Canadians Wary of 'Enhanced Drivers Licenses'

Dr.Merkwurdigeliebe writes ""Enhanced drivers licenses such as those to be issued in B.C. will lay the groundwork for a national identity card", federal privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said yesterday. Stoddart said the licenses, touted as an alternative to a passport for the purpose of crossing the U.S. border, closely resemble the Real ID program in the United States. She characterized that program as a way of introducing a "type of national identity card" for Americans."

Comments

That's how these things happen.

[tygerstripes]

If a government wants to introduce something like this against opposition, they simply have to make it non-compulsory but inconvenient NOT to adopt the measure.

You can get about without a passport or driving license, you can purchase goods without using your SmartCard - but why make life so difficult for yourself when, with just a couple of concessionary biometric measures, you can take the easy path?

There's never any need to convince the masses that something is a good idea; just convince the individual that it's not worth fighting.

Am I preaching? Hell no. When these things get introduced in the UK I'll grumble like hell and offer my vocal support to anyone who opposes the new identity scheme (whatever guise it eventually takes), but at the end of the day...

RFID is NOT secure!

[Nemilar]

The article says that these are basically standard licenses, but they include RFID chips.

Is anyone else worried about all these RFID chips that companies and government seem to love putting everywhere? Credit cards? Products? Licenses?

They do realize that RFID is not secure, right? And that anyone with a few bucks can buy or build an RFID reader and cloner? So basically, the validity of your RFID scan is zero. Anyone who can counterfeit a license today will be able to counterfeit a license tomorrow, as long as they do a little research and invest in some extra equipment. It's a business - those who can't (or don't) adapt will die out, and those who do adapt to to the new market will succeed. But it will not be going away any time soon. RFID does not make anything more secure.

Why so afraid of a national ID card?

[Confused]

Could someone please explain to me, why Americans, Canadians, Brits and Australians are so afraid of a national ID card?

I live in continental Europe in a country where everyone is expected to be able to identify himself to the police at any time, in a country where there's a central voter register and if you move, you are expected to register yourself with the local town inside of 3 weeks. That sounds like the total police state, doesn't it?

Lets see how this works out in reality:

[b]Identify yourself[/b]: Usually any official document with picture is ok, in reality this means in most cases your driving license - issued nationally, your national ID card or your passport (which many people have anyway to get to the sea in summer). As most Americans have a driving license anyway, this wouldn't change a lot of things for a good part of the population. The issuers of the driving licenses might need do a little more work checking the identity to prevent issues to the wrong name or wrong dates - but this wouldn't affect the common people.

The benefit of having a national ID card on the other hand is, that there's only a small number of documents used commonly and if you have one, you are identified. No more 'Bring 3 types of ID' stuff. You have your driving license, your passport or your ID card, you are set. If those are good enough for the police, they are good enough for everyone else too (eg banks, insurances, airlines).

As those official documents are quite important, forging those, getting those in wrong names or otherwise messing with them is taken very, very seriously by law enforcement. You don't mess around with your driving license just to get some beer before you should (which wouldn't be a problem anyway, once you get a driving license you're also considered old enough to get alcohol), that would send you quite quickly to jail. This improves the general trust in those documents.

At the same time identity theft a lot less of a problem here. If you need to identify yourself, you show one of those documents and everyone is happy. Should, for instance, a bank teller have doubts about your documents, you'll just be invited for a coffee while the police quickly drops by to check your documents. If it clear, fine, if it doesn't you're in deep deep trouble. To try getting around with a fake identity, you immediately raise the stakes to the level of a federal crime, which in most cases isn't worth the risk to small time criminals.

[b]To the police:[/b] So yes, the police may ask you at any time to identify yourself. If not, they can put you in lock-up for some time (similar to the 24 hours available to the American police if one can trust crime shows) to check your identity. In day to day operation, is seems very similar no matter if there's a national ID card scheme or not. If the police doesn't like your face, they can give you a hard time.

For people without ID, there are some procedures to get identified, but those take time and effort. If you happen to be one of the unfortunates without ID, your ID got lost / stolen / whatever, you do it only once to get a temporary replacement before having the new ones issued.

[b]Central voter register:[/b] So wherever you live, you are forced to register yourself inside 3 weeks. This is done mainly for the voter register, to have an idea who can vote in what district, for the tax man and for the police who likes to have a total control over the citizens.

The voter register is a good thing, it makes fraud and manipulation at the time of elections a little harder - you ain't registered officially in the district, you ain't going to vote for it.

The tax man is unfortunately very unavoidable. No matter if there's a national ID card or not, Mr. Tax man will own you and your data - in Soviet Russia and everywhere else too.

The police might have it a little easier to start up to indulge in their totalitarian police state fantasies if they have a national ID card. But if they don't they just dig into the d

Re:Why so afraid of a national ID card?

[twakar]

Could someone please explain to me, why Americans, Canadians, Brits and Australians are so afraid of a national ID card?
I'll tell you I'm afraid of this type of thing/attitude, from a Canadian perspective anyways.

For me, it doesn't come from fear or mistrust. It's simply a matter of freedom. The freedom to go about my daily life without having to explain my intentions or actions, or to prove that I'm allowed to be wherever I happen to be. Freedom of mobility is guaranteed under the Canadian Constitution.

I also happen to enjoy the freedom from arbitrary questioning/interrogation. The freedom from being monitored, from having my movements/purchases/actions tracked, perhaps to be used against me by someone in government I may have pissed off at some point in my life.

If I'm under arrest for suspicion of whatever, then fine. Under the current system I'll have my day in court. And up until now, I still trust my legal system (for the most part). Under a 'papers please' society, I wouldn't trust any member of law enforcement or the judiciary, I would be living in fear. Please try and remember that a government is supposed to be in place to serve the citizenry, not to monitor/track/control. People who through a trusted system of due process are deemed criminal should be monitored, but a free citizen should be under no such magnifying glass.

I truly fear the day that the freedoms I enjoy now, that my forefathers gave their lives for, will be a distant memory, that can only be discussed via 'approved' texts.

Even as a Canadian, I'm scared to go to the U.S. for what's it's become. I fear that 1 wrong move, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time could land me in world of pain or trouble.

Again, the reason I don't want any sort of national ID card is that I simply enjoy my freedom too much, and I will fight to the death to keep it.

P.S. although not perfect, I do feel that for the most part, at this moment I do live in the freest (sp?) country in the world

Re:Won't fly.

[kaos07]

Sure the Chinese have ID cards and sure they execute people. I'm not for any form of ID card, but it seems as though you're insinuating that they're somehow connected, and that's a fairly stupid link.

ID Cards != Execution by lethal injection

Re:National ID Register

[rxmd]

Because the ID card act is really about creating a centralised government database that stores all information about you in one place. Not just personal information either - this would be every electronic record that exists about you, like what you buy and where you travel.

You guys are confusing "creating a database" with "creating a primary key".

Let's for the sake of the argument assume that the tinfoil hat crowd is right and that the big spidery evil government works as they think it does. If the governments wants to create the database, but doesn't get the ID through legislation, they will create the database anyway and just use some other key, and live with the inconvenience of an occasional duplicate record or even exploit them, e.g. for creating extra voters. Whether the government collects data on everything you buy and everywhere you travel is completely independent of whether there is a national ID.