn't just be a meta-PKI. A lot of thought has to be put in in how people work with it. It needs to be simple, but yet decently secure.
Let us hope that you never have a totalitarian regime ruling. You came close to it during WWII. This would have made it much easier to control the populace had it been in place, and the Germans decided Sweden was worth it.
But, hey, you're all set up for the next time.
Well, the main problem with all your arguments is that Schneier is offering counter-arguments to those who condone or promote REAL ID. In that context, his arguments make a lot more sense. His basic position is that REAL ID fixes none of the things its proponents claim it fixes. In that context, a lot of your arguments are just plain silly, since they do nothing to argue for REAL ID. They simply take his counter-arguments out of context. However, I'll respond individually anyway.
1. A forged or fraudulently acquired ID is a forged or fraudulently acquired ID. At best REAL ID could provide a temporary net increase in security until the first time it was forged or acquired fraudulently. I suspect it will be credibly forged before it is in widespread use, and a fraudulent ID will probably be acquired the first day REAL ID is issued.
2. Some of the 9/11 hijackers had valid Virginia ID. Do you know what the 'higher criteria' is for a REAL ID? A social security number. So REAL ID adds all the security of a social security number. Gee, I feel safer already.
3. Sure, but why does it have to be mandated? If you want your state to do it, fine, but whether any other state opts in is none of your business.
4. The real IDs of the 9/11 hijackers didn't stop 9/11. Therefore, they were 'worthless for catching people who haven't done anything wrong yet'. That they identified the hijackers after the fact is great, but irrelevant to the argument you were countering.
5. Our country already have a national ID system that has significant problems with it: Social security. REAL ID is basically a SSN where, rather than no one being able to demand your number, everyone will be required to demand your number. You think identity theft sucks now. Wait until every single account you have anywhere is tied to a single REAL ID. Totalitarian potential aside, the benefits are far outweighed by the costs.
Hell yes,
This is it.. REAL ID is the final stone for me, I will NOT comply with it.
I know George Washington would not even recogonise the government he once lead to freedom.. thus I don't dont regoginise my government as such. It has no right over me any more so than any other gang of thugs and criminals.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Identity cards make things easier (for the government); they don't make them better (for the people).
What your trolling on this site too?
+ Police+State%22+site%3Areddit.com&btnG=Search&meta =
This person posts the SAME EXACT POST to EVERY story on reddit. Everyone. Always from some shitty comcast site.
Just a little FYI for the clueless person who modded this troll up.
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=%22becoming+a
Close. I think you've actually got it, but I think the question is just a bit more general. Ultimately, it boils down to:
Do you trust the government and any government thereafter to protect you from corporate interests, identity theft, corruption in government (and elsewhere), and the government itself? The answer is almost certainly no, right?
I'm all for a government issued standard ID (even a global standard) if:
-It is opt-in. I mean completely opt-in. You can not get one and your life will just be a little less convenient (like having a university give you an ID number rather than using your social). You can get one, but pick and choose where you use it.
-Some kind of guarantee that the ID will not suffice as the sole evidence of guilt. (E.g. the fact that your ID was used to access an ATM should not, per se, be evidence that you robbed it.)
-Privacy laws are updated such that only first parties have access to any information they gather on you. (Except for law enforcement who _must_ get a warrant.)
Since all of these are probably barring radical social/political change, I say "no thanks" to the convenience offered.
"I mean like a patriot act level of breach of trust."
Curious - could you specify your objection to the Patriot act, and the "breach of trust" contained therein?
A bullet in the head makes life easier; no more bills to pay - don't have to worry about taxes etc. Very convenient
Doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Sell your soul for convenience; give up your rights incrementally for convenience; trade your constitution to corporations for convenience and a false sense of security...C'mon, either you're with us or your with the terra-ists. Everything is black and white, it's never been more simple.
Yes, simplicity, get used to it -- it will be very simple; the authoritarian government will manage everything for you. You just be sure to "like it."
Call me pro-government or whatnot, but a properly done National ID card system would be a boon to Joe Sixpack compared to our existing system of using the same numbers over and over. One couldn't just grab a set of numbers that pertain to a person and commit identity theft (unless the thieves had a TWIRL machine and could factor 2048-bit public keys in a matter of weeks/months... then they likely wouldn't be bothering with average users), one could have cryptographic proof that a person graduated a university (the university's CA signing the user's public key with a statement saying they were awarded a degree in xx, on xxxx date.)
Its not 100% secure -- the places that would be the targets would be certificate authorities rather than individuals, but one can harden a CA a lot more than hardening a billion or so users. Even if the CA gets compromised, the certificate expires... and can always be revoked.
I don't consider an ID card to be a restriction on rights... Knowing who someone is has been part of commerce since the beginning of time (so caveman A makes his delivery of sheep to the real Caveman B, rather than Caveman M who is pretending to be Caveman B), and documents stating one's identity have been around for ages as well.
Maybe now we can have the two-key security that would make identity theft alot harder. Now that there is such a thing as a national ID card, maybe now we could keep our Socil Security numbers to ourselves, the way they were mean't to be kept.
Nowadays, SSN's are used for just about everything. I can understand for bank accounts, but I am having to disclose my SSN to just about everybody, even to get a counseling appointment at school, or to sign up for classes, or to add/or drop classes. Now, I am being asked by everyone to disclose my social because that is the way that they do business. Don't get me wrong, I know who to and who not to disclose my SSN to, but now, everybody asks for it even for the most menial of tasks. I have encountered countless forms and technicalities where someone "absolutely needs" my social.
Now, with a National ID Card (NIC), this can come to a justifiable end. SSNs are supposed to be kept secret because they are EXACTLY who you are in the eyes of the government. With NIC cards, citizens can have a two-party key, one that is public, and one that is private. It works on the same principle as why most people have two email accounts: One for all the BS spam and general mail, and one private account for known, important contacts that we feel really do matter about hearing from. It's a public key and a private key. The public key is for everything that is not individual-critical: College courses, cell phone accounts, counseling appointments, credit card accounts, and other stuff that is important to know who they are dealing with is, but way too common for releasing such sensitive personal data. The private key is for things where it is absolutely critical, a matter of life and limb, where the exact identity of the individual must be known to authorities: Driver's licences, bank accounts, court proceedings, background checks for firearms or other highly-sensitive materials, or other government-critical matters.
Only government agencies should be legally authorized to even ask for the private key, since the government is the only body who truly needs to know xactly who you are. Anyone else can use the public key, and if an issue with identity theft arises, then they should be able to ask for the private key ONLY for verifying that you are who you say you are, and be forbidden from storing any kind of record of it, aside from maybe a line or two that reads "PRIVATE KEY SUBMITTED FOR VERIFICATION PURPOSES ONLY. KEY RECORD DESTROYED".
Remember: A two-key system is excellent for proving ho you are. If you have both the correct public and private keys, and someone posing as you only has the correct public key, then it is pretty clear who is really the correct person in question. The only reason that people are against this sort of this are people who don't want to be found out - ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS (operative word: ILLEGAL), groups whos stated goal is aiding and abetting people who are here illegally, and individuals who know their source of income from identity theft will disappear if it become tougher to get away with their crimes.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Being able to blow random strangers heads off might make your life "easier" but there are good reasons not to do that.
from anyone who thinks a name and password constitutes "two factor" authentication. This is a single factor, just in in two parts. Two factors would be "something you know" (name and password) and "something you have" (a token). Three factor could include "something you are" (retina or fingerprint scan).
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I need all three to get a Passport, but then I can't use my Passport to get a Driver's license.
I'm curious to know which state that is, but in either case that's perfectly fine by me. Passport fraud is a much bigger problem than driver's licensing fraud, and there is no reason to trust the passport application/issuance process over the driver's license application/issuance process. I'd rather keep them separated by not having one document usable for application for the other, as a way to isolate fraud issues.
If you were to dig down, I think you'd find that the level of resistance to the initiative is directly proportional to the cost of complying.
I'd say you have to dig down deeper than that. For the most part, states are all about in the same place in regards to compliance costs. Every state today has a digital license, and, hell, 2/3rds of those states are using the same equipment made by one company.
