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DHS Official Suggests REAL ID Mission Creep
The Register noticed that a senior US Department of Homeland Security official has floated the idea of requiring citizens to produce federally compliant identification before purchasing some over-the-counter medicines — specifically, pseudophedrine. The federal ID standard spelled out by the REAL ID act has been sold as applying only to air travel and entry to federal buildings and nuclear facilities. A blogger on the Center for Democracy and Technology site said, "[The] suggested mission creep pushes the REAL ID program farther down the slippery slope toward a true national ID card." Speaking of federal buildings, CNet has a state-by-state enumeration of what will happen on May 11, when REAL ID comes into effect, to citizens who attempt to enter, say, the Washington DC visitors bureau.
Won't someone please think of the meth addicts?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Since I've spent years outside the U.S., I don't have a driver's license. When I return to the U.S., I use my passport as identification to purchase alcohol or travel long distances. If people are concerned about Real ID posing massive privacy issues, why haven't people like me using our passports faced this yet?
I wonder if the DHS consciously constructs slippery slopes and has timelines drawn up for when to feed what to the American people, or if they're just really good at accidentally destroying our civil liberties...
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I am not American but I wonder why you have such problems with personal identity numbers. Here in Sweden we had them since 1947 and we all have ID cards with this number, name, address and a picture. Its really an easy way to identify yourself. All organizations also have an identity number.
Look, I know it's cool to fight the drugs, and that meth seems to be evil from what I've seen, dunno, haven't tried it.
But speaking as an asthmatic allergy sufferer, and someone who gets some really crappy colds every year making good old sudafed a bitch to find/get/procure. That new Sudafed crap elevates my heart rate by over 20 bpm and doesn't clear my head. You feel like you're ordering donkey porn when you go in and try to buy something that has it, and most vendors don't.
For the record, Aleve has a 12 hour decongestant that is the evil good old sudafed in it. After suffering for three days with every other stupid cold pill on the shelf took one of those, and was fine for 12 hours.
Of course, it was too late and I got a sinus infection so I had that joy to go through.
But this is just stupid. I'm ok with you putting it behind a counter so a meth head doesn't come in and clear the shelf, stealing it all. but the limits on the amount make it rought if you have a >3 day long cold sometimes.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
What happens if I'm summoned to a Federal Court appearance and don't have the required ID? Do I:
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
That would give non-citizens more rights than citizens, since they can hardly make it illegal for resident aliens to buy medicine. Or will they be forced to show green cards or the like? What nonsense.
I already have to show ID when I buy a product with too much Pseudoephedrine in it. It's kind of annoying when you need to show your driver's license and sign a slip for buying a big bottle of NyQuil. Is this merely a state law (I'm in NJ) or have people in other states seen it as well?
What exactly does pseudophedrine have to do with homeland security? Why do those DHS guys even think about it at all?
Most people would consider me a liberal, although exactly how liberal depends on the current position of the pendulum. Yet it seems to me that the strongest argument for conservatism has always been this: you can't get everything you want. Yes, we'd all like the poor to have access to health care and top notch education, but if we throw money at those problems we reduce entrepreneurial incentive (or sometimes even worse: refocus it on capturing windfalls) needed to grow the economy and provide access to wealth for all.
Here we see a flip side of this argument: we'd all like to be perfectly safe, but at some point you buy the next increment of safety at the cost of something else. Are we really safer if we have a government functionary peering into all kinds of aspects of our private lives? Is Republican Party conservatism just the choice of an alternative form of government paternalism?
This kind of thing is what conservatives (and liberals) ought to be on the lookout for.
Conservatives for years have railed against the idea of a government ID ("papers, please"). Personally, I don't have a problem with a standard government issued ID, but I do understand what they're getting at. It's about the indignity of some unaccountable government flunky exerting control over your private affairs. If the growing conservative discomfort over ID standards is any measure, many conservatives have begun to realize that the government issued ID is really symbolic; it's not the ID per se, but what can be done with it.
All things being equal, an ID that is standardized, either by being issued by a single authority or whose issuance and features are controlled by a single authority, is better than an unreliable ID. The problem is that a better ID is also convenient for illegitimate purposes. Why mandate such an ID for purchasing medicine, if other than to put medicine purchases in a federal database?
And that's the rub. Conservatives are way behind on recognizing the coercive power of databases in government hands as they are ahead in recognizing the dangers of a national ID.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Sure. If you got the cash....
