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US Lawmakers Eyeing National ID Card
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."
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.
The awesome part about this is that it ought to cause the Tea Party types to blow a gasket. On one hand, you have the federal government making ID's that will make it tougher for undocumented aliens to get work, so finally all of those high-flight jobs mowing lawns and manning the grill at fast food restaurants will be safe for Real Americans(tm). On the other hand, you have the federal government making ID's that will allow them to do... Well, whatever wacky-ass conspiricy stuff the federal government supposedly does with ID's -- I'll have to wait for Glenn Beck to tell me exactly why it'll be such a problem, but I'm sure it will be. In reality, however, the big losers in any sort of forgery-proof national ID situation are going to tomorrow's 19 year-olds who won't be able to get into the bar with their "Hawaii driver's license" anymore. So really, this program only hurts the children.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Nice national ID cards for our safety and you know just to be on the safe side we need a DNA database too, to prevent people from misusing this program...and hey we need to start monitoring your internet usage to prevent people from pretending to be you and setting up appoitments or chaning your information.
Yeah its nothing to be worried about, Im sure it will be all OK.
Maybe an actual Health Care Bill, rather than a frankensteinian Health Insurance Bill?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
It's good we're finally going to get a proper social security card that is only used for the purpose of social security, and not as a general identification number that's treated as secret yet widely shared. No more will a social security card be used for other purposes.
This is primarily being pushed by Chuck Schumer, a liberal Democrat.
There's no such thing as fraud proof. Humans are involved in the process and humans are corruptible.
In fact, fraud proof makes it difficult to prove someone stole your identity if they some how manage to fraudulently apply for ID in your name.
Over the years there have been number of larger polls concerning a national ID system. Each and every time the results have been very conclusive and clear cut: The vast majority of Americans is strongly opposing the establishment of a national ID system. The reasons range from privacy to practical, philosophical, and religious concerns. Instead of weakening our constitutional rights and taking away our privacy little by little, our representatives need to respect democratic opinion and decisions and the will of its own people and stop trying to push a national ID system on us. This has happened in the UK where people are finally waking up and protesting on the streets now, only that it's too late for them. We are not in the UK, China, or North Korea here. The US is a democratic country and our government and representatives need to respect that. Period.
I'll be glad when Obama is finally inaugurated!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I'm pretty pumped up, its nice when democracy leads to a little social good.
It's the same reason militia groups train in the woods. They like to pretend that they could defend themselves against the United States Armed Forces. It's simply a distraction against the things that really protect freedom, like voting, community organizations, or being an active citizen in the Athenian sense.
The standing army is used for foreign coup d'etats instead of civil wars on home soil. They learned a long time ago that giving you the "choice" of entertainment, fast food joints, cars, and clothes is far more effective distraction from participatory democracy than direct government violence.
In the fantasized bleak future, the government wins because they have a national ID card. In reality, you are already owned by your debt. You either plead fealty to the system in exchange for access to material goods, and live and die by your credit report, or you suffer the consequences.
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.
really, you should travel more. here in europe our gobernments have had track of our IDs for decades and we have social security, that will cover me for instance, if i travel to the US (it will pay the costs of any injury i might have and your hospitals will treat it as if it were an insurance company). so what? is anyone coming home to kill me because he knows a number related to my name?
i can tell you the problem: fear.
afraid of someone who's got your ID number? so what? I show my ID every night I go out, I show it every time I pay plastic, and so on, and... nothing goes wrong. same with my social security card, and even if i dont have it, if i have a health problem i know i can go to the hospital and they will take care of me. when im capable of, they will ask for an ID, ssec card or something, but i will be alive. and don't start moaning about inmigrants, 'cause Spain is being called the "door of Europe" in the northern Africa countries, and we still have no problems dealing with illegals coming in all the time..
and if you are about to say i misspelled something, yeah probably I did, English is not my mother language.
cheers all, and do be so afraid of helping your neighbours fgs
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
Therefore I refuse to hear it.
(switches to MSNBC). Ahh yes. They are telling me that this National ID card is simply like a drivers' license, therefore it's a-okay. Nothing dangerous about a drivers license. (sigh). I love the calming lies of MSNBC flickering on my screen. It's just like when mom told me locking the windows would keep me safe from bad people, and they couldn't possibly get it.
Haaa-uummmmmm.
Arthur: I think that TV just sighed.
Marvin: Ghastly, isn't it? All the channels have been programmed to have a cheery and sunny disposition, even when reporting bad news.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
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 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 ...
The teabaggers would go ballistic, these are people ready to shoot at the census takers.