The main person mentioned as being pro-REAL ID was basically the CIO/CTO for the state of New Jersey. While she may have some input regarding how the DMV is run, she is not the head of the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission. She's got her own priorities and goals and they include creative ways of making government work better in New Jersey that having nothing to do with the DMV or its operations.
If anything, she probably likes the REAL ID Act because it allows her to push things like microprocessor based cards, useful for her goals, that the state legislature wouldn't have enacted by itself.
... to at least include a picture.
Why, because the solution to photo ID fraud is more photo ID cards?
I can't imagine how enrollment would work for such a system, but, essentially, you'd be using the same flawed documents (passport, driver's license) we have now to apply for the card. A card which would likely be trusted more than the flawed documents that were used to apply for the card in the first place.
``What's wrong with licensing privately-owned, competitive "ID Verification Entities"?''
Use your "Discover" card much?
When I worked for IBM, due to the fallout of cobranding and comarketing agreements that I could not possily map out and decode for you, if you had an employee ID number ending in an odd digit, the corprorate credit card you were issues was American Express, and if you had one ending in an even digit, you got a Discover card.
So if you needed to travel, if your employeed ID was an odd number, you made a phone call. If it was an even number, you had to go get a cash advance on the card, and then use it to pay for the travel in person with a cachiers check.
The moral to this story is that, no matter how you try to level the playing field, you will end up with natural monopolies forming, so long as there's an inequality of trust.
As an experiment to prove this to yourself, I suggest you get copies of the top 6 Internet broswers, get the list of certificate authorities each of them recognize as providing valid root certificates by default, and then throw out all the ones that are not supported by all 6 browsers. When you are done doing this, post:
(1) The list of certificate authorities whose root certificates are by default known by all 6 browsers
(2) The count of root CAs for the browser with the most root CAs
I guarantee you that if you do this, and you are ever needing to start an Internet commerce site that needed secure transactions for payment, you will be picking a particular root CA to buy that certificate from.
-- Terry
Nothing. I want absolutely nothing from the US mis-government.
I would rather live under a bridge than take any sort of hand out.
Matter of fact, I think I would prefer to go live on a deserted island
in the Adriatic Sea and live off of fish and berries.
I'm bloody well sick of everything. I prefer to do without than to submit.
FTW...
ID CARDS:
1. Identity Theft Made Easy
2. Mistaken Identity Made Easier
3. Privacy? fagetaboutit.
4. Political Abuse - framing the innocent and/or rounding up all the *unwanted$ subgroups$* and tossing them in Cuba.
5. More taxes, expenses, red tape that does nothing to help anyone.
6. Anything that can be made - can be faked. For every measure, there is a countermeasure. Usually countermeasures are much cheaper and easier too,
7. Corruption, Graft, Bribes, etc - dirty cops, kickback politicians, drug dealing government employees - wont even be slowed down by tattooing ID numbers on peoples foreheads.
and finally 8:
According to the whole 9/11 lie-pack - all the plane high jackers had full, legal visa and passport paperwork.
Finding out some guy with legal national identity cards planted a Nuke, 10 minutes after it went off, well - that really didn't help did it?
Law enforcement is local - always will be.
Keeping tabs on the local scene, finding out what strangers are in town.
Knowing what is going down.
Fundamentalist Faith Based Government - Is Totalitarianism the best response to make believe terrorism?
Bha.
California and New Jersey- 2 of the most controlling states (except for illegal immigrants, but that's a totally different story).
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I think what you are looking for is the Libertarian Party http://www.lp.org/
Libertas in infinitum
I have a friend who moved here from California. No money, just her car. She managed to get a job and got a pay check, decided to open a bank account, and couldn't because her new address here in Arizona didn't match her address on her California ID. So the only way, was to get an Arizona ID with her new address on it. Which was not easy because the only form of ID she had was her California ID (Arizona Requires 1 photo ID and 1 secondary ei Birth Cert. SSC. She only had that ID.) With a National ID card. She may be able to get her Address changed on it with a couple clicks and a print.