I realize you're being absurdly funny, but still...
A Federal "Real ID" stomps all over the Constitutionally protected rights of States _and_ citizens. It's been a while since the feds have done such a bangup job stomping on _that_ much liberty.
Remember, the SS# was "never to be used as a means of personal identification..." And now look where we are. The Real ID is nothing more than a power grab and a consolidation of yet more Federal power... that the Congress complied with happily. Time to take the DHS to court... and let the Supremes decide if they can usurp authority that is _NOT_ enumerated to the Federal government.
I didn't think I would see such a reading comprehension problem with our government when it comes to the Constitution. Seems clear to me what it says... they may not like it, but I don't care. It's not their position to like it... it's their position to uphold it and keep it from becoming... well... Orwell's nightmare.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
And in record time for a federal agency. I think its creation was a mistake and its continued existence a money-sucking waste of resources. Instead of focusing on terrorism they've started to put their greasy fingers into all kinds of areas not related to what's supposed to be their core mission.
Unless someone can relate cold medicine and terrorism. If we've got this terrorism thing whipped that DHS has so much time on their hands, then scale back their budget.
We have the FBI for domestic terrorism, the CIA for overseas operations...they were getting the job done before 9-11. Just as a reminder, the problem wasn't that we didn't know about the terrorists before 9-11, the problem was we didn't act on what we knew. And we knew without massive, illegal wiretapping of Americans, without the Patriot Act, without waterboarding, secret prisons, GITMO and all the other retarded things we've done out of fear since then.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
A "logical fallacy" is one which is false. That is, and *instance* of the slippery-slope argument might be fallacious, but the slippery-slope technique in general is not fallacious.
What I infer from what you say is that the slippery-slope argument is not fallacious, but insufficient. And on that, I agree. Simply invoking the slippery-slope is not good enough. You'll have to back it up.
In this case of the Real ID, we've already seen the "slippery-slope" happening. It's not only logical that it will slide down that slope, but inevitable. The question is not "if," it's "when." With the DHS grasping for more power, that time seems now.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Now, if I'm not mistaken, state reps to the capital (i.e. your standard senator and representative to mention a few) must be residents (and therefore have IDs) of the states they represent. And I can only assume that in the current state of things they would have to show their IDs at some point (in what form I don't know, and I don't know if they actually have to show them as I've never had the privilege of going to DC). So I would have to ask, what happens to legislators from those states that have refused to cooperate with the RealID system? Do we just start excluding them from law making decisions? Do we basically force them to secede from the union? wind up with a really screwed up civil war over something so trivial?
I was in Hong Kong a while back, and the general advice from the tour guides was that you should only buy the silver $10 Rolexes from street vendors, not the gold ones, because the color rubs off the gold ones....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Here in the US, people believe that we're free and the government works for us - we're not owned by some government. Britain's a bit different, having a tradition of feudalism (we has a revolution against ours, while they mostly outgrew theirs), but they still also believe in individual freedom as a fundamental value. We both know it doesn't really work that way any more, and don't like it, and that really annoys us. Our countries also both have a history of slavery, and we know how owners treat property, though we didn't use ID cards for slaves back then.
South African friends of mine also had ID cards, but they could travel freely around their country because they were obviously white, while blacks and coloreds had to show their passes prove that they were going somewhere the white people wanted them. If you need a pass to travel around your country, you're obviously not one of the white owners, and if you want other people to have passes to travel around, you're saying you *are* one of the white owners.
Organizations assign you numbers and ID cards because they want to keep track of you and make you ask their permission to do things, and because they don't trust you. I don't mind if my bank does that - they're keeping my money, and I don't want them to let other people take it. But when a government says I need to get their permission to go somewhere, that's morally unacceptable - freedom to travel is a fundamental human right - and they're able to enforce it because they've got a bunch of guns and can shoot anybody who doesn't obey. I don't mind if the government uses numbers as database indexes to keep track of appropriate things; I'm not the only person in my town with my name. But if they're keeping track of things that are none of their business, that's wrong. And ID cards mean that they can keep all those records together, which is dangerous and inappropriate.
I've been really surprised that Europeans are tolerant of ID cards, not only given the recent unpleasantness that had just happened when you Swedes got yours, but also given the history of the 1700s-1800s, with monarchies, czars, secret police, and that sort of abuse from traditional governments and their replacements.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks