A $200,000 home in Ohio would fetch over a million dollars there.
There is, incidentally, a surprisingly healthy million dollar home market in Ohio suburbs. The reason is because people who are moved by their companies from housing markets where there is a bubble, need to put the equity they have (500k+) into their next home to avoid capital gains.
I've been wondering a lot about this lately, and I think that a certain amount of income differentials are becoming unjustifiable. There's one large company with a significant New York and Columbus presence(s) that has employees making $200k in New York who do the same thing as a $75k Columbus employee. Unless the New York employee is magically 2 1/2 times more productive, they might have to justify themselves very differently in the future.
Well how do they hope to stop terrorists with this
Here's how to answer that.
"All the 9/11 terrorists had valid ID, and used those valid photo ID to get on airplanes. Imagine how different 9/11 would have been if they had shown up that day with non-photo Vermont driver's licenses. So the question really is...how can you stop terrorists with a photo ID?"
Perhaps you could discuss how the California State Driver's License, which doubles as a state ID, does "almost nothing but enable the [state] government to trample individual rights".
California is a great state to bring up, it's usually the state I cite in making the case against ID cards.
California began issuing photo driver's licenses in 1957 (it and Colorado were the first states, and were doing so in black and white, and I presume the photograph was not taken by the DMV, but was brought in. In this regard, CA and CO were exceptions, because no other state started until 1967, and were doing so with office taken color instant photographs.) When I was in Sacramento in 2004, I attempted to research the reasoning for the law, but was unsuccesful. (No state I've researched added photos to driver's licenses for reasons related to driving or fraud. They were heavily lobbied by film and camera makers for the photo licenses for the contracts, so a bunch of BS reasonings were made up, such as "better identification.")
At any rate, California was therefore the first state to feel the effects of driving license fraud, and they felt it hard. California began optional DL fingerprinting in 1978 and made it mandatory in 1982. This was argued as a method of preventing fraud, but California license fraud went up by 50x time between 1982 and 2000, according to the DMV, in spite of fingerprinting, electronic fingerprinting, and nearly 5 changes in the DL document to prevent counterfeiting. (The DMV, incidentally, didn't like people refusing to be fingerprinted between 1978 and 1982, and dusted for fingerprints on those individuals' DL application documents. This earned a strong rebuke from the California Supreme Court in a 1986 case, and I think is a great way of showing how CA DMV officials perceived their own power, and I think that dusting for fingerprints (which they weren't entitled to) by a state government is an example of a state trampling on civil rights.
I also believe that the mandatory photographing of each citizen is a state trampling on civil rights (curiously, CA recently terminated a law allowing individuals with religious objections to skip being photographed.) You might disagree. I also feel that the mandatory photographing and archival of those photographs is not a proper function of a state in a free society. (California has a database with the photograph and fingerprint of basically every Californian above the age of 16. Ironically, the justification for this database is to prevent the fraud problems that were caused by the morons introducing photo based licenses in the first place. (However, if that were the justification for the database, then law enforcement would need a warrant to access it, but they have free access.
I don't need to tell you that there've been plenty of stories of police in uppity California towns demanding ID of individuals in order to hassle them (for reasons unknown to me, Hollywood typically portrays Santa Monica as the instigator of this.)
When I visited the state library in Sacramento, in order to do my research, the guard demanded my ID to enter. When I presented it, she glanced at it for a second and gave it back to me.
What could she have been looking for? The ID simply confirmed that I have a picture of my own damn self in my pocket, and that I have a name and birthdate, though, since she wasn't comparing it to a list or anything, the name and DOB on the card was irrelevant.
It could be a silly security measure put in place by either morons, or people who wanted to make it look like something productive was being done. Either way, the implication was that an individual was not permitted to examine the state library without a state issued document that was irrelevant. I think that's an example of the state trampling on civil rights. (You could also say that that action was a good, example of the police simply reaffirming that it had the power to demand things from me, and irrelevant police actions whose purpose are not justifiable except from the point of police power are indeed examples of the state trampling on civil rights.)
Since, as the question states, there are other countries doing this we should have some recent historical data to back up such claims.
Each country's experience with photo ID cards is indeed different from every other country (not to mention, the experiences are evolving--the photo ID in the US for the first 10-20 years they were omnipresent (1970s and 1980s) was heavily rooted in financial transactions (everybody and their grandmother paid for their groceries with checks when I was a kid.) Today, financial transactions are becoming far less dependent on ID, and if you open an account online or via mail, you don't even have to show ID once.) What's funny to me is that IDs are, in my mind, an old-fashioned solution to the issues of verifying identity, when better, less centralized solutions already exist. Alas, governments like the cult of the ID.
Quite a lot of Europeans and Asians might be defending ID cards...their experience with ID cards tend to be very bureaucratic in nature--though a lot of those bureaucratic transactions are performed in less ID centric countries with other identification processes which are just as viable/effective/fraud-free (and sometimes, cheaper, since ID cards and the infrastructure required for them are expensive.) Since bureaucratic processes are just not targets for fraud, to imply that the cards don't invite fraud is fatuous, because other countries can do the same processes without the fraud. It's when the card is burdened with transactions that could invite fraud (such as granting of immediate credit) is where ID fraud begins.
There is something I call the "photo ID culture" which sets in...it's the idea that people expect certain types of transactions to require/demand photo ID because similar transactions are done with ID, when in reality the ID may add nothing to the security of the transaction. The recent push in the US for ID for voting is an example of this. In a lot of instances, people coming from National ID countries are advocates of the photo ID culture of that country and therefore can't really imagine it any other way.) Since the acquisition of ID in each country is typically accompanied by a milestone (age in National ID countries, driving rights in the US) then the initial acquisition of the ID is looked at in a positive light (the idea that the ID is liberating.) I think the average slashdotter realizes that this is a farce, in that the ID enrollment process is highly intrusive, and the burden of carrying around the card involves a burden of proof that falls on the citizen, and not one that falls onto the state.