The incident you're referring to was in fact a suicide, not an attack by anyone, and certainly not by Tea Party activists.
It's called a slippery slope for a reason. It could happen and perhaps it is not all that unlikely.
I got mine using a photo ID (state drivers license), birth certificate, Social Security Card, and alternate photo.
It's called a Passport.
...is more government power. Once the national ID is in place it will be expanded. First ID, then driver's license, then credit card, then key card, and so on, and it will not be long before the United States government has a record of everything you buy, every place you enter or leave, every place you can enter, and, eventually, everything you do or say. This is not a slippery slope argument because we are already far down that slippery slope sliding on our asses at bewildering speed to the rocks at the bottom. Picture yourself living in a world where everything you do or say or possibly, not too long hence, even think, is being continuously monitored by the almighty government. This isn't just a conspiracy theory any more. It's a policy. A $500 ticket every time your car drifts a couple of miles an hour over the speed limit, spot checks scanning your (effectively naked) body for weapons or contraband, not just at airports but lots of other places that "need security", the government monitoring your fat intake, your cholesterol level, how well your kidneys function, how much nicotine is in your blood. Don't think so? Socialized medicine is all the excuse needed to directly regulate everything you eat, everything you drink, every product you ingest, rub on, carry.
We live in a country with literally millions of pages of laws, rules, regulations, and requirements that apply to every citizen. Now picture what it will be like when the government is finally able to completely enforce every single tiny, seemingly inconsequential rule, law, regulation, or requirement that's on the books. Tell me how anyone will be able to get through a day without being cited for multiple violations of laws that you can't even know exist because no one can read that much material.
I'm sorry. That's not a free country. That's not America. That's not what our forefathers wanted to leave for their posterity. And it's no place I want to live. So where will we be able to go, those of us who still want freedom or privacy or the right to make decisions for ourselves? Why do any of you even want to live in such a country? Make no mistake. That is where Obama is going to end us up. If he's elected to a second term, you will see all of the above put into place.
And Congress did not "give us" the right to medical care. Rights are intrinsic to each and every person, they cannot be granted and when they are taken away there is tyranny. Rights are negative things, we need them so we can stop other people from doing things to us that we don't like. When you turn a right around and make it a positive thing, like the "right of medical care" then you also put into place a requirement of service from someone else to implement that right. You're "right" then enslaves that person. That's not freedom. And that's a fact.
Why? Do you not believe we should have borders? Do you not think that American Citizens should be the benficiaries of our laws, taxes, infrastructure? If you say no to either of these questions, then you must mean that we should be able to enforce our laws, whether they be environmental, working condition, criminal, civil, or whatever related in all other countries. Also, we should collect taxes from all other countries citizens. No?
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Rights are an aspect of reality and apply to individuals.
If you lived as an isolated individual, you would have to build shelter, make tools, hunt and gather for food. No other person would be there to stop you. You would be free to preserve your life and well-being; you would be free to take the actions you saw fit to take; you would be free to keep the shelter, tools, and food that you produced. The only thing you would have to worry about would be animals, and the vagaries of nature.
When people choose to live together, they can recognize what it means to live as a human being, and apply that to a social setting. The rights to life, liberty, and property are the recognition of the life of a human individual in society with other human individuals.
People could live in close proximity, and wantonly steal or kill one another, but that's not society. That's living like animals.
Society cannot invent rights, only recognize them; government cannot grant rights, only protect them. Rights exist apart from society and government, and their existence is definite and specific.
If the social mores of a group of people reflect something other than life, liberty, and property -- so much the worse for them. What they're perpetuating has nothing to do with rights. Moreover, what they're perpetuating is something less than a human society.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
The correct term for such invaders is illegal aliens. Please stop referring to them as illegal immigrants, as immigrants enter the country legally. Illegal aliens do not.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Lemme tell you a little story:
I have an "authentic, long-form birth certificate, signed by the physician who delivered him and bearing an authentic raised seal". It was issued in California when I was born.
You know who won't accept it of proof of my birth? The State of California. Or, for that matter, any of the other 49 states, nor the federal government.
Why? The thing is a forger's wet dream. The blank form was a xerox of a xerox of a xerox (and so on), that was filled out on an IBM Selectric typewriter. There is an indecipherable scrawl in the space for the doctor's signature. Yes there's a seal, but it's really hard to make out after being compressed by a stack of papers in my parent's safety deposit box for decades. And I could order a copy of that seal from thousands of places on the Internet for less than $40.
What will these states take as proof of my birth? A certified abstract of birth, issued by the State of California. Much like the one Obama put out on the Internet. Why? It actually has some anti-counterfeiting technology in it.
