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US Immigration Bill May Bring a National Biometric ID Card
schwit1 sends this quote from the Wall Street Journal:
"Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain. Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal US workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker. ... A person familiar with the legislative planning said the biometric data would likely be either fingerprints or a scan of the veins in the top of the hand. It would be required of all workers, including teenagers, but would be phased in, with current workers needing to obtain the card only when they next changed jobs, the person said. The card requirement also would be phased in among employers, beginning with industries that typically rely on illegal-immigrant labor."
I must see your papers.
coffee | nose > keyboard
Why do we need another card? Seems to me that identity thieves have enough things to use already.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Over my cold dead body.
Ain't gonna happen.
Seriously though...this idea would likely work just as it is being advertised, but the privacy implications of this are astounding. Then again, we only have the illusion of privacy at this point here in the US, so we may as well stop fooling ourselves....
Remember kids, privacy != freedom
Living With a Nerd
This is a National ID card. Call it what it is and be done with it, don't try to hide it as part of an immigration bill.
Who wants to bet that employers will just have a paper form to check off that they looked at your card rendering all the bio stuff useless?
The only reason I mention that is because a social security card is also 'required' for employment, although I lost mine when I was a kid and have never shown it to any of my employers.
I tell them I forgot it and they never ask again.
Mr. Cheney, we've advised you in the past to stop trolling internet forums!
Make it so this card also has my drivers license, and passport (I assume it already has my social security since it's for work) and I am all for it. I am tired of having to to worry which ID i need to have on me. Drivers license (all the time), then passport when I fly (god help me if I forget this one), and now this?
Gov't - stop making life cumbersome. With technology we can get everything we want, on a drivers license sized ID card. It shouldn't be that hard.
Oh - and don't forget the most important thing...the persons picture.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
I guess this is where we learn whether Americans hate "big gummint" or mexicans more. Based on our performances during the wars on terror, drugs, crime, pedophiles, etc. I'm guessing that the answer will be "mexicans" hands down.
Sure, there'll be some libertarians and civil libertarians who actually do prefer freedom, and some liberals(and, of course, hispanics) who don't actually hate mexicans; but the "God bless Joe Arpaio" crowd would submit to checkpoints and cavity searches in their own homes if they thought it would bring back "purity" and "real america"(how ironic...).
Meet the new boss (administration), same as the old boss
I find this hard to believe. Obama already gets enough grief about
Obama's not in the senate. He hasn't been in the senate since he became president. This proposal is in the senate. Stop obama bashing.
Just because Schumer is meeting with Obama does not mean Obama is responsible for this idea. According ot the article, a source in the white house said they have no official stance.
Personally, this is the first time I have seen the democrats sell something properly. They are targetting this towards everyone, but their language is focusing on immigrants. Republicans are against national IDs, but they are more likely to be for it when we start throwing out the words "immigrants"
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
Fine, congressmen should get the cards first. If they still like the idea after 6 years, let them try and foist it on the rest of us.
FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec
"A person familiar with the legislative planning said the biometric data would likely be either fingerprints or a scan of the veins in the top of the hand. It would be required of all workers, including teenagers, but would be phased in, with current workers needing to obtain the card only when they next changed jobs, the person said. The card requirement also would be phased in among employers, beginning with industries that typically rely on illegal-immigrant labor.""
What about virtual companies and telecommuters were the notion of "illegal worker" doesn't really exist.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
For those of you who are going to draw analogies to Soviet Russia, etc. and complain that this somehow violates our rights and so on: just think of all the "papers" we ALREADY have to carry in this country. A lot of fuss was made in anti-Soviet propoganda about the papers the Russians had to carry around, but try leaving your house some time in the U.S. without your driver's license, car registration, proof of insurance, etc. I'm pretty sure the cops aren't going to accept "But this is a free country!" in lieu of these if you get stopped at a roadblock.
There are privacy concerns here, but not civil liberties ones (well, no more than are raised by all the other "papers").
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
and let in all the illegals than give those fucks in washington not only a national id card but one with biometric data. Worse than the Nazis and Soviets.
This is something that we need to harp on everytime the subject comes up. You cannot pass laws against illegal aliens to prevent them from working or participating in social programs, because we don't know who they are. You can only pass laws against everyone requiring them to prove they are a citizen. To require us to beg government approval before we can work or attend school, and hope there isn't a clerical error, or we never lose our papers at a bad time, or that the government won't someday extend this program to a larger scope.
There are no laws against illegal aliens, there are only laws stating that we are all assumed guilty of being illegal aliens until we prove ourselves innocent.
I have always wanted to be branded like cattle. Thankfully, our government wants this to be the case, as well. And they make it sound like a good thing? I think not...
Good luck with the revolution!
Holy happy hippy crap!
How long before people claim this as the mark of the Beast?
If I get a card like this, they will simply have to look for it in the local dump. I am not going to cooperate with this program.
They are taking our jobs!
Dey took hiz job!
why do they talk about fascism, "papers please" and destruction of privacy and freedom?
it's just a damn national id card. do you drive? do you have a driver's license? same fucking thing. is the existence of your driver's license some sort of matrix-like conspiracy to utterly destro your individuality? no? then calm the fuck down
it's just a bizarre sort of rigid fear of the unknown, when if you have an actual functioning brain, there's no threat this card poses to anyone, anyhow
what a bunch of spastic hysterical idiots
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If the immigration system wasn't so fucked up to begin with we wouldn't be seeing this. Corruption in Mexico and on this side of the border is largely what causes the problems that this stupid card is supposed to fix. It will not fix them. Illegal aliens are nothing if not highly intelligent and resourceful. The U.S. government is nothing if not blundering and ill-managed. This will not fix the problem, but instead introduce new problems for those who didn't have them before. The cards will solve nothing. I have illegal immigrants in my family who work here and I would love to see an opportunity for them to be able to be able to stay and make a living, but not at this cost. I refuse to trade freedom for a slightly and increasingly lesser form of freedom. I will be putting the word out that the US has its balls trapped on the immigration issue and that people should not be quick to support something just to get what they think they want only later to discover that it's actually a pair of shackles. Technology is not magic.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
flight access [...] cashing checks or even credit cards [...]to track purchases [...] replacement for courtesy cards [...] health care, I mean we can now see that you buy WAY too much alcohol and cigarettes [...]the govt types will be able to come up with new, nifty ways to use a national id
Wow - just WOW. You are aware that with the exception of "national health care", EVERYTHING you mentioned would be done by private businesses, right? And if idiots like you get their way and there is no "national health care", private insurance companies could use it the same way, right?
Don't get me wrong - such an ID is a horrible idea - but it's a horrible idea because it will be abused by corporations.
(Yes, I know - all the libertardians will now proceed to mod me down and talk about how the invisible market fairy will make it all better.)