The summary of the above is that the ID experience in a lot of nations is not, strictly speaking, malcious, it's just not particularly useful or justifiable. (Keep in mind, I find there is a malice involved in requiring that someone be photographed and enrolled in a computer system they don't want to be in. If it's so nice and unobtrusive to have an ID card, why should a citizen be forced to have one?)
Modern day (non-nazi) examples of ID abuse come from Israel and South Africa. Israel has used its ID cards (which do indicate the religion of the card holder) as a way of controlling movements of its population within particular areas, and, frankly, as a way of hassling Palestinians (which became so severe a few years ago that it earned a rebuke from the UN.) Though here's a recent example.
I think the Israeli examples are ideal, because they show how individuals can be effectively castrated by the government if their ID card is removed. More than just the metric "can the police ask for ID card simply by walking down the street" the metric "am I human/citizen and can I survive uninhibited?" is a great way of testing the negative effects of an ID card.
South Africa, of course, used ID cards similarly, and they were key in maintaining Apartheid (their ID cards did in
the need for identification to fly, and the need for identification for voter registration. In other words, ID is already necessary to fully participate in the society.
Both of which are very arguable, in particular the voter fraud issue. (And there are plenty of people who've argued very cogent arguments that identification to fly is more than worthless, such as Bruce Schneier. The successful voter fraud that has occurred in the US has been perpetrated by poll workers and other elections officials--not random people coming off the street to vote. It's simply not an effective way of changing an election result. There are far easier, more effective legal ways of influencing elections than even voting once.)
So I'd disagree that ID is necessary. There are plenty of people who get their driver's license and that document sits in their wallet for four years until it needs to be renewed again. (I personally vote absentee and fly so irregularly that it's not a problem if I just fly as a selectee without ID. I'd be happy not to have one.)
A national ID card - issued for everyone, and presumably for free or at a very, very low cost, since it is mandatory - would equalize access to something that is already neccessary.
ID cards are notoriously expensive...so while it might be "free" on the surface it's still something being paid for through taxes. The British ID plan will cost probably 10-15 billion pounds (and is not free to the citizen.) A US National ID card would easily cost $30-50 billion (and hence, there is a lot of lobbying going on for it, since it would be a huge industrial contract.)
You know, there are countries in Latin America who have ID card contracts that cost $80/citizen...and that's in a country where per capita GDP is $2400/year. I am truly at a loss to explain why such poor countries needs such sophisticated ID card systems.
The issuing of the first British Passports predates the existence of the United States by more than 350 years.
I should have added that I'm only talking photo passports, which are used like passports are today.
There were other types of passports introduced prior to WWI which had a variety of semi-related uses (the British ones you mention were more ambassadorial/diplomatic in nature--indicating that the King wanted the traveller "recognized.") As Wikipedia notes, passports have indeed existed since medieval times, but their usage was not akin to passports of today. (Those documents were not for tracking or class identification (identification as a citizen of a nation-state) but more for protection of the citizen, recognition of his status as a traveller, et cetera.)
They are pre-cursors of modern passports, and certainly were influential in their adoption/design, but are arguably too different to claim that they're the same document.
(The US most definitely did not invent the passport, either pre-modern or modern. Abominations like that only come from you Europeans.;-)
in the UK if you go to open a bank account, they ask you for a gas bill!
And then they ask for your money. Probably can't just make that up can you?;-)
The scare of terrorists and money launderers is overrated. In fact, the Economist had an article in it in the last few months saying that US Patriot Act measures are having a negative effect on preventing money laundering and terrorism financing, because too much damn data is coming through the system.
Banking has survived eons without ID cards...and today, needs them even less because of auditing technology, ATMs, credit/debit cards, et cetera. Photo ID cards arguably add nothing to the security of banking transactions today.
Social Security fraud is getting harder in the US, thanks to auditing and tracking. Information regarding deaths is fed directly to the SSA. Payment is made to banks through direct deposit. This was the original purpose of the SSN and it works well and without difficulty.
Once you cross state lines, your ID is no longer familiar to those who may want to look at it (airport ticket counter, liquor store cashier, hotel clerk, police officer, EMT) and thus becomes easier to forge.
Well...sorta. It's true that document unfamiliarity plays a role in passing a bad document.
On the other hand, there appears to be a logarithmic function regarding the quantity of documents issued and card fraud. For instance, there are about 3 times as many California card holders as Ohio card holders, and the California state ID/DL is several times more complex to forge than an Ohio one, yet, California probably deals with 10 times the fraud issue that Ohio does. If the California card were 100x more difficult to counterfeit, the problem would still be the same.
Every extra DMV employee that is necessary adds a new avenue for potential fraud (as does every extra DMV office.) If you presume that California has as many forgers per person as Ohio does, then that implies at least 3x the extra effort going into the counterfeiting the California card than the Ohio card. That is, however, not true, because the California license is a "marquee" document, so far more people are networking and synergizing their efforts at figuring out how to forge that card in comparison to the Ohio card.
This same principle obviously applies to green cards and passports. Doesn't matter how amazingly difficult to counterfeit they are, the best forgers in the world are working on them at this very second. Can you imagine how they would work on a National ID card...or how many fraud avenues would be available with the (estimated) 30,000 ID card issuing employees? (There are, to be fair, some synergies available with US driver's license documents. Only a handfull of technologies are used...so if you can forge a New York DL, you're pretty much 2/3rds on the way to forging a California DL.) ID cards are also not Picassos. For a forger to forge a painting, they need to have a pretty close relationship with it, which is often difficult because there's only one painting available for them to examine (likely protected in many different ways.) However, with ID cards, the Picasso to forge is right in your pocket, and is easily examined.