You know who doesn't have a birth certificate from a US state? John McCain. He was born in Panama (he's a citizen, since he was born to US parents).
So, can we stop the birther bullshit and get on with trying to govern?
I can't believe those intrusive, brain-dead republicans, led by Karl Rove and his minions want to roll out a national ID card, just another intrusion into our privacy, things will be so different when Obama gets in office, that's for sure!
Wait, what?
Oh crap... Never mind.
Ken
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthcertificate.asp You'll note how well snopes goes into this "conspiracy" For example, two different Hawaii newspapers printed a birth announcement for him. The whole birther thing, well its bull. I'm sorry.
Snopes sources should help you some.
Hinkelman, Michael. "Judge Rejects Montco Lawyer's Bid to Have Obama Removed from Ballot." Philadelphia Daily News. 25 October 2008.
Koppelman, Alex. "Sex, Lies and Creatively Edited Interviews with Sarah Obama." Salon. 5 December 2008.
Nakaso, Dan. "Obama's Certificate of Birth OK, State Says." Honolulu Advertiser. 1 November 2008.
Nakaso, Dan. "Hawaii: Obama Birth Certificate Is Real." Honolulu Advertiser. 27 July 2009.
Nakaso, Dan. "Hawaii officials confirm Obama's Original Birth Certificate Still Exists." Honolulu Advertiser. 28 July 2009.
Voell, Paula. "Teacher from Kenmore Recalls Obama Was a Focused Student." The Buffalo News. 20 January 2009.
Associated Press. "State Department of Health Declares Obama Birth Certificate Legal." Honolulu Star-Bulletin. 31 October 2008.
Associated Press. "Challenge to Obama Is Dismissed." The New York Times. 5 March 2009.
The Economist. "Born Under a Bad Sign." 28 November 2008.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
I stopped reading at 'fraud proof'. If it's gonna happen, it'll happen. But 'fraud proof' is a joke.
-SonicDawg
Most federal programs run SO smooth its no wonder that they would like to take some of the burden off the states as to give us all the sense of safety a national ID would give you and to have it all at the federal level? Bonus!
Nice to see we have many on here ready to curl up in a ball and take whatever beatings the federal government hands out like they were back in high school taking beatings from a bully. Acceptance of your new evil overloads indeed.
Not knowing the average age of posters I'm willing to bet it's somewhere around 30. Well I'm almost 60 and I can tell you that health care used to be cheap. A doctor's visit was $8 and insurance cost me around $30/month but most people didn't need it because we were more fit back then.
So what happened? In one word I'll tell you. Government!
First the government mandated that employers provide insurance to their employees. The insurance companies loved this since it brought them more customers. The side effect however was that having insurance meant that instead of simply putting a band-aid on it people went to the doctor or the emergency room and the insurance company got billed. Higher demand and assurance of payment meant that doctors and hospitals could raise fees. Higher costs forced up insurance rates. Unfortunately the higher costs put more burden on people with fixed incomes and the poor. And lets not forget the unions hand in all of this.
So government created Medicare and Medicaid.
This was fucking great for the doctors, hospitals and even the insurance companies. Doctors and hospitals could charge more for their services and the insurance companies could raise their rates. More money running through the insurance companies means more cash flow, always a good thing.
Meanwhile people began to believe that medical care was a right and not something you had to pay for. The disconnecting of the cost-benefit ratio was removed from the consumer and thrust into the hands of Insurance companies and faceless bureaucrats.
Things went along like that with ever increasing costs and more demands for government to do something. So in order to get elected the knotheads in congress made more poorly thought-out laws. They kept getting elected by knothead voters. And so it goes.
So now, not only is medical care extremely expensive but the government will now force everyone to buy insurance even if they are young and strong and don't need it.
And the costs WILL go up.
Cost cutting won't work and will result in less quality and less availability. Even more of the costs will be taken up by paper(computer)work. I do consulting for a large medical clinic and about 1/3 or more of the staff have nothing to do with providing health care. Their jobs are exclusively doing the work necessary to bill the insurance companies or the government for payment. The billing costs so much that people with no insurance at all get a greatly reduced rate for care.
So everybody, despite all of the assurances from the news parrots and government lackeys, costs WILL go up and taxes WILL go up to pay for it. Either taxes will go up or the debt will go up. My guess is both will go up. Increases in taxes and debt are unsustainable and eventually lenders will stop lending and taxpayers won't be able to pay.
I hear the economy in Argentina is improving.
...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.
Lets be real here, a license doesn't allow you to drive- if ti did you'd have to swipe it to start a car.
SHIT! Don't go putting ideas into their heads!