Ok, so worker will be required to get it when they next change jobs, and the industries that will be forced to require this first are the ones which typically hire the most illegals. The industries that hire the most illegals are construction, food service, etc. Those are also the industries where people are going to need to "change jobs" pretty soon, especially construction, due that sector having been hit the hardest by the economic issues. Yet again, this is just another way to control the poorer workers, all the while making them feel like having to register body scans to get a job building houses is for their own good 'cause it'll keep "illegals" from getting the jobs or "terrorists" from blowing them up.
How come its OK for capital to transfer across borders but labor can't move freely? How come I have to go through more trouble to get legal working status in another country than I do to invest in a foreign stock market? Is it because the nation state is the new lord's estate and they want to keep me on the manor? And to make sure we don't get any funny ideas, the Daddy Party tries to tell us we should hate our neighbors and do anything necessary to keep them out, fomenting racism and causing all sorts of animosity on both sides of the border, and the water, making sure that we're just as unwelcome abroad as they are here... screw this shit.
Wells was too smart for you: "I went and stared at nothing in my shaving-glass, at nothing save where an attenuated pigment still remained behind the retina of my eyes, fainter than mist."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Well, this completely solves the illegal immigration problem! I mean, it's not like people will give illegal immigrants jobs if they don't have valid "job cards." After all, then they would need to pay the immigrants cash under the table or something. And, of course, these cards will be 100% forgery proof so immigrants won't be able to just get a fake ID.
Plus, there are no privacy concerns at all. I mean a card with your fingerprint and other personal information sitting right in your wallet? That's the most secure place I can think of. Nobody would ever lose their wallet or have it stolen. The card could never, ever go missing leading to identity theft. Nope. Simply impossible.
Oh and did I mention the "E-Verify" online system to check the ID card's validity. A stroke of genius! It's sure to be 100% hack-proof like all good government sites are.
Finally, there's no way this would ever be used for anything other than jobs. There will be no temptation for our completely honest politicians to extend this to travel, voting or any other use.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to clean my glasses. I think there's a smudge on the rose-colored lens.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The problem with this - your card has no biometrics (pictures, fingerprints, etc) - so you can steal someones social security card and then use that to gain work...which is not what we want.
Uhmm... Using a stolen SSN to get a job... Wouldn't that mean the social security benefits aquired over the years in that job would be credited to the original owner of that number?
bickerdyke
... don't want a fix to the problem.
It's not good for business, and so MANY people don't want to fix the problem, it's never going to be solved in any real way.
You know the I-9 form? You know how annoying it is? You know how many people have been prosecuted for falsifying information on the form?
Two. That's it. Two cases.
Either people here in the US are really, really honest, or there's no one out there investigating theses things.
New technology won't change old behavior.
awesome - this is the first step towards automatic identification - soon we will have the RFID chip implanted under your skin so with one wave of your hand anyone can know everything about you!
i knew something like this would happen when immigration moved under the auspices of the Department of Fatherland Security.
and RFID is so much nicer than barcodes or numbers just written straight on the skin...
Instead of using crap like this to stop illegals, do this instead:
1.Do whatever is necessary to ensure legal American workers can get (and will try to get) the jobs that illegals are currently taking. Tie this work to unemployment benefits (i.e. if you are currently out of work and receiving any kind of government unemployment benefits you have to take these jobs. Possibly the government over there could do what the government here in Australia did and introduce "work for the dole" (which is where you work at the jobs like fruit picking that would otherwise be taken by illegals in the American system but instead of being paid by the employer out of their pockets, the government pays what they would have paid you in unemployment/dole payments)
2.Encourage American companies to build factories and other things in Central America where the illegals come from (if a Mexican has a good job in Mexico, they have a lot less reason to try to come to America and work for almost no pay because any job that pays anything decent wont take the risk of hiring people without proper paperwork)
Well, don't just stand there, do it.
http://www.house.gov/
http://www.senate.gov/
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Of course it's more than that. When you get a job you're already required to provide identification both of your eligibility to work and your identity (A photo ID in combination with SSN/birth certificate or a passport).
This may have some kind of verification to make sure the ID was properly checked. Many places only check your social security card...that has no form of actual identification. Are you sure it's the law you have to show a photo id currently? Birth certificate is absolutely not required. Each city, & state and employer is different. Two jobs ago I had to provide a photo copy of my naturalization certificate (though the second HR person said I had to bring it in to show it to her, because a photo copy from her predecessor wasn't proof enough...which shows inconsistencies). This was in addition to my license and social security card. My last job? Social security card and license. I am pretty sure the license was more for the employer then for the gov't (i would have to do some driving so needed a license). My current job - they just needed to check to see who i am and run a background check (not gov't required, just a company process).
THe point is - there are tons of inconsistencies, and through all of my employers (large and small, in NJ, PA, DE, and various cities/counties in those areas) they have all been different. I used to work in retail banking while in college and they had to get me bonded (all bank employees must do this)....i only had to provide social and drivers license.
Why they don't require some kind of photo on a soc card is beyond me...it would help reduce ID theft...and your social card is one of the most difficult ID types for you to get changed, and it is so integral in your life (credit, social security benefits, and more)
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
Driver's Licenses were, when initially set up, just that... a LICENSE. A piece of paper with a government seal saying you were approved to drive, just like a hunting license. No ID, no address and issued by the STATE.
A national ID, weakens the powers of the states and gives the federal government more control over your daily life... IE as in now you need papers just to seek employment and eventually to get healthcare that the government approves you to have.
As the saying goes, you can't throw a frog into a boiling cooking pot but you can sure turn up the heat over time and they won't know the difference...
But hey... chocolate rations are up.
Do they really think this card can't be duplicated / created illegally? If it's actually too hard to make one, people will just steal the materials or bribe someone. As is done today. The only ones that will be impacted, as usual, are those attempting to follow the law, who get eaten alive by the bureaucracy.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Because kids need a cause. They don't need to UNDERSTAND a cause, or to grasp implications and both sides of the issue, they just need something to wear on their sleeves, next to the patch promoting that super-cool underground indie band only they have ever heard of.
Uhmm... Using a stolen SSN to get a job... Wouldn't that mean the social security benefits aquired over the years in that job would be credited to the original owner of that number?
And the income taxes that would be owed for said income....
This whole thing is pointless anyway. Does Congress really live in a fantasy land where illegal immigrants are hired to positions where they supply SSNs, drivers licenses, etc? In my experience the vast majority of businesses employing illegal labor do so by paying them in cash. "Come work with us for a day putting up drywall, there's a few sawbucks in it for you." No amount of biometrics will stop this.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The ID cards are not the problem. The problem is consequences.
Today, it is cheaper to staff with undocumented workers and hope they don't get caught. If ALL employers had to verify the ID of all of their employees and contractors or face serious fines and all contractors (including household help) were required to show a verifiable ID and anyone who fails to check or falsifies faced serious penalties, this problem would be hugely reduced overnight.
The real problem is that the big businesses (agriculture, meat packing, hospitality, commercial real-estate, etc..) want the cheap labor and won't let the problem be solved.