Incidentally, the US bureau of engraving and printing realizes the uglyness of this situation, and has never claimed that money is uncounterfeitable. Their only goal is to stay "one step ahead" of counterfeiters. However, for the ID card system to work, at a cultural level, we need to believe in a functionally impossible cult of uncounterfeitability. Every new driver's license is introduced claiming it was just as uncounterfeitable as the previous one.
The funny thing is, can you imagine if passports were a new idea?
They are a relatively new idea, and people just have a short attention span. They were only introduced in WWI (to the horror of just about everyone) promises were made to eliminate the documents after the war (which weren't kept) and it wasn't until WW2 that you really needed one to travel worldwide. (Quite a lot of the immigrants to Ellis Island had not a piece of paper on em.)
I cite the passport, and the ensuing cult of documentation to travel, as the biggest loss of liberty and freedom in the 20th century. Our acceptance/resignation of the idea that you need documentation and permission to cross borders is shameful.
I may add though that the original justification for passports during WWI was to "prevent espionage." Apparently spies couldn't get valid documents. Having done quite a lot of research into photo ID cards, the justifications for them usually range from stupid to assinine--and today we would be much more sophisticated (thanks to security knowledgeable audiences like Slashdot) to weed out the dumb arguments.
Or Driving Licenses: "New Compulsory Photo ID required just to operate vehicles!"
Photo driver's licenses are also fairly new and weren't as uncontroversial as you suggest. Most Americans didn't have one until the early 1980s. The justification for the photo license was also flimsy (the Ohio BMV, in 1974 said it was for "better identification" though police in Ohio didn't feel it was necessary.)
Well into the late 1970s there were a variety of attempts to make the photo optional on the Ohio license or to eliminate it completely. There was a pretty good amount of unhappiness about it. Several states maintained photo optional licensing until after 9/11 (like Vermont, Tennessee and New Jersey, though only Tennessee retains it today for the elderly.)
Like passports, attempts to introduce photo ID cards today would be met with much more sophisticated arguments against, particularly because the justification for them was so lackluster to begin with.
I hypothesize, based on factual and anecdotal information, that the creation of the photo driver's license coincides with the push by Polaroid of its instant color photo technology, which was too expensive for most Americans, but which they could sell successfully to state DMVs for ID card issuance. (An ex Polaroid employee, who founded a group against National ID cards, told me that Polaroid's color instant photo process, was given a special national security exemption, and its patent lasted twice as long as normal patents do.)
Most european nations have had what you americans would call "ID cards" for decades if not centuries.
Centuries?? Pray tell how they were making ID cards before the invention of photography?
(In all fairness, it's possible, but non-photo documents tend not to carry the burden that photo documents do.)
In reality, the European ID card adoption began, as I recall, in Belgium during World War I--basically as a type of internal passport (which was also created in Europe during WWI.) Based on the fact that they were development of both were related to each other, and that the passport was introduced for (get ready for it) to prevent "espionage" (the idea that spies couldn't get valid documents) I can only surmise that the Belgian ID card was introduced with similar justification.
ID documents and passports were not well received, as Europeans were horrified by the idea of requiring documentation to cross borders. It is my understanding that promises were made to eliminate the documents post WWI, though those promises were not kept. (This is not to say that Europeans universally had ID documents post WWI--quite a lot of immigrants to Ellis Island arrived with not a single piece of paper.)
Like anything, Europeans became accustomed to them and don't question them much any more (though quite a lot of the purposes a European would use an ID card for are done fraud free without ID cards in other countries. ID cards in many countries serve a bureaucratic purpose, but this is hardly necessary.)
I guess my main question is, if they are so useful and uncontroversial...why would you be forced to obtain one?
Its very hard for me to swallow your thesis that any one of your listed crimes has a higher repetition than the others.
This is slightly paradoxical argument, but bear with me here.
Sexual offender recidivism is actually fairly low. (We're talking people who molest/rape children and adults.) Now keep in mind, however, sex offenses don't tend to start online...they happen to people who are already known to the offender in real life.
But the parent was most interested in on-line sexual predators and those who download porn (for the sake of argument I'll leave out those who make child porn, as that's very unusual.)
If an online sexual predator tries only a few times, and really doesn't succeed, then he's not exactly all that great a threat anyway. If he does succeed, then they become a sexual offender, and they leave a whole different trail of evidence, if you will.
If an online sexual predator tries continuously, then the evidence of that will manifest and you don't need 2 year logs to figure that out (regardless if they succeed or not.) The same thing for a child porn consumer. The child porn consumer who does it only once or twice is not the threat to society that a CPC is who does it regularly. The frequent consumer's addiction will manifest without needing the extended logs.
Without the logs as evidence, how else are they supposed to catch these scumbags?
Unlike other types of crimes (like say terrorist conspiracy or tax fraud) child predators/child porn users repeat their offenses. (After all, it's a sexual proclivity, and that implies multiple frequency. (I am given the impression however that your average child molester is a one time deal (usually unrelated to the internet anyway.)) If the individual is repeating the offense, then the logs currently retained are sufficient to investigate, archive more logs/traffic and prosecute.
Data retention is most useful for one time offenses...where you'd figure out a year or two after the offense occurred that something might have happened. Sex crimes using the Internet just don't manifest in isolation that way (but maybe some terrorist conspiracy communication would.)
In Wisconsin's State v. Picotte (2003) an individual caused severe injuries to another, and that person died about two years later from those injuries. He was initially convicted with some type of assault charge, but after the guy died, they convicted him of a murder charge.
English common law, in the 13th century created a concept called the Year and a Day Rule in which a person is not culpable for a person's death due to injuries they caused if the person dies 366 days after the injuries were caused.