Indoctrinate : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments Educate : to develop mentally, morally, or aestheti
Installing a toilet, fridge, freezer, and microwave into the couch from which I watch TV or movies would make life easier as well, but you don't see me doing it.
Excuse me, but why should I be forced to let anyone do anything with my personal and private information without my consent?
Name me one security tactic that hasn't been defeated? Haven't you learned this with the RIAA and MicroSoft? Now, all your personal information would be on one card. Hack that and you no longer have your own identity. Identity thieves and Al Qaeda would have enormous interest in busting that so-called "Security".
That's because
a) You're like an ostrich, living with your head in the sand; and
b) You're ignorant of even recent history, which has repeatedly proven your principles to be dead wrong, as there hasn't been one security scheme since the dawn of the Internet, online or offline, that hasn't been cracked.
Real ID cards are machine readable. Machines can and do get counterfeited.
You live in denial, and that's just as big a mental problem as paranoia - except in 99% of all survival of the fittest scenarios, you're the first to get eaten.
May your chains set lightly.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
The odd thing about politics is that people can be on the same "side" for differing reasons.
It may well be that people oppose this based on price, and it may well be that if price is resolved, much of the resistance falls away. But that doesn't make it a good theory. And it's sad when people take positions for the wrong reasons because when the reason goes away and they find their are different ones, it looks like the reasons are a sham rahter than that there were several legitimate, independent reasons.
Government is out of control on expense. And expense is something that should be scrutinized carefully. That said, that's not the best reason to oppose this.
The article makes the point that the National ID card "makes life easier". But what's misleading about that is that it makes it sound like the people opposing it "want life hard". They don't. They just understand that the price of having things easy is quite high.
A great many problems of Modern Life are caused by the search for the too-easy solution. We optimize one thing while ignoring another. We make it easier to get fast food, while pessimizing our health. We decide people would rather not press a button to download images or start a program on a CD just inserted, so we create auto-execute things that breathe life into worms/viruses without requiring human intervention. We decide people would rather not type passwords, so we offer to store them online where they're easier to find.
The problem isn't that having a national ID wouldn't be easier, it's that it might be easier not only for us but for others who work against us. The problem isn't that it wouldn't make it easier for the good guys, it's that we don't always know who the good guys are... Government is not a magic fairytale place that is inhabited only by decent people and is free of bad people, nor is it a horrible place filled with awful people all out to get us. The sad truth is that it's just a place like any other with good people and bad people, and it's also a place that's known to corrupt people with power, so maybe there are a few extra bad eggs thrown in there just for color. So we have to worry about that.
And we have to worry about other things, too. Like creating a fragile, easily-attackable system. Once you get things centralized, the value of cracking it is just temptingly high. That's bad. We wouldn't want all the root passwords in the world all in one place. What slows down intruders in computers is that security systems differ. Why wouldn't we want the same for government?
This idea isn't even new. It's the basis, ultimately, of States Rights, which was nothing more than a crude 1700's theory of root passwords, that said that the feds wouldn't have the passwords, or keys, or guns, or whatever it took, for controlling everything in the US. They had a few keys. And the local states had a few keys. The whole notion of Separation of Powers is a theory based around the idea that anyone is subject either to becoming a bad guy, or being attacked or threatened by a bad guy, and that safety comes not from finding people immune to human nature, but rather from insulating the system from the possibility of human nature being a problem by making sure that any attack on the system moved slowly. It's why there are three heads of government. It's why supermajorities must be used to change the Constitution. It's why there are multiple hierarchies of courts. And so on. Overtaking a democracy is painfully slow, and that's how democracy protects itself.
The real threat to Democracy is the push for "efficiency" and "ease of use" by anything governmental. It's people like Ross Perot, neither the first nor the last of his ilk, but certainly a crisp iconic example of what I'm talking about, who talk about running
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Anytime I hear the line that something will "make life easier" I grow rather suspicious. Easier for who? The government or you?