Federalism is officially a complete failure.
The day I am forced to get an unconstitutional "biometric ID card" in order not to have my job opportunities, directly subsidized by taxes, government-sponsored monopolies and other expropriated wealth, stolen by an illegal immigrant is the day that it's time to dissolve the federal government and revert it's duties back to states that have some semblance of fiscal responsibility and individual rights.
And I say this of course under the near-universal assumption (by now) that this, along with everything else the US government does, will do absolutely nothing to curb illegal immigration or salvage jobs or benefit Americans and instead will be used simply as another tool of inept government to punish the compliant and reward criminals and cheaters and traitor banks and businesses.
The US is no longer a functional government. It can't regulate borders. It dissolves them and signs them away in supranational treaties. It can't regulate trade or abusive businesses. It supports them and bails them out when they fail. It can't win wars. It can't even define "winning" in terms of the bullshit wars it now engages in. It can't regulate reproduction or resource consumption or immigration or anything that actually affects the long term well-being of it's citizens. All it can do at this point is make token bullshit infringements on the rights of anyone unlucky or stupid enough to get in it's way, accomplishing absolutely nothing save crippling debt increases in the process.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
First, if employees would have to get them when they got new jobs would this be something done in the field or something someone would have to go to an office to pick up? If the latter than exactly how much do you think immigrant workers who cross the border to work in the fields will stop by a government office to register?
If it's the former what stops anybody from creating a second indentity for themselves by simply getting a job, saying they have no ID, and getting a card? Or stops someone who is here from mexico (many of whom don't have birth certificates they could find or any documentation) from simply creating identities ad hoc?
Also, for the sake of comic relief, can we call it a Multipass?
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
ah ok. weh have tax-numbers for that...
bickerdyke
Tracking citizens of what, their work? We already do that. ...
This is nothing more then putting a "picture" on your social security card.
Which is exactly the problem. Read to one of the other posters on the same level as you. He describes "other" uses for this card, like stores and other government agencies tracking non-work related things. It's not entirely crazy that a national ID card will be used for far more than simply track work. Look at the social security card that you cite. It was never intended to be a national ID number, but it's become one, not just for the government, but for most businesses as well.
already we have millions of illegals with IDs because so many areas purposely are safe harbors for them, this is just one more thing on the list they will get
Uhmm... Using a stolen SSN to get a job... Wouldn't that mean the social security benefits aquired over the years in that job would be credited to the original owner of that number?
The problem is that illegal immigrants are using this - and they are not supposed to be here. Criminals use this to avoid being tracked...I am sure we would like to continue to track pedo's...or escaped criminals. What if the person who is using this for work decides to then take grandma's SS benefits? Or take a loan out on her name and default on the loan now ruining grandmas credit? What if you are working, and someone else is working on your social....now your income tax bracket went up. If the person didn't pay any taxes on the money they made...guess who has to pay it...yup you do.
I'll prefer to keep my social private and I'll earn my own retirement benefits.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
but would be phased in, with current workers needing to obtain the card only when they next changed jobs
Well, that's scary. You could easily form a permanent underclass of never-employable again people with that plan.
There's no point to getting a card unless its more effective than a passport or drivers license or military ID, or my freaking passport would be good enough so we wouldn't need this new thing. It took months to get my passport, including all kinds of hoops to jump thru for notarization and some special kind of birth certificate and other foolishness involving the local postmaster. I assume this new thing will be worse, otherwise we wouldn't need it. Its a safe assumption that in general, any time the govt does anything, its to make it worse for the middle class, and this specific situation seems to fit the mold.
For a upper middle class employed dude like myself, a couple months time and a couple thousand bucks is annoying but no big deal, similar to replacing a leaking roof and fixing the damage. For dirt poor, unemployed, barely HS educated, how-mucha-month, joe six pack, he's screwed. What if J6P needs to hire a lawyer to fix some paperwork, or needs to pay up front to get docs from various agencies to prove his existence?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
This is Schumer, not Obama. Schumer is going after the votes of the lazy unemployed* people in upstate NY who see illegal immigrants doing jobs that they refuse to do and complain that the immigrants are taking their jobs.
* There are lazy employed people. There are non-lazy unemployed people. I am talking about the lazy unemployed people only. I am not trying to associate the two adjectives.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
It's funny how a lot of Americans are shouting "Dey took our jerbs!", but when you actually offer them the jobs that illegal immigrants are doing, i.e. scrubbing toilets for low wages, then suddenly they are too good for that kind of work.
Illegal immigrants do not take away high-pay jobs, and those actual high pay jobs are routinely shipped off to India and alike anyway. Those immigrants are greasing the wheels of the economy, doing jobs that nobody else wants to do.
I see it in my own country (Netherlands) where we have to ship in seasonal workers to harvest asparagus crops because they just can't get the local people to do the hard work.
It'll be interesting to see the effects of this plan.
Does Congress really live in a fantasy land where illegal immigrants are hired to positions where they supply SSNs, drivers licenses, etc? In my experience the vast majority of businesses employing illegal labor do so by paying them in cash. "Come work with us for a day putting up drywall, there's a few sawbucks in it for you." No amount of biometrics will stop this.
Illegal immigrants use stolen socials to get said jobs...yes it happens, and yes it is significant. Those socials are also used by criminals who are trying to avoid detection, used by people trying to steal benefits, used by people trying to get loans and defaulting on them, etc. It's a huge issue. SS theft is extremely bad - it hurts the person who had their information stolen (getting your SS changed is next to impossible). It hurts the businesses who got screwed out of loan money (which in turn raises the prices for the general public).
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
Bypassing all the arguments for and against this plan, I notice an interesting detail in the article. It applies to employers and employees (form W2) only. It apparently does not apply to business owners or freelancers (form 1099). So all the independent people (lawnkeepers, housekeepers, pool cleaners, handymen, freelancing programmers, etc) won't be affected by this either way, at least at first. They'd have to expand it to apply to everyone asking for any kind of service (hospitals, unemployment, banks, groceries) to have it affect 100% of the population. So if you want to avoid this card as long as possible, just start your own service business, or convince your employer to convert you to a form 1099 contractor, instead of a form W2 employee. You'll have to work out the pay scale to afford your vacations, insurance, and other perks, but that's workable. Also, if a lot of people become their own bosses, they technically always will have a job (their own business), so the unemployment lines would diminish. Theoretically. ;-)
>> Does Congress really live in a fantasy land where illegal immigrants are hired to positions where they supply SSNs, drivers licenses, etc?
No. The public lives in a fantasy land. They also believe that the only thing between them and immortality (guaranteed healthcare for the rest of their natural and unnatural lives) is passage of a bill in congress.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
I agree. I liked it very much back in the 80s when I was visiting Switzerland -- they had "combo" smart cards that were used as ATM and rail discount cards. I would, in fact, like it very much if there was a smart card that could be used for everything -- for proving that I'm licensed to drive, for getting money out of the ATM, for identification, ... What's the difference between having it on multiple pieces of plastic vs. having it on one? How does it erode my privacy/freedom in any way?