The Wisconsin legislature had entertained statutorily eliminating the Year and a Day Rule, but failed to do so, so the common law precedent stood and the conviction overturned.(Though the court did eliminate it from that point further (essentialy saying that the common law precedence is archaic) but let it stand for this one case.)
Hence, a British law from the 13th century (which no longer exists in Britain) played a major role in an American murder case in 2003.
Yet, nobody really wants their kid to become a garbage man.;)
Amusingly enough a friend of mine (he and his wife are both college/university professors) with a young son said basically "after what I've been through I might go ahead and tell my kid to be a garbage man or a truck driver."
Social engineering is basically a con. You develop a relationship and proceed to exploit it.
I see your point (and I admit it didn't occur to me before) but the social engineering was heavily contextual.
I admit that I presume that he's reformed. Even if he isn't reformed, and I have the opportunity to befriend him (which I haven't) I wouldn't hesitate to do so. I'd keep your point in the back of my mind and watch out for information gathering situations.
Which would be, alas, ironic. Though he might have been a master at it, he is probably just as likely as anybody else in my life to use social engineering against me, but the fact that I would be wondering if he is and no one else isn't (thereby missing other dangers) is one of those funny security paradoxes.
Which can't exactly be the case otherwise you wouldn't have made your post.
Mitnick brings a level, knowledge and sophistication to the field of information security which is truly unparalleled, thanks to his social engineering deeds (which many in the security industry understand and may have played around with, but not to the advanced level Mitnick did.)
Whether he makes money on his knowledge as a free man or gives it to the state/chairty because he's consulting from jail, his experience is irreproducible.
(Speaking of reproducing, Frank Abagnale (From Catch Me If You Can fame) also has experience as a masterful criminal applying social engineering, and has been able to turn that around and show companies what they need to know.))
If anything, IT people spend too much time listening to security eggheads, and not enough to the social engineering specialists who know where true weaknesses lie.
Virginia has your SSN and a lot of information up too...Don't attack the wrong people
I disagree. States knew just as well as everyone else that the SSN was not intended for identification purposes. Since they decided to use it for identification purposes, contrary to the original promises/intentions.
Because they took that responsibility, they should have to deal with the consequences of it. (In Ohio, the state supreme court has ruled that the state is liable when they disclose an SSN.)
The same moronic thinking that led to SSN use by credit bureaus was the same that lead to DMVs to adopt them as well for licensing purposes (late 1960's. Ohio began SSN collection for driver's licenses (and printing them on the license the same year that Virginia did...1967. Credit Bureaus began operating in about 1970-1971.)
Other than finding the legislator who introduced the legislation (and the guy who thought the SSN would be perfect for the credit bureaus) and beating him, I think the state should pay very dearly for its mistakes.
so they can learn that the left lane is for PASSING
As an Ohioan, I have to admit to finding this concept "quaint." 95% of the time I pass on the right and it's only people from other states who seem to find the concept foreign.
Keep in mind, passing on the right is a behavior that has evolved in Ohio due to several unique factors:
a.) a split speed limit (trucks 55, cars 65) aa.) huge amounts of truck traffic, which means that the right lane has trucks and the left lane has trucks passing trucks but all of them are doing under 65 b.) aggressive law enforcement that seems focused on the left lane c.) we're the only state which requires two lanes of traffic open during construction. on a two lane highway, that might mean using the shoulder as a traffic lane. when that occurs, trucks are forced to the left lane, because the shoulder isn't built for that weight. by virtue of that the right lane becomes the fast lane, and if you're around enough construction, you'll spend more time passing on the right than the left
I don't think I've seen a single other company support the standard.
They do exist. Older Samsung camcorders such as this one take only Memory Sticks for flash memory.
According to the Samsung website, their newest camcorders take either SD/MMC or are like this one and take, niftily enough, SD/MMC, Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro.
This may, admittedly, suggest that the Samsung camcorders are just Sonys in disguise.
Under the US system, the moderates are more powerful, as they are swing voters and will be pandered too.
That would be the case only if the political districts were created to be "reasonably" politically neutral.
However, of the 435 congressional districts, only about 50 may be called politically neutral. The rest are gerrymandered by whomever to fit either one party or another. In those districts, the only way to win is to fight in the primary, which usually requires pandering to the radical elements of that party in order to win. Once the primary is won the winner sits back and fundraises for other candidates who live in marginal districts--so that they may be esteemed by the party officials and get a good position once they're elected.
but having a stable moderate government is quite desirable to everyone
Yes, but the two-party system doesn't necessarily offer that much stability. Multi-party systems typically have a roving moderate consensus that moves with time through different combinations of politics.
Our system is a black/white system that gets polarized. The longer the majority is in power, the more severe the flip will be when the other party takes over. We've had the same party for the last twelve years, if the Democrats win Congress back in 2006 the entire government suddenly flips to the new party manifesto and it'll be run like the Republicans have run it (with as little input from the minority as possible.) The two party system is actually quite destabilizing, especially in recent times, where politics has gone from ugly to lethal.
Two party politics is also damaging to the "intellectual capacity" of the electorate and the political discourse. In two party systems, political discourse comes in the form of "we're right" and "they're wrong" (depending on who's in the majority and who isn't.) In healthy multi-party systems, it's impossible to maintain this rhetoric--parties are forced instead to have a party platform and defend theirs as being the best (which is clearly intellectually more complex and encompassing.)
Even in systems which are essentially two party with a strong minority party (UK, Canada) "we're right/they're wrong" rhetoric just can't get off the ground like it does in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
A $200,000 home in Ohio would fetch over a million dollars there.
There is, incidentally, a surprisingly healthy million dollar home market in Ohio suburbs. The reason is because people who are moved by their companies from housing markets where there is a bubble, need to put the equity they have (500k+) into their next home to avoid capital gains.
