US Lawmakers Eyeing National ID Card

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US Lawmakers Eyeing National ID Card

Posted by timothy on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @10:40AM from the oh-wait-didn't-we-mention-this? dept.

According to Wired (and no big surprise, considering the practicalities of implementing massive changes in medical finance), US lawmakers "are proposing a national identification card, a 'fraud-proof' Social Security card required for lawful employment in the United States. The proposal comes as the Department of Homeland Security is moving toward nationalizing driver licenses."

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And what's the problem here? by LostCluster · 2010-03-23 10:40 · Score: 3, Interesting

I'm not sure why Slashdot is so afraid of this. You don't have a right to be anonymous to your employer. You don't have a right to avoid taxes. You just got the right to healthcare, but do you really want that going to illegal immigrants? We already drive around with standardized (yet customizable non-materially) license plates on our cars. You already need proof of government permission and proof somebody's going to pay if you hit something to drive a car. You aren't supposed to be able to get on a plane anonymously...
Let's not think of the things we'd be able to get away with with a fake id... and start thinking how we can make sure somebody else can't fake their ID for our mutual protection.
1. Re:And what's the problem here? by couchslug · 2010-03-23 10:48 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  The price of protecting exclusivity is restricting access to America. De-facto open borders mean the only way to deter invasion from the failed narco-states (which US policy helped wreck!) to our south is to deter employment of non-citizens.
  Americans indicate by their behaviors that they want a welfare state. Making that practical means restricting who gets the goodies, and pitting citizens against illegals is inevitable.
  As a citizen, I don't care about foreigners and favor chasing those who won't obey the law back where they came from. It's me or them, a binary choice. This being MY country and MY birthright, fuck them.
  
  --
  "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
2. Re:And what's the problem here? by LostCluster · 2010-03-23 10:51 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  American health insurers make it very clear that the only service they'll provide for you in Canada is medical transport back to the USA. They won't pay the out-of-country rate for Canadian healthcare.
3. Re:And what's the problem here? by nido · 2010-03-23 10:55 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  You don't have a right to avoid taxes.
  Actually, you (and everyone else, for that matter) has the right and the responsibility to avoid paying as many taxes as you can. Tax evasion is another matter, however.
  Wikipedia has an article:
  
  Tax avoidance is the legal utilization of the tax regime to one's own advantage, to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. By contrast, tax evasion is the general term for efforts to not pay taxes by illegal means. The term tax mitigation is a synonym for tax avoidance. Its original use was by tax advisors as an alternative to the pejorative term tax avoidance. Latterly the term has also been used in the tax regulations of some jurisdictions to distinguish tax avoidance foreseen by the legislators from tax avoidance which exploits loopholes in the law.
  -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_avoidance_and_tax_evasion
  
  --
  Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
  www.teslabox.com
4. Re:And what's the problem here? by AHuxley · 2010-03-23 11:39 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  5) Give them access so they don't infect their bosses?
  Disposable, skilled, interchangeable, union free, tax paying low cost labor does come with a few basic maintenance costs.
  But the costs are picked up by the state and per visit payments are injected back into the private hospital system?
  The other options are robots or a guest worker system.
  Robots are expensive and need US techs to service and certify.
  Guest workers are less disposable, interchangeable and tend to have rights, protections and real contracts.
  On paper the system you have now is the win for the US elite.
  If you have a job and no ID your out of view, if you get caught without papers whats the ID card going to do?
  The only reason you want an ID card is to track the mainstream US population.
  If the US gov wanted to deal with the 'human slavery" side - treat the bosses like drug dealers, you lose it all in forfeiture cases.
  As this is not happening, its all ok :)
  
  --
  Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
5. Re:And what's the problem here? by AuMatar · 2010-03-23 11:40 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  That works great when you're worried about the sniffles, an ear infection, and maybe a broken arm. Then when you get cancer you're fucked- unless you're in the top 2% or so of wage earners you're either going bankrupt or dieing. Because insurance sure as hell isn't going to pick you up, and you won't be able to afford hundreds of thousands in medical bills. It will fail miserably as you get older and require hundreds of dollars a month in medicine as well. Of course you can not take those medicines, but you'll lose decades of your life. And since we have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in this country why should being poor mean you have to die decades younger? Seems to violate 2 out of the 3 right there.
  