All it does is decrease profits for wallet makers. I smell a wallet maker conspiracy here.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
So - at least one of your contentions is that this will provide less bureaucracy? You've obviously never worked for any form of civil service. There will be more bureaucracy, because you can't fire the old guys (who won't know what to do with this fancy new technology), so you'll have to hire new people. The old corps will still do what they've always done, duplicating the efforts of the electronic systems on paper.
Your emphasis on the "use of" id is also flawed - a centralized infrastructure will inevitably be used for purposes not originally envisioned. The "big deal" is preventing that infrastructure from coming into existence. Tomorrow, the Dems get booted out, the Reps come back in and decide to datamine this toy for "terrorist trends". Next thing you know, people are getting harassed and interrogated because a computer said so (you don't need evil intent - simple bugs will work just fine). Ever hear of false positives?
All of these measures are a threat to freedom, in the aggregate.
Well, Dave's lyrics to the song Endgame sound more likely and less crazy by the day (and they weren't a very hard sell in the first place) although they were technically about a different document that this plan certainly ties directly into.
"A system of controlled movement, like a giant ant farm." is about fucking right.
for employment, photo ID is required by federal government
for independent contracting- no
passport (col a) or photo ID + something like ss card
a social security card is not actually required- but a valid # is
http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/i-9.pdf
see instructions on the actual government form
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Think how many people would be unable to take jobs if just 1% of the checks returned false negatives. Who wants to wait while the INS (or other agency) decides they might have made a mistake and will update the database in the next annual batch? I like to eat and I have to pay bills; I'd prefer to take the chance that someone will hire a few illegal aliens to this.
Just because Schumer is meeting with Obama does not mean Obama is responsible for this idea. According ot the article, a source in the white house said they have no official stance.
You're clearly not familiar with the "Opposite Theorem". This means that the White House does have an official stance, and they're in favor of it.
Between the libertarian right, the religious crazies who will conflate this with the "mark of the beast", and the lefties who don't trust law enforcement, this will never get through Congress. If it ever came to a vote, the uproar in the intertubes and talk radio would be deafening and the tea party loonies would all die of apoplexy.
No sig? Sigh...
those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
The unfortunate side effect is that immigration is going to be even more of a nightmare for people who are legal to work in the US
You think that is the only unfortunate side effect, or even the most significant?
The potential for government abuse of this system is very high. The government can use it to track its own people without warrant, to further the current problem if lifetime punishments for every crime, and to silence anyone with an unfavorable opinion. Furthermore, this increases the risk of identity theft victimization, since swiping this card, or the information on it, is all such a thief will need to do (and don't think for a second that this unique identifier won't be used for credit applications, phone service, and everything else that the SSN is used for today (and more)).
This has "bad idea" written all over it, but is being sold as a solution to a problem that only exists because the government refuses to enforce its CURRENT POLICIES (and not due to their expense, but rather, due to the high demand for cheap foreign labor among donating businesses).
As if Congress could pass anything right now. If all that stands between us and a complete fascist state is their ineptitude, well I'm happy with that insurmountable mountain between that future and us. Not that the future their complete lack of leadership is going to bring us is any less bleak.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
In the Netherlands, having your fingerprints taken when applying for a new passport became obligatory last year. The government pretended that this was necessary in order to fight terrorism, although the measure is way more severre than what the European Union requires governments to do. There were and still are some civil rights organizations protesting against this security craze.
A very unfortunate side effect of this became visible at the latest elections. People were required to bring a passport along with their voter's registration card. 200,000 voters, a significant percentage of the country's registered voters, didnot have such an ID, for various reasons ( poverty, ignorance, laxism, protest ). Thus, they were excluded from the most fundamental mechanism underlying a democracy: voting.
Americans, beware !
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I think it's some form of weird cross-contamination from the red scare of the 50s, which has now been adopted by the crazy wing of the left.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
There is one major difference between a license to drive and a license to work. If I wanted to, I can drop off the grid. I can just not renew my license, get a bicycle, stop using credit cards, do odd jobs for cash or barter, pay cash for everything, and completely disappear. There is nothing illegal about this (other than tax evasion, if you are earning more than $8000 per year, but I'm sure there are legal ways to deal with paying taxes while not having an official address), as there is nothing mandating that I have a driver's license, nor anything forcing me to use credit/debit cards.
If, however, a license to work is created, then the step "do odd jobs for cash or barter" becomes illegal if I don't have this license to work. Now, there is no option for me to drop off the grid. I have no choice.
I know at this point it's a small difference (almost to the point of not existing), and that 99.99% of society likely has some form of ID that allows the government to track them, but the point is that, to date, all forms of ID are effectively voluntary. Take away my ability to get paid to work, a basic requirement for survival, and we've got a serious problem. It's the principle of the thing—Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. This inability to work stifles my ability to pursue happiness (a starving man cannot be happy - see Maslow's hierarchy of needs), and in the long run, through starvation, would remove my right to Life itself. Essentially, the government is trying to get me to give up part of my right to Life and my right to pursue happiness in exchange for eliminating the illegal immigrant problem. Screw that. I'd rather let the whole world in than give up the last vestiges of my freedom to choose whether or not I wish to have "papers" to identify myself.
Before commenting on the Bible, please read it first
This seems just like another 'divide and conquer' attempt in order for Washington to get nothing done and still spend taxpayer money. Getting rid of illegal immigration is a top goal of the rightwing liberty movement as well as preserving privacy through resisting a national ID.. So, if you want to divide the rightwing movement and dilute their influence, come up with solutions that require implementing problems. That way, some of the rightwing movment will support the National ID in order to prevent illegal immigration and some will resist the National ID and thus look like supporters of amnesty (since our political system tries to label everyone on every issue in either one or the other category while ignoring all other options). It falsely makes those against a National ID appear to be for amnesty.
We don't need a National ID card to deter illegal immigration. Instead, we need enforcement of current laws. Companies that hire illegal immigrants need to be penalized. The rampant illegal immigration is a result of lack of penalties; not a result of illegal immigrants being hard to find. For example, Tyson Foods (btw, a huge political contributer) continues to operate despite repeated slap-on-the-wrist fines for employing illegal immigrants. The law needs to be enforced better from the top down. Companies should not be able to make cost-based decisions that involve breaking the law in order to save money.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Is this really a big deal? I just seems like an updated SSN card to me.
Don't we already have a version of this with the "Transportation Worker Identification Credential" (TWIC)?
http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/layers/twic/index.shtm
It has everything this ID card asks for, including the fingerprints.
Why do we need another card? Seems to me that identity thieves have enough things to use already.
Did you miss the part about it being biometric? This would seem to be the best tool to fight identity theft.