ID cards are common in many countries in Europe including my own. Xou get in the age of 16, you can use to buy beer or to enter bars and clubs, and other than often said, you don't have to take it all the time with you. No problem with that. You are fighting against something which is no danger for your privacy, while personal data protection in fact don't exist in the US, and that is a real danger. How does the police identify people without ID cards in the US so fast and quickly? Because all the databases aren't proteced and all the small pieces of informationen existing in the lots of databases can be combined and can be easily conflated, which is for example forbidden in germany. It's only not soething appearing in the public discussions. And the most greates joke is, everybody in the US owning a drivers licence,has a not-so-called-ID-card in his pocket. The "danger of the national ID cad" ist nothing else than a dogma, created by people like the NRA, ultraconservatives and so on, who need a symbol they can use as a flying flag. But in fact, this is totally irrational. IHMO & Just my 2 cents.
The problem in "papers please" totalitarian dictatorships is not that people constantly ask you for your ID before you're allowed to go anyway. That is the symptom of the problem. The actual problem is that if your papers aren't "in order" then you're not allowed to move around freely.
Seriously, is it that bad to show someone your ID? Now, obviously if someone asks for it, it's going to be checked, so there is a chance that you'll be detained because of your ID, but remember that (at least so far) we usually don't stop people from moving without a good reason. (Except Jose Padilla. (I do think Bush should be impeached for that, but that's a different issue...)) In the Soviet system, the presumption is that you aren't allowed to travel, and the papers check is to prove that you are. Our system is the opposite. We let everyone travel freely unless we have grounds for suspecting otherwise. Let's save the freaking out for when people tell us that we can't move freely, not for when people ask us who we are when we move. Indeed, instead of freaking out about the national ID, it would be a much better use of our time to ensure that travel restrictions are transparent and contestable in court, so no ordinary people are grounded without a good reason or if they are, they can have the reasons reviewed.
To recap:
Restricting the movement of people = bad.
Asking people to prove who they are = often done by bad guys but not bad in itself!
Demanding our system be more transparent = a much better use of our time.
It's entirely possible.. A large portion of CA fruit fly border patrol does indeed involve stopping every vehichle...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The National ID Card is a bad idea because the assumption will be that if you have the card, you must be you. Since everyone will assume forging the card is impossible, someone who forges one won't have to worry about being challenged.
Consider it from an efficiency perspective: there are 300million people in the USA. If the ID card system is 99.9% accurate (a measure far beyond what the government is likely to do), that means that, at any given time, 300,000 of the cards will be wrong.
I speak here from experience: I once got a parking ticket for a car I did not own. According to the New Jersey department of Motor Vehicle Services, that license plate number was connected to my name. But I had never owned any car with that license plate number, in New Jersey or any other state. When I asked my lawyer what I should do, he said "Just write a letter to the court explaining that the records are in error." I asked if the judge was going to believe that, and he said "Stuff like that happens all the time." He was blasé about it; government records are so riddled with errors that people who deal with them all the time don't even think the errors are a big deal.
But once people get brainwashed into believing that THIS card can never be faked or incorrect -- something that's never happened and is actually impossible -- who's going to believe you when you say "That wasn't me."?
The idea is not that you can be "positively" identified as a citizen of your country; that is irrelevant to me.
Politicians give away rights to whomever they wish at the time, just like they negotiate with Aid, Trade, and Technologies.
Does the question come down to "oh, you are not our citizen, so you have no rights in this country"?
In America, the rights protected to American citizens are bartered, traded, or given away all the time.
H1Bs, medical care, citizenship rights when born on the soil, advanced technologies, weaponry, etc.
What The Flip is wrong with these people in California and New Jersey?
:-)
Do they not care about the state having such power to invade an individuals privacy?
They do realise that a file will be kept on them and it is not simply an ID card - everything will go towards national database?
They do know that the ID Cards are a Red Herring don't they - and aim is to identify them on national database with remote scanners?
I have wrote on this subject many times:
http://yro.slashdot.org/~Garry+Anderson/
So - why do government have no respect for your right to privacy?