I've been wondering a lot about this lately, and I think that a certain amount of income differentials are becoming unjustifiable. There's one large company with a significant New York and Columbus presence(s) that has employees making $200k in New York who do the same thing as a $75k Columbus employee. Unless the New York employee is magically 2 1/2 times more productive, they might have to justify themselves very differently in the future.
Well how do they hope to stop terrorists with this
Here's how to answer that.
"All the 9/11 terrorists had valid ID, and used those valid photo ID to get on airplanes. Imagine how different 9/11 would have been if they had shown up that day with non-photo Vermont driver's licenses. So the question really is...how can you stop terrorists with a photo ID?"
Perhaps you could discuss how the California State Driver's License, which doubles as a state ID, does "almost nothing but enable the [state] government to trample individual rights".
California is a great state to bring up, it's usually the state I cite in making the case against ID cards.
California began issuing photo driver's licenses in 1957 (it and Colorado were the first states, and were doing so in black and white, and I presume the photograph was not taken by the DMV, but was brought in. In this regard, CA and CO were exceptions, because no other state started until 1967, and were doing so with office taken color instant photographs.) When I was in Sacramento in 2004, I attempted to research the reasoning for the law, but was unsuccesful. (No state I've researched added photos to driver's licenses for reasons related to driving or fraud. They were heavily lobbied by film and camera makers for the photo licenses for the contracts, so a bunch of BS reasonings were made up, such as "better identification.")
At any rate, California was therefore the first state to feel the effects of driving license fraud, and they felt it hard. California began optional DL fingerprinting in 1978 and made it mandatory in 1982. This was argued as a method of preventing fraud, but California license fraud went up by 50x time between 1982 and 2000, according to the DMV, in spite of fingerprinting, electronic fingerprinting, and nearly 5 changes in the DL document to prevent counterfeiting. (The DMV, incidentally, didn't like people refusing to be fingerprinted between 1978 and 1982, and dusted for fingerprints on those individuals' DL application documents. This earned a strong rebuke from the California Supreme Court in a 1986 case, and I think is a great way of showing how CA DMV officials perceived their own power, and I think that dusting for fingerprints (which they weren't entitled to) by a state government is an example of a state trampling on civil rights.
I also believe that the mandatory photographing of each citizen is a state trampling on civil rights (curiously, CA recently terminated a law allowing individuals with religious objections to skip being photographed.) You might disagree. I also feel that the mandatory photographing and archival of those photographs is not a proper function of a state in a free society. (California has a database with the photograph and fingerprint of basically every Californian above the age of 16. Ironically, the justification for this database is to prevent the fraud problems that were caused by the morons introducing photo based licenses in the first place. (However, if that were the justification for the database, then law enforcement would need a warrant to access it, but they have free access.
I don't need to tell you that there've been plenty of stories of police in uppity California towns demanding ID of individuals in order to hassle them (for reasons unknown to me, Hollywood typically portrays Santa Monica as the instigator of this.)
When I visited the state library in Sacramento, in order to do my research, the guard demanded my ID to enter. When I presented it, she glanced at it for a second and gave it back to me.
What could she have been looking for? The ID simply confirmed that I have a picture of my own damn self in my pocket, and that I have a name and birthdate, though, since she wasn't comparing it to a list or anything, the name and DOB on the card was irrelevant.
It could be a silly security measure put in place by either morons, or people who wanted to make it look like something productive was being done. Either way, the implication was that an individual was not permitted to examine the state library without a state issued document that was irrelevant. I think that's an example of the state trampling on civil rights. (You could also say that that action was a good, example of the police simply reaffirming that it had the power to demand things from me, and irrelevant police actions whose purpose are not justifiable except from the point of police power are indeed examples of the state trampling on civil rights.)
Since, as the question states, there are other countries doing this we should have some recent historical data to back up such claims.
Each country's experience with photo ID cards is indeed different from every other country (not to mention, the experiences are evolving--the photo ID in the US for the first 10-20 years they were omnipresent (1970s and 1980s) was heavily rooted in financial transactions (everybody and their grandmother paid for their groceries with checks when I was a kid.) Today, financial transactions are becoming far less dependent on ID, and if you open an account online or via mail, you don't even have to show ID once.) What's funny to me is that IDs are, in my mind, an old-fashioned solution to the issues of verifying identity, when better, less centralized solutions already exist. Alas, governments like the cult of the ID.
Quite a lot of Europeans and Asians might be defending ID cards...their experience with ID cards tend to be very bureaucratic in nature--though a lot of those bureaucratic transactions are performed in less ID centric countries with other identification processes which are just as viable/effective/fraud-free (and sometimes, cheaper, since ID cards and the infrastructure required for them are expensive.) Since bureaucratic processes are just not targets for fraud, to imply that the cards don't invite fraud is fatuous, because other countries can do the same processes without the fraud. It's when the card is burdened with transactions that could invite fraud (such as granting of immediate credit) is where ID fraud begins.
There is something I call the "photo ID culture" which sets in...it's the idea that people expect certain types of transactions to require/demand photo ID because similar transactions are done with ID, when in reality the ID may add nothing to the security of the transaction. The recent push in the US for ID for voting is an example of this. In a lot of instances, people coming from National ID countries are advocates of the photo ID culture of that country and therefore can't really imagine it any other way.) Since the acquisition of ID in each country is typically accompanied by a milestone (age in National ID countries, driving rights in the US) then the initial acquisition of the ID is looked at in a positive light (the idea that the ID is liberating.) I think the average slashdotter realizes that this is a farce, in that the ID enrollment process is highly intrusive, and the burden of carrying around the card involves a burden of proof that falls on the citizen, and not one that falls onto the state.
The summary of the above is that the ID experience in a lot of nations is not, strictly speaking, malcious, it's just not particularly useful or justifiable. (Keep in mind, I find there is a malice involved in requiring that someone be photographed and enrolled in a computer system they don't want to be in. If it's so nice and unobtrusive to have an ID card, why should a citizen be forced to have one?)
Modern day (non-nazi) examples of ID abuse come from Israel and South Africa. Israel has used its ID cards (which do indicate the religion of the card holder) as a way of controlling movements of its population within particular areas, and, frankly, as a way of hassling Palestinians (which became so severe a few years ago that it earned a rebuke from the UN.) Though here's a recent example.
I think the Israeli examples are ideal, because they show how individuals can be effectively castrated by the government if their ID card is removed. More than just the metric "can the police ask for ID card simply by walking down the street" the metric "am I human/citizen and can I survive uninhibited?" is a great way of testing the negative effects of an ID card.
South Africa, of course, used ID cards similarly, and they were key in maintaining Apartheid (their ID cards did in
the need for identification to fly, and the need for identification for voter registration. In other words, ID is already necessary to fully participate in the society.
Both of which are very arguable, in particular the voter fraud issue. (And there are plenty of people who've argued very cogent arguments that identification to fly is more than worthless, such as Bruce Schneier. The successful voter fraud that has occurred in the US has been perpetrated by poll workers and other elections officials--not random people coming off the street to vote. It's simply not an effective way of changing an election result. There are far easier, more effective legal ways of influencing elections than even voting once.)
So I'd disagree that ID is necessary. There are plenty of people who get their driver's license and that document sits in their wallet for four years until it needs to be renewed again. (I personally vote absentee and fly so irregularly that it's not a problem if I just fly as a selectee without ID. I'd be happy not to have one.)
A national ID card - issued for everyone, and presumably for free or at a very, very low cost, since it is mandatory - would equalize access to something that is already neccessary.
ID cards are notoriously expensive...so while it might be "free" on the surface it's still something being paid for through taxes. The British ID plan will cost probably 10-15 billion pounds (and is not free to the citizen.) A US National ID card would easily cost $30-50 billion (and hence, there is a lot of lobbying going on for it, since it would be a huge industrial contract.)
You know, there are countries in Latin America who have ID card contracts that cost $80/citizen...and that's in a country where per capita GDP is $2400/year. I am truly at a loss to explain why such poor countries needs such sophisticated ID card systems.
Not all IDs are photo IDs.
Yes, but as I said, they're rarely used the same way.
The issuing of the first British Passports predates the existence of the United States by more than 350 years.
;-)
I should have added that I'm only talking photo passports, which are used like passports are today.
There were other types of passports introduced prior to WWI which had a variety of semi-related uses (the British ones you mention were more ambassadorial/diplomatic in nature--indicating that the King wanted the traveller "recognized.") As Wikipedia notes, passports have indeed existed since medieval times, but their usage was not akin to passports of today. (Those documents were not for tracking or class identification (identification as a citizen of a nation-state) but more for protection of the citizen, recognition of his status as a traveller, et cetera.)
They are pre-cursors of modern passports, and certainly were influential in their adoption/design, but are arguably too different to claim that they're the same document.
(The US most definitely did not invent the passport, either pre-modern or modern. Abominations like that only come from you Europeans.
in the UK if you go to open a bank account, they ask you for a gas bill!
;-)
And then they ask for your money. Probably can't just make that up can you?
The scare of terrorists and money launderers is overrated. In fact, the Economist had an article in it in the last few months saying that US Patriot Act measures are having a negative effect on preventing money laundering and terrorism financing, because too much damn data is coming through the system.
Banking has survived eons without ID cards...and today, needs them even less because of auditing technology, ATMs, credit/debit cards, et cetera. Photo ID cards arguably add nothing to the security of banking transactions today.
Social Security fraud is getting harder in the US, thanks to auditing and tracking. Information regarding deaths is fed directly to the SSA. Payment is made to banks through direct deposit. This was the original purpose of the SSN and it works well and without difficulty.
Once you cross state lines, your ID is no longer familiar to those who may want to look at it (airport ticket counter, liquor store cashier, hotel clerk, police officer, EMT) and thus becomes easier to forge.
Well...sorta. It's true that document unfamiliarity plays a role in passing a bad document.
On the other hand, there appears to be a logarithmic function regarding the quantity of documents issued and card fraud. For instance, there are about 3 times as many California card holders as Ohio card holders, and the California state ID/DL is several times more complex to forge than an Ohio one, yet, California probably deals with 10 times the fraud issue that Ohio does. If the California card were 100x more difficult to counterfeit, the problem would still be the same.
Every extra DMV employee that is necessary adds a new avenue for potential fraud (as does every extra DMV office.) If you presume that California has as many forgers per person as Ohio does, then that implies at least 3x the extra effort going into the counterfeiting the California card than the Ohio card. That is, however, not true, because the California license is a "marquee" document, so far more people are networking and synergizing their efforts at figuring out how to forge that card in comparison to the Ohio card.
This same principle obviously applies to green cards and passports. Doesn't matter how amazingly difficult to counterfeit they are, the best forgers in the world are working on them at this very second. Can you imagine how they would work on a National ID card...or how many fraud avenues would be available with the (estimated) 30,000 ID card issuing employees? (There are, to be fair, some synergies available with US driver's license documents. Only a handfull of technologies are used...so if you can forge a New York DL, you're pretty much 2/3rds on the way to forging a California DL.) ID cards are also not Picassos. For a forger to forge a painting, they need to have a pretty close relationship with it, which is often difficult because there's only one painting available for them to examine (likely protected in many different ways.) However, with ID cards, the Picasso to forge is right in your pocket, and is easily examined.