Now for all of those slashdotters who will start fretting over the misuse of this card -- get over it. You are not likely to find yourself in Dr. Richard Kimble's situation (unjustly convicted of murder and needing to hide from Tommy Lee Jones). And as for the government having too much power, please note that these are the people who have our guns, tanks, drones and hydrogen bombs. No, we shouldn't trust them -- we should watch them for any abuse of power and call them out when necessary. But a system that insists we should maintain personal security through making personal identification more difficult is misguided.
anyone who has an opinion about this can contact Senator Schumer and Senator Graham
You must not be from New York. Chuck Schumer doesn't give a shit about anyone north of Westchester county. If you asked him to find his home state on a map he'd point to Manhattan island.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Correct me if I'm wrong but there is some, oh let's call them "constitutional" issues with this. First, entering the country illegally is a "crime". Second, hiring someone who has entered the country illegally is also a "crime". Third, being a citizen of the U.S.A. is not (so far) a crime and neither is looking for work. So if the Feds want me to PROVE I'M INNOCENT OF A CRIME in order to get a job, that would be a violation of my constitutional rights. Won't Be Done. Nothing to see here. Move along, citizen.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
I lived in USA for 6 years and the best thing there, in terms of citizen-government interaction, was that there was no mandatory ID cards.
Sure, an ID card is not that big of a deal at first. It's not much unlike a DL (which almost everyone carries around all the time anyway), and it's not like the police can't track you down all the time.
But this is what will happen:
Here in Serbia, quite literally, I can't even take a walk in the park anymore without a cop stopping me and asking for ID...
The difference is it will cost us billions instead of millions.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Do you really not know that almost every other country in the world from Cuba on up already has guaranteed health care?
...are the primary forces at work behind such legislation
Firstly, look past the rhetoric, posturing, and spurious justification, (the 'immigration problem'), and realize that this move simply concentrates more power in the hands of government. Governments always seek greater power, and that's just the nature of the beast. But insofar as we exercise our rights and our will, we hold the leash around this beast's neck. That leash is long overdue for a hard, sharp yanking.
Secondly, any popular support for this move will stem primarily from fear, some of it based in reality and some of it manufactured by politicians and corporate interests. Fear is a good tactician but a lousy strategist; it can get you out of a tight spot and save your life, but it's no way to RUN your life, it's no way to let OTHERS run your life, and it's no way to run a country. We need to be planning a future where we don't require such intrusive 'protections' as a matter of course, rather than perpetuating fear-based, ad-hoc reactions to a perpetual series of crises.
Just my two cents' worth...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I mean between your wars and your economy, I think I have a solution for you...
Some employers may stop hiring illlegals, others will take the risk and continue hiring them. The glut of unemployed illegals will drive their wages down and increase the margins realized the employer hiring them.
This is what the government wants. An employer caught hiring illegals will be fined and have assets confiscated. It will be a profit center for government, prosecuting and deporting illegals is not.
The problem with illegal immigration isn't a lack of legislation -- as you might perhaps guess from the name, illegal immigration is already illegal.
There is already a card you're supposed to have in order to be employed in the US -- it's the Social Security card, which your employer needs to see in order to do payroll deductions.
Illegal immigration is a problem because existing laws are not enforced. I think they should start there.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
Why they don't require some kind of photo on a soc card is beyond me
Since we now get our social security cards when we're still infants, that would look a little funny.
Disclaimer: Evolution comes with NO WARRANTY, except for the IMPLIED WARRANTY of FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
The national ID card proposals have met a lot of resistance, so someone had a clever idea - let's tie it to a popular cause. It's a recession, so everyone wants their jobs protected, and they'll go for anything.
If this doesn't work, the next attempt will be an ID card to prove that you're not a sex offender. You know, to protect the children.
I'm curious what would happen if this program actually worked as intended. What do all the illegal immigrants who suddenly have no means of income do? Surrender to immigration or turn to crime?
FUCK THAT!
(seriously...in addition to the obvious reasons why this is such an awful idea, there is going to be a very large population of people who will see this as "the mark of the beast.")
because employers do not need to comply with costly labor laws.
New Economic Perspectives
"No taxation without representation!"
- The paranoid ravings of some traitor to the British Crown, just before a bunch of tea got dumped into Boston Harbor.
Interesting choice of .sig you've got there, Citizen. Your cognitive dissonance is showing.
Of course he does. And he also knows (as should you) that the users of that "guaranteed" health care regularly come to the US to get quality work done rather than wait in line for the rationed health care in "almost every other country."
"...history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." --Ghandi
Most European countries have such programs and by most accounts they work fine. There is nothing wrong with wanting to control the flow of people (and goods) across your borders. It is necessary. We don't need and shouldn't allow an unlimited/unknown number of people to enter our country. Some will be criminals. Most will be economic refugees. Our economy needs some unskilled laborers but we ought to be able to devise a way to give our own citizens the incentive to take work they deem is beneath them while giving businesses incentives to hire citizens. The penalties for hiring illegal migrants are already in place. They need to be enforced. Personally I'd be glad to see the prices for a weekly lawn mowing go up. I see lawns in my neighborhood being mowed after weeks of drought when there has been zero growth. Cheap labor leads to waste! Yes it does!
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
a drivers license, or a national id, are simply a necessary component of living in ANY society
Odd, because shortly after the revolutionary war, we had neither of those, and society seemed just fine.
Back in the USSA!
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
However, consider that revoking a card would be necessary but you can't necessarily revoke the information on the card, or if you do, you cause someone a great deal of grief. There are reasons why biometric data is considered to be the weakest form of strong security.
There is a great deal of potential for abuse here, just with the no-fly lists, etc, but this is worse because I can still drive my car across the country (I might not be able to if I didn't have income though). There is no life in prison for every crime, and our courts won't let that happen as long as they are open for business. However, I am concerned that someone might pull strings to get cards revoked in order to mess with political opponents (I seriously doubt Sen. Kennedy's inclusion on the No-Fly list was entirely accidental).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
You're asking the wrong question. The question is why should government be able to throw up obsticles in my way to work? As a free person, I should be able to live my life WITHOUT government interfernce, unless I infringed upon the rights of another. Government (and you) don't have any right to come inbetween with my dealings with another free person.
What is wrong with YOU, that you can't handle being a free man and must have someone to rule you?
there are countries in western europe that have greater protections for certain freedoms and liberties than in the united states. AND THEY HAVE A NATIONAL ID CARD
I would personally feel much more comfortable if laws were put into place to protect our privacy first, before the Government makes a national ID card mandatory. This means no storing of personal identification in databases for indefinite periods of time unless there is a specific reason (and you are notified about it), and a system to strictly define what the Government is allowed to do and not do with these ID cards. Those of us with security clearances have already given biometrics, but those are special-needs purposes and there are already rules that govern what happens to that information. There are benefits to having a national ID card, though I would prefer that we didn't have one at all.