  --
  I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
6. Re:And what's the problem here? by Grishnakh · 2010-03-23 12:04 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  It seems like a big part of the problem is expecting insurance to pay for everything health-related. This leads to a giant amount of overhead, which just adds to the cost of health care.
  I don't file a claim with my auto insurance company every time I need to change the oil, get a car wash, get new tires, or replace a broken CV axle. I pay for it myself, and it's cheap (actually, dirt cheap because I do it myself). So why should I have some giant insurance company that I have to go through every time I visit a doctor for an annual check-up or an ingrown toenail or whatever?
  Yes, I can't afford hundreds of thousands in medical bills. Similarly, I can't afford to pay the damages if I wreck my car and someone gets hurt. That's why I have auto insurance, to pay in case I do have a car wreck. That almost never happens, so my only communication with my auto insurer is my bill and policy renewals.
  Why do we insist on having insurance companies pay for all our medical issues, which we then have to pay them for? This is all just make-work: huge companies that do nothing but process paperwork and shuffle money, taking some of it for themselves, and providing little value in the process (actually, they provide negative value in most cases).
  What we need is catastrophic insurance, to pay for those things which don't happen often, and cost a fortune. Things like cancer, ER treatment, medivac helicopter rides when you're in a car wreck, heart surgery when you have a heart attack, etc. Then regular doctors' visits should be paid some other way, either out-of-pocket, or perhaps with socialized healthcare (paid directly by the government, not with a for-profit corporation acting as a middleman). Of course, the existing insurance companies wouldn't like that, because they're making tons of money by acting as a useless middleman, and their lobbyists are sure to "convince" Congresspeople of how important they are in any health care "reform" bills.
7. Re:And what's the problem here? by AuMatar · 2010-03-23 12:22 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I don't disagree in general, our system would have worked much better as is if that had remained the case. But we're well past that point. People expect insurance to pay for everything. And because of that, pharmeceuticals have skyrocketed in price to where it isn't really optional anymore. Even normal costs like doctors visits have risen greatly due to that fact, and the fact that insurances demand an X% discount (so they just inflate their costs to match). We no longer have a choice- people can't afford to pay cash and an attempt to change insurances back and hope the prices fall would end in turmoil. It'd shatter the economy, and people would die for not affording meds in the meantime.
  The other place I disagree with is for the very poor- a doctors visit even at inflation adjusted prices of 30 years ago would be a significant cost to them and any just society would need to at least partially subsidize it.
  
  --
  I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
8. Re:And what's the problem here? by trurl7 · 2010-03-23 13:16 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I think you have an unrealistic assessment of the nature of such incidents. You are assuming a sane criminal who will prefer a broken leg to a broken neck. You are assuming a perfectly controlled (as in not at all affected by adrenaline) father whose children and wife are in the house with a stranger who is stealing something, may be armed, or may simply want to kill the man, rape the women, shoot the children and THEN steal the stuff. Or any of dozens of other really bad things that could go wrong.
  The invader's right to life may trump my right of possession. But if I break his legs and the bastard turns around and sues me in civil court (as can easily happen in sunny NY (may its laws be damned to hell)), then I'd say there is no justice. Things can go wrong. And I would rather the example father worry more about stopping the invader than getting sued by the surviving SOB afterward.
9. Re:And what's the problem here? by CrashandDie · 2010-03-23 17:22 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I'm afraid that Plato wouldn't agree with you. If a person doesn't know what freedom is, they are unable to long for it. One of Plato's initial points is that if a person would have his head restrained, unaware of being able to move his body and such, he would not realise that he is being limited.
  
  Another way to look at it would be to have someone live in a completely closed cell, day in, day out, without having ever known anything else before. Let's not think about feces (or assume the prisoner would understand the concept of a toilet), and that food would be delivered through a specific system.
  