This is a post that I have used many times before
Liberty has to be one of the most important things in life. Well up there, behind health and safety of your family, must be the right to go about your daily life without being forced to live it under oppressive surveillance. For it surely is oppression - being spied upon by the authorities in all that you do. Knowing this information could be used against you, for any purpose they see fit. The so-called all-seeing eye of God over you - meant to instil respect of them and fear of authority.
It can be proven they use propaganda to deceive you into believing them. How?
Ask Security Services in the US, UK, Indonesia (Bali) or anywhere for that matter, to deny this:
Internet surveillance, using Echelon, Carnivore or back doors in encryption, will not stop terrorists communicating by other means - most especially face to face or personal courier.
Terrorists will have to do that, or they will be caught!
Perhaps using mobile when absolutely essential, saying - "Meet you in the pub Monday" (meaning, human bomb to target A), or Tuesday (target B) or Sunday (abort).
The Internet has become a tool for government to snoop on their people - 24/7.
The terrorism argument is a dummy - total bull*.
INTERNET SURVEILLANCE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP TERRORISTS - THAT IS SPIN AND PROPAGANDA
This propaganda is for several reasons, including: a) making you feel safer b) to say the government are doing something and c) the more malicious motive of privacy invasion.
Government say about surveillance - "you've nothing to fear - if you are not breaking the law"
This argument is made to pressure people into acquiescence - else appear guilty of hiding something illegal.
It does not address the real reason why they want this information (which they will deny) - they want a surveillance society.
They wish to invade your basic human right to privacy. This is like having somebody watching everything you do - all your personal thoughts, hopes and fears will be open to them.
This is everything - including phone calls and interactive TV. Quote from ZDNET: "Whether you're just accessing a Web site, placing a phone call, watching TV or developing a Web service, sometime in the not to distant future, virtually all such transactions will converge around Internet protocols."
"Why should I worry? I do not care if they know what I do in my own home", you may foolishly say. Or, just as dumbly, "They will not be interested in anything I do".
This information will be held about you until the authorities need it for anything at all. Like, for example, here in UK when government looked for dirt on individuals of Paddington crash survivors group. It was led by badly injured Pam Warren. She had over 20 operations after the 1999 rail crash (which killed 31 and injured many).
This group had fought for better and safer railways - all by legal means. By all accounts a group of fine outstanding people - with good intent.
So what was their crime, to deserve this investigation?
It was just for showing up members of government to be the incompetents they are.
As usual, government tried to put a different spin on the story when they were found out. Even so, their intent was obvious - they wanted to use this in
Why nopt just improve the Social Security number system? As opposed to trying to construct an entirely new system?
umm...the civil war provides precedent that it is illegal to secede
042-51-4323
"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same in every country."
- Herman Goering, Commander, Nazi Luftwaffe
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
How about just do the right thing and get rid of the Ponzi scheme known as the Socialist Insecurity, the only investment requiring 12.5% and you get back 2 %. With now a 2 to 1 pay in to out. Thats why Mr. Ponzi fled Chicago and the country when his great plan of everyone will get more than they paid in failed!
Having had my identity stolen for 5 plus year and trying to get 100 different agencies passing the buck to do anything about it, I'd have to agree... damn I'm not even sure if I'm me anymore! But would it make a difference?
..And who's law is that? The state of Maine's? or the Feds?
Mane declares they are de-ratifying the constitution and will become independent they thus ignore all the laws of the Feds including that one.. now.. its "possible" that the Federal Government will use force on the state of Maine and its people.. but that wont look very good on TV either.. and may cause even more people to hate the Fed..
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
But, if you posses a legitimate drivers license (a permit) from another state, you may legaly drive in any other state. This is not the case with a carry permit. What is the major difference?
You can kill more people, in less time, with a car?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I meant *just my passport*.
There are still a lot of people that lived through the rise and fall of the Third Reich; Ya Nazi's. Nazi's take over town. Next, Nazi's go to Hall of Records, get list of towns people which has on it things like religion, and address. Nazi's then find the bad people, and they are taken away. Maybe that will never happen again. But there are survivors that still flinch at such memories. To take the position of "Us Verses Them" in this ever shrinking world is not constructive. Hate, is not a family value; And Intolerance is bad for business.