I do agree with your statement though. Another poster from Norway pointed out that they have a national ID, but they are well protected. I just don't see our government giving us that much protection right away. It will take a few scandals where government employees are found tampering with data before we see any push for protection.
where exactly does this fucking paranoid schizophrenic fantasy of national id card=gestapo raping your rights come from?
what the HELL is wrong with you paranoid retards?
Being anonymous in this country used to be something that you could control. If you wanted a loan, certain benefits, or to do certain things, you had to give some information up. That was fine. But making it mandatory to give biometric data is just opening pandora's box. Yes, Europe does already do this, but we're not Europe. Remember, this is the same country that said warrantless wiretapping of Americans was fine. This is the same country that freaked out after 9/11 and made flying on an airplane a security nightmare. The Patriot Act? What about the secret no-fly lists, where many innocent Americans who had similar names to suspected terrorists got stuck on the list with no clear way of getting out?
At the face of it, it is somewhat silly to be so paranoid about something like this, but my take is, why give the Government any ability or chance to abuse a system that we really do not need? We already have existing immigration laws that are hardly enforced. We should start with those. We just don't need another ID card or layer of bureaucracy. And as other people pointed out, many illegal immigrants are getting work and paid under the table. No amount of IDs or security cards will stop that situation.
I don't think we need to be paranoid, I just think we need to let the government know that this will make life for those of us who are law abiding citizens a little more difficult, and those that are operating under the table will see no change. It'll be business as usual for them. In the end, if we must have a national ID card, then they should put it in a separate bill, and along with it, create a framework to protect it from abuse.
Best "String" Ever!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"Of course he does. And he also knows (as should you) that the users of that 'guaranteed' health care regularly come to the US to get quality work done rather than wait in line for the rationed health care in 'almost every other country.'"
In other news today, Sarah Palin admits that she used to have sneak over the border into Canada to use their health care system: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/03/sarah-palin-canadian-health-care.html
Here's a bet: The proportion of U.S. residents crossing the border into guaranteed-health-care-countries exceeds the proportion of guaranteed-health-care-country citizens crossing into the U.S.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
So when I got some people at the local home depot to help me move at $160 for the day (6 hours) then they used ssn, dl and tax forms? The reality is that there is no one way to stop anything.
SS theft is just that, theft. For the most part, just so you KNOW, most if not all people who "steal" SSN always contribute to the SSN owners contributions, but they can never claim it. It also amazes me that a lot of people even pay taxes on their fake SSN's.
And you know what? To be honest, I prefer to have a person using a "stolen" SSN to actually do some work than have legal's mooching at home because they don't want to work. Lets compare some things:
Undocumented resident: steals ssn to get a 'legal paying job'
documented resident: stays at home because ssn gets welfare or other social source of income
UR:faces getting caught by police check points or immigration sweeps at their low paying jobs
DR: faces long lines at social offices
UR:Will establish a family or take care of family back home and encourage to get ahead in life due to opportunities.
DR: Will kick kids out at 18, may or may not encourage kids to get higher education, kids take for granted what they have.
Eventually as the years pass by and "undocumented" persons are given the chance to become "documented" they'll get their own SSN and be able to base their life around that. And having worked in several banks, sometimes as an employee and others as a contractor, believe me that a SSN alone is not going to get someone a loan for a $200,000 house that they couldn't repay.
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
What is wrong with using a Passport? Passports will contain the same biometric information as these ID cards.
Ever hear of Medical tourism? Americans are leaving the country to get surgery and other treatments done because they can't afford to get it done here due to lack of coverage or gaps in coverage with their insurance.
As someone who just finished dealing with the US govt getting a greencard for my wife (no, she was not a mail order bride, you twits - we met while I was living abroad), I am in full support of enforcing our immigration laws. Fuck illegal immigrants. My wife and I jumped through all the fucking hoops proving she was who she was...we were a legit marriage...she was not a terrorist...that I could "support her" if she could not work...all that shit. I get so frustrated when I see these illegal jackasses - and dont whine this shit about "noone is 'illegal'" - 'cause they are breaking the fucking law and need to be punished.
I would love to see E-Verify be mandatory. $5-k fines per worker per day for NOT using it. I would like to see E-verify have a running database that flags SSN repeat hits cross-referenced against the full names and date of birth along with the geographic locations from the hit. I would also like to see a "feature" where you could lock your SSN down - i.e. you go to a federal facility and request that your SSN be locked to your current job, so some jackass jacks your SSN to clear E-Verify they say, "No - says you have your SSN on file here working at XYZ INC...not Javier's Drywall. Is this you, or do you need to get into the deportation catapult?" Would have to be easy to adjust this setting, but I think it would rock.
While biometrics are awesome, I know some people are scared of big sister. I think the cross-reference deal would take care of it for the most part.
1331461 is only semiprime *sigh* Alas - I am just short of 1337.
The difference is it will cost us billions instead of millions.
So what you're saying is that this is a "high-tech jobs bill"?
>>In other news today, Sarah Palin admits that she used to have sneak over the border into Canada to use their health care system
Lots of Americans do this. When you offer free health care, usage goes up.
If those infos are matched on the "workers" database, ok, if not... 400 millions people data is nothing for a custom made database with modern technologies (i.e. do *not* use an SQL engine).
I would be much more, okay, slightly less paranoid about things like this with one change. Any legislation like this applies to the members of government FIRST. You want a single biometric ID for all workers, after you, Senator. Don't think we need warrants for wiretaps, fine, we will just install this nice little device on all your phones, and the transcripts can go straight to wikileaks. Have a problem with "government run health care"? Fine, we will just take away your health plan (it's government run after all). Good luck finding insurance now, Mr. Old White guy with a bad heart.
--You're BOTH right. It's a floor wax AND a desert topping!
for dealing with criminals always result in penalizing law-abiding people?
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
See for example Marshall Brain's writings:
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
A list of current robotics videos I put together, with robots doing everything from milk cows, prune grape vines, throw and catch cell phones, put laundry in washing machines, invent and test new theories in yeast genetics, and do autopsies (the last one isn't a video, thankfully):
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005926.html
So, ID cards and worries about illegal immigrants are all a distraction from rethinking the economy along the lines of having some mix of a basic income, local subsistence production from 3D printing and organic gardening, a gift economy like GNU/Linux, better resource-based planning, making work into play, a spread of local currencies and LETS systems, and lots of other possibilities I helped organize here for moving beyond a jobless recovery:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery
If you want to worry, worry about how to build an economy where we get past the irony of using abundant military robots to enforce a scarcity-based economic system designed around getting humans to work like robots. :-)
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
the email address is asshole@uranus.com
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
What exactly will this round of "Halt! Papers please!" solve?