Incidentally, the US bureau of engraving and printing realizes the uglyness of this situation, and has never claimed that money is uncounterfeitable. Their only goal is to stay "one step ahead" of counterfeiters. However, for the ID card system to work, at a cultural level, we need to believe in a functionally impossible cult of uncounterfeitability. Every new driver's license is introduced claiming it was just as uncounterfeitable as the previous one.
The funny thing is, can you imagine if passports were a new idea?
They are a relatively new idea, and people just have a short attention span. They were only introduced in WWI (to the horror of just about everyone) promises were made to eliminate the documents after the war (which weren't kept) and it wasn't until WW2 that you really needed one to travel worldwide. (Quite a lot of the immigrants to Ellis Island had not a piece of paper on em.)
I cite the passport, and the ensuing cult of documentation to travel, as the biggest loss of liberty and freedom in the 20th century. Our acceptance/resignation of the idea that you need documentation and permission to cross borders is shameful.
I may add though that the original justification for passports during WWI was to "prevent espionage." Apparently spies couldn't get valid documents. Having done quite a lot of research into photo ID cards, the justifications for them usually range from stupid to assinine--and today we would be much more sophisticated (thanks to security knowledgeable audiences like Slashdot) to weed out the dumb arguments.
Or Driving Licenses: "New Compulsory Photo ID required just to operate vehicles!"
Photo driver's licenses are also fairly new and weren't as uncontroversial as you suggest. Most Americans didn't have one until the early 1980s. The justification for the photo license was also flimsy (the Ohio BMV, in 1974 said it was for "better identification" though police in Ohio didn't feel it was necessary.)
Well into the late 1970s there were a variety of attempts to make the photo optional on the Ohio license or to eliminate it completely. There was a pretty good amount of unhappiness about it. Several states maintained photo optional licensing until after 9/11 (like Vermont, Tennessee and New Jersey, though only Tennessee retains it today for the elderly.)
Like passports, attempts to introduce photo ID cards today would be met with much more sophisticated arguments against, particularly because the justification for them was so lackluster to begin with.
I hypothesize, based on factual and anecdotal information, that the creation of the photo driver's license coincides with the push by Polaroid of its instant color photo technology, which was too expensive for most Americans, but which they could sell successfully to state DMVs for ID card issuance. (An ex Polaroid employee, who founded a group against National ID cards, told me that Polaroid's color instant photo process, was given a special national security exemption, and its patent lasted twice as long as normal patents do.)
Most european nations have had what you americans would call "ID cards" for decades if not centuries.
Centuries?? Pray tell how they were making ID cards before the invention of photography?
(In all fairness, it's possible, but non-photo documents tend not to carry the burden that photo documents do.)
In reality, the European ID card adoption began, as I recall, in Belgium during World War I--basically as a type of internal passport (which was also created in Europe during WWI.) Based on the fact that they were development of both were related to each other, and that the passport was introduced for (get ready for it) to prevent "espionage" (the idea that spies couldn't get valid documents) I can only surmise that the Belgian ID card was introduced with similar justification.
ID documents and passports were not well received, as Europeans were horrified by the idea of requiring documentation to cross borders. It is my understanding that promises were made to eliminate the documents post WWI, though those promises were not kept. (This is not to say that Europeans universally had ID documents post WWI--quite a lot of immigrants to Ellis Island arrived with not a single piece of paper.)
Like anything, Europeans became accustomed to them and don't question them much any more (though quite a lot of the purposes a European would use an ID card for are done fraud free without ID cards in other countries. ID cards in many countries serve a bureaucratic purpose, but this is hardly necessary.)
I guess my main question is, if they are so useful and uncontroversial...why would you be forced to obtain one?
...ordinary stability control?
Its very hard for me to swallow your thesis that any one of your listed crimes has a higher repetition than the others.
This is slightly paradoxical argument, but bear with me here.
Sexual offender recidivism is actually fairly low. (We're talking people who molest/rape children and adults.) Now keep in mind, however, sex offenses don't tend to start online...they happen to people who are already known to the offender in real life.
But the parent was most interested in on-line sexual predators and those who download porn (for the sake of argument I'll leave out those who make child porn, as that's very unusual.)
If an online sexual predator tries only a few times, and really doesn't succeed, then he's not exactly all that great a threat anyway. If he does succeed, then they become a sexual offender, and they leave a whole different trail of evidence, if you will.
If an online sexual predator tries continuously, then the evidence of that will manifest and you don't need 2 year logs to figure that out (regardless if they succeed or not.) The same thing for a child porn consumer. The child porn consumer who does it only once or twice is not the threat to society that a CPC is who does it regularly. The frequent consumer's addiction will manifest without needing the extended logs.
Without the logs as evidence, how else are they supposed to catch these scumbags?
Unlike other types of crimes (like say terrorist conspiracy or tax fraud) child predators/child porn users repeat their offenses. (After all, it's a sexual proclivity, and that implies multiple frequency. (I am given the impression however that your average child molester is a one time deal (usually unrelated to the internet anyway.)) If the individual is repeating the offense, then the logs currently retained are sufficient to investigate, archive more logs/traffic and prosecute.
Data retention is most useful for one time offenses...where you'd figure out a year or two after the offense occurred that something might have happened. Sex crimes using the Internet just don't manifest in isolation that way (but maybe some terrorist conspiracy communication would.)
Still, they need that 6Mbps connection...
It's not the connection that bugs me, it's the fact that all you need is 2 myspace pages open and Mozilla's at 180MB of memory used.
In Wisconsin's State v. Picotte (2003) an individual caused severe injuries to another, and that person died about two years later from those injuries. He was initially convicted with some type of assault charge, but after the guy died, they convicted him of a murder charge.
English common law, in the 13th century created a concept called the Year and a Day Rule in which a person is not culpable for a person's death due to injuries they caused if the person dies 366 days after the injuries were caused.