  If the prisoner, in this scenario never knows anything else, he could not imagine anything else. If there is nothing to provide an input to your senses (and that includes imagination), there is nothing to imagine. It is fair to assume that the prisoner would simply accept his condition, loneliness and fate as there are no alternatives.
  
  If, however, you put a man in a cage, after he has tasted freedom, knows that he too posesses the physical ability to run about as he sees his captors do, know he would be able to run free again if he were not restrained by the cage, then yes, he would want freedom as well, however this is not the same. Wanting freedom is not an innate state of mind, if anything is innate in a human, it's the ability to want what others have, and to have the arrogance to be treated as fairly at least as well as anyone else.
  
  Now, you say something quite interesting (paraphrasing) "you own what nature has given you, ie your body and the products of the labour your body is able to accomplish". Again, I agree with this but only to a point. Physical ability isn't what defines what you can and can't do, in most cases -- the Egyptians, Mayas and whatnot have proven this time and time again. What limits any individual, initially, is the ability to see, imagine, and drive the things their mind can come up with. In order to believe you can make a boat, your mind needs the crutches, the framework to come up with such an idea. If you are entirely free of thought and movement, this is fine.
  
  If, however, again going back to the idea of limitation, one has been punished everytime he was creative, or everytime he was acting impulsive, or taking initiative, you can be sure that after a pretty short amount of time you can entirely crush one's spirit and mind.
  
  To anyone who wants to interject: I am using Plato's hypothetical idea that you would limit a prisoner in such a fashion from the very first moment his mind or body is conscious. The human mind is something extremely powerful, and just a glimpse is enough to spark a lifetime of longing and faith; the hypothesis is that the isolation is utterly complete. Even though I'm pretty sure there are enough sick freaks who could imagine ways to have a human baby grow to be an adult without ever watching anything but a wall, live in a completely isolated room, or get beaten everytime it shows any manifestation of self, please, don't try this at home.
Re:Still think Obamacare is a good idea? by kismet666 · 2010-03-23 11:16 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'm pretty pumped up, its nice when democracy leads to a little social good.
Government can be effective by Spy+Handler · 2010-03-23 11:17 · Score: 3, Interesting

Unfortunately, being the U.S. Government, they will no doubt pull the same sort of stupidity

Nothing is fraud-proof. Nothing is bullet-proof either. However you can make something bullet-resistant. How resistant is commensurate with the amount of effort you put into it.
People love saying government is stupid and can never do anything right, but that's not true with everything. Currency is one example: there is enough political will and a real-world need to prevent counterfeiting (fraud). Government puts a good deal of effort into preventing counterfeiting, and the penalty is quite harsh and is well-enforced. While not 100% fraud-proof, they have done a pretty good job. I have not had a problem with being given counterfeit money recently, and I don't know of anyone who has.
Re:Still think Obamacare is a good idea? by Chris+Burke · 2010-03-23 11:22 · Score: 3, Interesting

What, you think this National ID card idea spontaneously appeared when the health care bill was passed? LOL, haven't payed much attention for the last, um, forever, have you?
The Powers That Be are always looking for a reason to push a national ID card. After 9/11 there was a big push for it, and regularly ever since, but it was defeated because even at our most paranoid and batshit crazy we knew better than to let such a thing pass. Just like this proposal will go nowhere as well.
Look, you want to stop Obamacare from resulting in a National ID card? It's easy:
Stop caring that an illegal might receive medical treatment, just like you're going to have to learn to stop caring that a poor person will receive medical treatment. The only way the ID card has gotten any traction is as a way to stop illegals from receiving benefits, i.e. as a result of the same people who are against health care reform.
And if you're confused as to how treating illegal immigrants will fail to bankrupt us, it's the same as with poor people: They already are receiving treatment, but at the ER, not at a regular doctor.