Prospective employers are already required to provide a (Social Security or TIN card) AND (birth certificate OR proof of voter registration). Illegal aliens (the correct legal term; illegal aliens are not immigrants they are criminal trespassers) already cannot provide that information and yet they are here leaching off of society. I know quite a few people who have immigrated or are immigrating legally and it's a royal pain in the butt for them, is usually a long process, prone to delays and huge legal expenses, while the people who are here illegally are living off of our backs (in many cases receiving welfare, "free"[sic] health care, etc.) and are pushing for amnesty. WTF? Our system is seriously broken and much like "pirated"[sic] Windows, entering illegally(read: invading) is often easier than immigrating (read: the legal way).
If I had my way, all illegal aliens who have been leaching off of our system would all be plunked down in the middle of the pacific in tiny rowboats and left to fend for themselves, especially the ones who come here and fly foreign flags and insist that forms be handed to them in languages other than American English.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
And in 1776, almost every other nation was ruled by a hereditary monarch or dictator. We bucked that trend too, for much the same reason.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Does Congress really live in a fantasy land where illegal immigrants are hired to positions where they supply SSNs, drivers licenses, etc? In my experience the vast majority of businesses employing illegal labor do so by paying them in cash
There are a good number of employers who actually check for documentation. A fake social security card can be bought for $50, and you don't have to be a citizen to get a drivers license. So it's not too hard to provide documents, as long as the employers don't verify the SSN, which they aren't required to do.
Qxe4
They (being the gov) could just enforce current laws, and remove things like special order 40 in order to enforce immigration law.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/lapd-special-order-40
Currently the only thing any of you should be concerned about is the second amendment laws and how they are interpreted by state.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
trollish, possibly, but funny, definitely.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
I have to wonder, though, how many people who are going "oh noes... mah freedum iz under attack" would get upset if a state government suddenly abolished its concealed carry license laws and declared that any adult who can legally carry a weapon is entitled to concealed carry.
Go ask residents of Alaska or Vermont. Anyone legal to purchase and own a firearm can carry it, open or concealed, without any kind of license. I'd hardly say there's outrage about it in those states.
And really, it's open carry that tends to freak people out. It's legal in 47 of 50 states to carry concealed (the process varies by state), but only around half of them allow open carry (of which some allow open carry unlicensed, others require the license for open or concealed). There's only one state that allows open carry only. There was strong implication in Heller that carrying arms was covered under the 2nd, and mention was made that concealed carry could be prohibited because it was thought repugnant in the past and often prohibited. But, given that the recent trend is overwhemlingly towards concealed carry, both legally and in practice, I expect that a future ruling would say states must allow some form of carry, it must be shall-issue (ie, not at the arbitrary whim of an official), and can't prohibit concealed carry if they do not allow open.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
While you were sleeping
a code was installed on everyone.
It was a brilliant idea by Dr. Cocteau. ...is sewn into the skin.
An organic microchip...
Sensors all over the city
can zero in on anyone at any time.
I can't even conceive of what
police officers did before it was developed.
We worked. This fascist crap
makes me want to puke.
What do you think you're scratching?
You really think we'd let you go
without control?
Your code was implanted
when you were thawed.
Why not just shove a leash up my ass?
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Maybe I'm missing something as I'm from Europe, but can't you use Social Security Numbers for this purpose? Here, every employer requires a SSN to officially hire you and pay you. Why would you need a card?
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Illegal immigrants will have beautifully forged cardsto use just long enough to gain entry or employ, while law-abidiing US citizens asked for their cards by the autorities (read: anyone not white) will be brutalized by a half-complete system built on the cheap and populated with error-riddled data input by ambivilent and clueless mouth-breathers with a guaranteed employment gig.
While I'm not a fan of Mrs. Palin, you appreciate that she did this when she was six years old (i.e. her legal guardians decided to do so for her), right? In addition to that, it was the closest hospital. The real story here is how cooperative the US and Canada were, even accepting each others' citizens for medical care with minimal paperwork. Of course, these days that spirit of brotherhood is missing.
Figures. To solve the illegal immigration problem, punish/suspect/subject the LEGAL CITIZENS of the U.S.
What a load.
- Our Congress doesn't dare solve this problem. No special interest group will let them.
- Business doesn't want it solved. Cheap and compliant labor is good for them.
- Politicians don't want to offend new voters, legal or not.
- Unions see illegals as potential new members.
Meanwhile:
- Citizens struggle to find even the lowest-paying jobs. It's hard to compete with less.
- Work is going to illegals that never did before. Who cleaned toilets in Maine before illegals came?
- Existing laws are ignored by federal authorities.
- Some municipalities actually PROMOTE illegal immigration. A slap in the face of the citizens that pay taxes directly to these conspirators and law-breakers.
- The southern border is as easy to walk across as Times Square. Only the terrible stupid or unlucky get caught.
- All proposals to secure the southern border are diminished and neutered so as to become useless.
- Employers pay minimal service to eVerify, etc, and largely are permitted to skate off of any violations.
- We see just enough enforcement action to give ICE a plausible story that they are actually effective. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are impotent, and deliberately so.
- We even prosecute those agents that are effective, and actively thwart local and state authorities that make an effort to deal with the problem. We put effective agents in JAIL.
I'm not hopeful. This transcends party politics. Republicans and Democrats alike are complicit in this. No Administration since Reagan has made even a marginal effort. And Reagan failed. We cannot tolerate this in the long run, and really have only the four boxes to use.
And you know what I'm talking about.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Speaking as an American who moved to Canada, most Americans are so deluded that they think if it were such a good idea they'd already have it. You can tell them that Cuba, Scandinavian countries, the UK, Canada, etc., all have it, and they'll point at that and say, "Well, there you go." They think it is a mark of how elite and amazing they are as a country that they get to pay for healthcare or something. It's ridiculous.
This is the product of spending 60 years terrifying people that the Communists are coming to kill them any minute, and that the Soyuz missiles have probably already been launched. I'll be so glad when the last of the Cold Warriors die out, because they've done harm to the psyche of the States that may be irreparable. Maybe, just maybe, we can get some real change when they're gone, but I doubt it. In the mean time we're going to have to deal with people who think that because it has the word "socialized" in it, that means Joseph Stalin is going to be in charge of it, and Felix Dzerzhinsky gets to decide what's covered.
--Obyron
In most states you can vote without showing a photo ID.
In some states, you may be required to vote a provisional ballot, In other states you may have to affirm that you do not have a government Issued ID.
For more details see:
http://www.ncsl.org/LegislaturesElections/ElectionsCampaigns/StateRequirementsforVoterID/tabid/16602/Default.aspx
The ultimate goal might be that illegals aren't allowed to work here, but the ultimate RESULT of anything like this will simply be to create an even larger underground economy. Many native borns simply will refuse to get the cards and end up working at stupid shit like selling on ebay and doing local jobs for cash or barter. Illegals will still be here and working, only now they'll be truly indentured servants living in the homes of their employers (or homes paid for by them) and given a paltry stipend each week for "spending money."
This is class warfare at its finest, and we need to vote out every knucklehead sonofabitch that would support such an elitist economy.
You can't handle it.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
how is this any different from now? you apply for a job and you give them your drivers license number and your SS#. They could go look it up through the same channels.