The Wisconsin legislature had entertained statutorily eliminating the Year and a Day Rule, but failed to do so, so the common law precedent stood and the conviction overturned.(Though the court did eliminate it from that point further (essentialy saying that the common law precedence is archaic) but let it stand for this one case.)
Hence, a British law from the 13th century (which no longer exists in Britain) played a major role in an American murder case in 2003.
Yet, nobody really wants their kid to become a garbage man. ;)
Amusingly enough a friend of mine (he and his wife are both college/university professors) with a young son said basically "after what I've been through I might go ahead and tell my kid to be a garbage man or a truck driver."
Social engineering is basically a con. You develop a relationship and proceed to exploit it.
I see your point (and I admit it didn't occur to me before) but the social engineering was heavily contextual.
I admit that I presume that he's reformed. Even if he isn't reformed, and I have the opportunity to befriend him (which I haven't) I wouldn't hesitate to do so. I'd keep your point in the back of my mind and watch out for information gathering situations.
Which would be, alas, ironic. Though he might have been a master at it, he is probably just as likely as anybody else in my life to use social engineering against me, but the fact that I would be wondering if he is and no one else isn't (thereby missing other dangers) is one of those funny security paradoxes.
Oh absolutely, I just wouldn't want to have Mitnick as a friend.
What in his background suggests he would be a disloyal friend?
which I don't have any problem with either
Which can't exactly be the case otherwise you wouldn't have made your post.
Mitnick brings a level, knowledge and sophistication to the field of information security which is truly unparalleled, thanks to his social engineering deeds (which many in the security industry understand and may have played around with, but not to the advanced level Mitnick did.)
Whether he makes money on his knowledge as a free man or gives it to the state/chairty because he's consulting from jail, his experience is irreproducible.
(Speaking of reproducing, Frank Abagnale (From Catch Me If You Can fame) also has experience as a masterful criminal applying social engineering, and has been able to turn that around and show companies what they need to know.))
If anything, IT people spend too much time listening to security eggheads, and not enough to the social engineering specialists who know where true weaknesses lie.
Virginia has your SSN and a lot of information up too...Don't attack the wrong people
I disagree. States knew just as well as everyone else that the SSN was not intended for identification purposes. Since they decided to use it for identification purposes, contrary to the original promises/intentions.
Because they took that responsibility, they should have to deal with the consequences of it. (In Ohio, the state supreme court has ruled that the state is liable when they disclose an SSN.)
The same moronic thinking that led to SSN use by credit bureaus was the same that lead to DMVs to adopt them as well for licensing purposes (late 1960's. Ohio began SSN collection for driver's licenses (and printing them on the license the same year that Virginia did...1967. Credit Bureaus began operating in about 1970-1971.)
Other than finding the legislator who introduced the legislation (and the guy who thought the SSN would be perfect for the credit bureaus) and beating him, I think the state should pay very dearly for its mistakes.
so they can learn that the left lane is for PASSING
As an Ohioan, I have to admit to finding this concept "quaint." 95% of the time I pass on the right and it's only people from other states who seem to find the concept foreign.
Keep in mind, passing on the right is a behavior that has evolved in Ohio due to several unique factors:
a.) a split speed limit (trucks 55, cars 65)
aa.) huge amounts of truck traffic, which means that the right lane has trucks and the left lane has trucks passing trucks but all of them are doing under 65
b.) aggressive law enforcement that seems focused on the left lane
c.) we're the only state which requires two lanes of traffic open during construction. on a two lane highway, that might mean using the shoulder as a traffic lane. when that occurs, trucks are forced to the left lane, because the shoulder isn't built for that weight. by virtue of that the right lane becomes the fast lane, and if you're around enough construction, you'll spend more time passing on the right than the left
I don't think I've seen a single other company support the standard.
They do exist. Older Samsung camcorders such as this one take only Memory Sticks for flash memory.
According to the Samsung website, their newest camcorders take either SD/MMC or are like this one and take, niftily enough, SD/MMC, Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro.
This may, admittedly, suggest that the Samsung camcorders are just Sonys in disguise.
Under the US system, the moderates are more powerful, as they are swing voters and will be pandered too.
That would be the case only if the political districts were created to be "reasonably" politically neutral.
However, of the 435 congressional districts, only about 50 may be called politically neutral. The rest are gerrymandered by whomever to fit either one party or another. In those districts, the only way to win is to fight in the primary, which usually requires pandering to the radical elements of that party in order to win. Once the primary is won the winner sits back and fundraises for other candidates who live in marginal districts--so that they may be esteemed by the party officials and get a good position once they're elected.
but having a stable moderate government is quite desirable to everyone
Yes, but the two-party system doesn't necessarily offer that much stability. Multi-party systems typically have a roving moderate consensus that moves with time through different combinations of politics.
Our system is a black/white system that gets polarized. The longer the majority is in power, the more severe the flip will be when the other party takes over. We've had the same party for the last twelve years, if the Democrats win Congress back in 2006 the entire government suddenly flips to the new party manifesto and it'll be run like the Republicans have run it (with as little input from the minority as possible.) The two party system is actually quite destabilizing, especially in recent times, where politics has gone from ugly to lethal.
Two party politics is also damaging to the "intellectual capacity" of the electorate and the political discourse. In two party systems, political discourse comes in the form of "we're right" and "they're wrong" (depending on who's in the majority and who isn't.) In healthy multi-party systems, it's impossible to maintain this rhetoric--parties are forced instead to have a party platform and defend theirs as being the best (which is clearly intellectually more complex and encompassing.)
Even in systems which are essentially two party with a strong minority party (UK, Canada) "we're right/they're wrong" rhetoric just can't get off the ground like it does in the US.
It must be the announcement that Slashdot has been bought up Rupert Murdoch. After all, why does Slashdot suddenly resemble Myspace?