--

The enemies of Democracy are
It's an interesting question by starseeker · 2010-03-23 11:25 · Score: 4, Interesting

As the technology to collect and manage information becomes ever more inexpensive, it becomes more and more of an effort to AVOID having data available to the government in such a way that it can be abused. When things get to the point where the drivers-license level data for every person in the USA can be causally tossed onto a thumb drive and taken to the next meeting, it becomes VERY hard to NOT use that data.
Well intentioned uses of such data abound, and some will be not only well intentioned but actually helpful (it is quite probable, for example, that correct use of a national DNA database WOULD allow many crimes to be solved that are not currently solved, just as fingerprint databases have been so useful.) Abuse of this data (particularly if the correctness of the data is trusted too much) by those in power is the counterpoint, and that is equally real (and equally scary). The problem is, the easier it gets to collect data the harder it is to be SURE it's thrown away if its intended to be thrown away. From some of the stores Slashdot has run about Britain, once they get ahold of your DNA they hang onto it, period. From their point of view, it might be useful in the future and its harmless sitting there in a database if its never used. If the agents of the system and those making the laws could be fully trusted, this might even be true. The problem is neither requirement holds. Law enforcement isn't perfect, and laws aren't either.
The balance of society is between empowering enforcers of the law to catch criminals and limiting the damage they can do when those enforcers go astray. My guess is given technological trends, the balance in the information game is going to have to shift from restriction of available information to stronger punishment for misuse and weaker assumptions about the automatic correctness of any personal info database. It's going to become too easy to collect too much information, and once collected it's very hard to uncollect it. Eventually, things will reach the point where a desire to NOT have your information on record will be an automatic flag, kinda like how the fuzzy areas on Google Maps are an automatic flag of "hey, there might be something interesting there." No idea were all this will lead, but I have a feeling technology will compel us to find out.
One though that might be worth thinking about - if there has to be a national database of all this stuff, have it widely distributed and copied at many locations, so that it's extremely difficult to push a universal change through any mechanism except one that makes records of the change (sort of a subversion database for law enforcement records - no anonymous changes and every change logged, as well as all historical database states being preserved. If records are ever changed erroneously, make it extremely difficult to do this without it being clear WHO did it)

--
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
"no surprise"? by Lemming+Mark · 2010-03-23 11:31 · Score: 2, Interesting

No surprise they're considering this given the current social and political climate, maybe. And perhaps the healthcare bill looks like an expedient motivator for it. I can't see the argument that the heathcare bill is responsible for ID cards, though. The UK has had a functional National Health Service for ages (the bill originally came into force in 1948) and hasn't needed ID cards to facilitate it. I understand that the new US healthcare proposals are substantially different but even so, surely private medical insurance has successfully been managed without ID cards for years - you still need to know who you're treating, why can't similar techniques work? I'm skeptical of the link here ...
Re:Yeah no problem. by Planesdragon · 2010-03-23 14:52 · Score: 2, Interesting

Yeah its nothing to be worried about, Im sure it will be all OK.
Actually, yeah.
If our government is not a tyranny, we have nothing to fear from them watching us.
If our government is a tyranny, they will watch us whether fear them or not.
So, nothing to worry about. Unless you have a quantum government, that can shift from non-tyranny to tyranny... but that NEVER happens. (Nope, never. Hitler wasn't elected, Russia wasn't mostly democratic before the Soviets siezed power, post-roman city-states never had the sheriff decided they were kings...)
Folks, what they're describing... by JeffTL · 2010-03-23 16:36 · Score: 2, Interesting

...is a Passport Card -- basically a secure national ID issued by the Department of State ($45 new, $35 renew for non-passport holders, $20 for passport holders, lasts 10 years). Over a million Americans, including myself, carry one -- that's more than the population of the Omaha metro area. It's for car, train, bus, and boat travel within North America, but can also be used as a single identification for getting a job (along with, if I recall, the standard ICAO-compliant passport and the green card), and is recognized by the TSA (for domestic air travel), liquor store, and just about anyone else who needs ID. The RFID chip just has a database pointer, which differs from the card number if memory serves, but it comes with a tin foil hat just in case.
What this idea amounts to is transferring or cloning the passport card program into Social Security or Homeland Security.