I'm sick of people making the arguement that it lets them track everything in the world and that everyone would get access to everything on it.
Think about it for more than a second. Your SS# is usually tied somewhere to your health insurance; do you think that allows anyone working at your health insurance company to check out your passport status or your SS benefits (bad example that answer is 0 always...) ?
It's an ID that authenticates that YOU are YOU. It will do a hell of a lot of a better job than a SS# which you have no way of proving its your or not if it gets compromised stolen lost etc.
What they choose to connect with it is a seperate issue; just be sure to raise hell if they try to connect confidential information together that they cant.
This also doesn't mean that it would supplant your drivers license for everyday use; most likely it would start by replacing the horridly insecure usage of the Social Security number; especially since its highly likely that social security will fail any year now.
I fail to see any point which lets you make a logical jump from merchant swiping your id to see your old enough to buy beer to the merchant also seeing that you've been arrested 6 times for disorderly conduct.
Directly addressing your points:
what do you buy now that requires your SS#? next to nothing? Why would that change? Seems to me this would replace your SSN not your Driver's License. You don't have to be a citizen to buy things here.
Even if you did 'buy stuff' and have it checked; how does this information become the governments? They already check your ID when you fly anyways. You are making a huge jump that automagically a. it will always get logged to the government where and when your id is checked, and B. that without a warrant they will even be able to query such information. The only purchases you even mention are transportation based where your ID is already checked, whats the difference? make it such that all they can do is check that its valid and can't log that it was checked or where it was checked...
Your bit on crimes makes no sense at all. What does that have to do with anything? It doesn't matter how many crimes are given to you because thats unrelated and independent from this ID. All this does is make the background checks done by your company and police officers potentially more accurate and collaborated. It doesn't change when they may occur. You take a new job, they run a background check. What's changed here?
its rather simple, don't allow stuff to get stored that shouldn't be. don't allow people to access information they have no need for.
What freedom is being reduced? Can you name one?
There is nothing wrong with the card in itself, its the implementation and usage that you should be concerned and vigilante about. Until then, just keep staring at your SSN card.
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
They think it is a mark of how elite and amazing they are as a country that they get to pay for healthcare or something.
You think you don't pay for health care just because it's provided by the state? Can I have some of what you are smoking?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Let the conspiracy theories begin! Oh... they already have.
Yes, employers here are supposed to check your social security number. Unfortunately, you can randomly create a social security number in your head, and it doesn't matter whether it really exists or not (although, if it does, you've just completely screwed the person who it belongs to). Using a biometric card, you prove that the card belongs to you. Hopefully.
Not that I agree with it... there are some problems that exist in the world (copyright infringement, for example) for which the cure is worse than the problem. This is one of those cases, IMO.
Stupid, sexy Flanders.
Can anyone point to a scientific study which shows that an individuals fingerprints are unique to that individual? It is commonly accepted that each individual's fingerprints are unique to that individual. However, when I looked into it, I discovered that this was a claim made by some in the late 1800s, which gradually came to be accepted as true. As far as I can tell no one ever did any detailed research to actually determine if it was true.
To make matters worse, when some studies have been done of how reliably experts can identify someone from fingerprints they have discovered that the vast majority of fingerprint experts (in a relatively small sample size) will fail to identify a set of fingerprint samples as belonging to the same person two times in a row.
For that matter has anyone done a study of other proposed biometric identification to show that it is unique in ways that do not vary over an individual's lifetime?
Understand, it is not that I believe that fingerprints are not unique (or other means of biometric identification), it is just that I think it would be wise to actually study the question rather than just assume it to be so, as all of the information I have been able to find seems to indicate is the current case.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
but I am also oppose to illegals destroy our economy (and yes, they are costing America HUGE
How is that exactly? I suppose they wear out the sidewalks by walking on them without paying taxes...
What is the difference between an 'illegal' and a citizen? A few pieces of paper. Perhaps the problem isn't trying to enforce a quasi-racist policy (nobody complains about illegal immigrants from Canada.), perhaps you should try to make it simpler to become a citizen.
I say take anyone who wants to be here who isn't a convicted serial killer.
Before you get too holy about 'illegals', keep in mind that you, your parents, or your grandparents were probably immigrants at one time.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Wow modded informative.
I don't think anyone involved in the American healthcare debate disputes that America has great care if you can pay for it.
Why one side keeps on bringing this up confuses me, as it's irrelevant to the discussion.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
Every year, the Social Security administration accidentally declares several thousand people dead who are actually still alive. Once this occurs, it can take years to get the mistake corrected. Imagine if it was against the law for you to work in ANY job during this period. During test runs of E-verify, 6.3% of checks resulted in false positives (e.g. legal citizens where declared illegals). In a country of 300 million, that comes to nearly 20 million law abiding citizens who would be unjustly banned from any form of employment. And people think this is a GOOD idea?
In general, if you don't give criminals an opportunity to change, they cannot and will not change. If you give them a steady job (and other stable conditions, like housing), they might grasp the concept of stability that a lot of people know and enjoy, and end up reforming.
I'm not a US citizen and I don't live in the US. I live in a European country where national ID, issued by the ministry of interior, i.e. police, has "always" existed, and it's considered normal (as is the case with many other European or other states in the world). I always considered people in UK, US and other states without a national ID card to be privileged in this regard.
Why on earth would the government need to have my fingerprints, photo or residence on a file in a central database? To fight crime? It seems to me that states without this kind of record are managing just fine with capturing criminals. There is simply no legitimate (from the freedom perspective) reason for these kind of records to exist.
There are many situations (some not so far-fetched) where this can be abused by the state. In "democracies" you may not feel immediately any consequences, but good luck when your democratic government decides it will not cooperate with your "freedoms" anymore. Weimar Republic was also a democracy, look how well that worked out.
If you value administrative convenience over denying the government one more opportunity for potential abuse, I think you should give China or Russia a try (out of many other possible choices). There, the government has easy access to all your administrative information, and will usually not bother you if you are a good citizen.
I personally think ID cards and pervasive CCTV monitoring would be a good thing IFF the data were fed directly into an independent, accredited agency which only released or confirmed data under strict guidelines. However: A national ID doesn't have a prayer of being implemented in America anytime soon. The UK can't even pull this off, and those "apathetes" let their government watch them everywhere.
Same back to you :)
I'm sorry, but if you're too thick to see with the prompting that I gave that a uniformly formattted, electronic, authenticating ID trivializes the integration of transaction information from sources across the nation then I'm not inclined to take you seriously. This is /. try to have some technical reasoning skills.
also, the derisive "questions" were one word each. i replied tersely out of reciprocated contempt. but you take it a step further by allowing one side of an argument to merely ask one word questions as proof of their position while requiring researched doctoral theses from the other side. this does not make for a level debate forum. in fact it's a common tactic to unfairly discredit one side.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
sorry, /. farted and put my response under your post rather than AC's
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay