This is Isreal, and you are free to not answer their questions.
Not if you actually live in Israel, and your ID card indicates that you're not Jewish.
The way ID cards exist and are used in each country of the world is unique, and the experience with Israel could fill volumes.
For a Jew, it represents a complex sense of identity, that really is a personal thing...there was quite a lot of argument concerning those who had become Jewish through non-orthodox conversion, and whether they should be able to have "Jewish" on their ID cards...which pissed off the orthodox establishment.
On the other hand, turning 16 is hell for a Palestinian. You stand in line at one office which gives out ID cards in Palestine, and then you're hassled for the rest of your life.
Several years ago the bottom was hit when Israeli police were confiscating ID cards of Palestinians. Since the card is required for you to move around, it basically made them non-entities who couldn't go anywhere (this practice was ended after much international criticism.)
I still hear stories of Israeli police who, after examining a Palestinian's ID card, throw the card onto the ground, as opposed to handing it back. It's a quick and dirty way of insulting them and their identity, and reminding them that they are not in control, and what really is in control is a cheap piece of plastic...and the people who issued it.
I mention all this because the Israeli experience with ID card is a great reason why not to adopt ID cards.
I also mention that, in a truly bizarre finding, the Israeli ID card experience 90% mimics that of the Nazi Germany ID card experience (right down to the letter "J" indicating if the person is Jewish or not.)
-I may or may not want info like eye color, hair color, weight, height etc.. I hesitate because I don't think they are particularly usefull in identification. I've never had anyone actually check my eye color when I present ID.. and I know women who change thier hair color more often than thier desktop background.
This information is an anachronism...from the time when driver's licenses didn't have photos on them...and that information was used to make sure the card belonged to that driver. Once photos were added, no one bothered to actually remove the info...or at least, they saw no particular reason to. (Countries that issued ID cards that started out as photograph based, don't have this info on em.)
The information is still collected because if you don't have your license on you, and you get pulled over, the police could confirm identity by double checking the info from the DMV database.
As for your idea, you're always fighting with the fact that identity card systems simply don't work well with too many people. California, for instance, issues 25,000 photo ID cards per day. Even with a very very low rate of bad card issuance, they still issue out 100,000 bad cards per year (photo ID cards that can be used to misrepresent yourself.) Sure your idea takes away a major failure point (database accumulation) but it assumes that people wont' lose the cards, the documents that are associated with them, and honestly, it really doesn't change all that much from what we currently have.
Normally I don't point out language errors, usually they aren't that important...however I find myself "uncomfortable" with the idea that a "ban" can be "revoked."
After all, it was the initial screening abilities that were revoked in the first place...can revoke be used to mean "reverse" in this instance? (Revoke implies to me that some ability associated with another person is being annuled. Here, the ban was not placed by the other party, but by the same party who will be reversing it.)
Rich... very, very rich people. Their families can hire very, very, very expensive lawyers to make a corporation pay very, very, dearly for their mistake.
On a civil case like this, lawyers go on contingency, so no money is out of pocket for the individual. This scenario is very likely since a settlement is virtually guaranteed. Therefore being really rich has no particular bearing on the situation.
Lots of money for lawyers helps on criminal cases (when you're the accused) or when the case does not have a guaranteed settlement, and you wish to use lawyers to irritate someone.
Incidentally, let's say this were the case anyway...and flying really rich people around was a higher insurance risk due to the liabilities if something happened. The insurance companies who underwrite the airline woudl take this into consideration and charge higher premiums. Those higher premiums would translate into higher airfares for those rich individuals, meaning that they were essentially insuring their own expensive asses.
I wouldn't give up my model M for anything. However there is this one interesting issue...when you got one girlfriend on the phone, and the other online, the one on the phone gets pissed off saying that you're not paying attention to her because she can hear you typing in the background.
Throw a serial ATA card into your PC and get one or two Westerm Digital Raptor drives (37.6GB) You won't be at 50GB, but you'll get 10k rpm performance and a five year warranty...drive is about $120-$150.
Actually...I happen to be an Ohioan, and I think the verticalized license document is pissing in the wind...though slight better than what they've done in the past (different backgrounds, different colors in the title bar...et cetera.)
It's possible for someone to be over 21 and have a verticalized license...though I can't say for sure why I've been told of people being more successful than not with the verticalized license.
Incidentally, I'm working on legislation to allow individuals to get a license without a birthyear on it (if they don't use it for age related ID...but they use it for ID, and don't want to show their age everywhere.) It only makes sense that this license would be vertical...
It's just a 2d barcode...same principle...slightly more information in the barcode, rarely are they encrypted (though I think the Georgia 2d is.) It's an ISO 2d barcode standard either way.
All you need is a fake mexican consular id and you can be anybody.
Normally I would just fake a birth certificate and a Social Security Card, which seems a pretty reasonable and common way of doing things.
Or I could take your idea, and fake a matricular consular card, which is only held by people who are illegal immigrants, because for some reason, there is some advantage to me to pretend to be a fucking illegal immigrant.
In addition to simply demagnetizing the stripe, you could re-encode the stripe with new information...like you're really over 21...or your name is really something else, et cetera.
With barcodes you can always put a sticker with a new barcode over the original barcode. You would have to be looking really hard to notice, if done right (remember people printing up new UPC barcodes for Wal Mart products?)
The only type of machine readable document implement that is difficult to change are simultaneously human readable...the readable characters on the passport (found on the first page on most passports and have lots of little >>>>>>>> thingies) were originally conceived on a privacy basis, because people would always know what's encoded in their passports. I cite the security advantages, since a human can read what the machine can read, and its easy for a human to double check that.
Not that they would. When a human has a machine to read a document, they will almost always just trust what the machine says, and not check what the document says.
Here's the nuts and bolts of it...in a class transaction like checking for age, usuall the bouncer/bartender isn't as interested in the photo as they are in the license (making sure it wasn't counterfeited.) This is why you can get away with a license that doesn't look like you.
The potential here, as you can see, is for a facial recognition system, but that's another story.
At any rate...you could very well hand over a license that's of you, but indicates that you're under 21. If the bouncer has a swiper machine, they won't check to see what the license says, all they have to do is swipe the license to see what the machine says, and let you get in regardless. All you really need to do is take your current photo ID document and re-encode the stripe so that it says what you want it to say...the front of the license will continue saying that you're under 21, but it doesn't matter as long as the machine says you're over 21...a human will trust the machine.
Which is exactly what is happening in the area I live in.
Agreed...the BBC effects were not just good for the time...and required a considerable amount of innovations given the technology they had, but still look very good to me now (albeit a touch dated in that Doctor Who sorta way.) I loved the look of the starship Heart of Gold...but my favorite thing was how they got the "teletype" to appear on the screen when the book was talking. To this day it remains my preference when words have to appear on screen in a movie/show (Gaiman's Don't Panic explains how the BBC did that.)
Re:What's wrong with national IDs?
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Beyond Fear
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· Score: 1
I don't understand why Americans are so afraid of national ID cards. Where I live we have standardized national ID cards that are used in most situations, and I can't say how it has made me any less free.
It should be said at this point that every country's experience with ID cards is very different. Many European countries use them for mostly bureaucratic functions (functions which are done in other countries, without difficulty, without ID cards. In fact, I like to say, if you don't have ID card fraud, they probably aren't all that useful int he first place. The reason why people in those countries do think they're useful in some way is simply because the "photo ID culture" is already ingrained there, and they can't imagine life without them.)
I once asked my Costa Rican relatives if there were any purpose to having an ID (Cedula de Identidad) in someone else's name...and they couldn't think of anything. But there's lots of ID fraud down there, because their cards indicate citizenship, residency status, and work rights. So illegal immigrants from other nations do need a fake card to work there.
Possibly the most fascinating example of ID cards is that of Israel...it could fill up volumes. The name on the card isn't important...but the cards indicate citizenship *and* religion. This is controversial even among Israeli Jews (the cards no longer indicate that someone is "Jewish" because indicating that a person who was Jewish who wasn't Jewish blood or Orthodox, would severely piss off the Orthodox Jews. The solution to this amuses me insanely, now they simply put a letter "j" on the cards (in Hebrew script...it can stand for Israeli or Jew and doesn't indicate what type of Jew) and not a single person has noticed that that is what the Nazi's put on their ID cards to note if someone was Jewish.)
On the other side of things, when a Palestinian turns 16 they have to get their ID card, and they're treated like rubbish during the process, and hassled for the card regularly. A friend of mine whose been to Israel says that Israeli guards examine the ID cards...and then throw them onto the ground, instead of just handing them back. This is a fascinating form of psychological power...implying that they are just as worhtless as the card they threw on the ground. In the late 1990's...Israeli guards would confiscate ID cards, essentially making the person unable to go home, or anywhere for that matter (ID card confiscation brought a lot of heat unto Israel from numerous organizations, and has since been stopped.)
For the Jews, the card is a form of empowerment and identity. For the Palestinians, it's a form of repression. (Interestingly, other than making sure that people stay in their neighboorhoods and keep to curfews, the cards play no role in security...this, in a country in which security is the most important thing above anything.)
The United States experience with ID cards has been that of fraud. Fraud from people trying to get alcohol (not really severe) and financial fraud. Our financial fraud issues are indeed unique, and why they occur is not easily figured out.
I bring up Europeans again...many European countries do have a national ID card. During World War I, the passport was introduced, and Europeans were horrified by the idea of a photograph based citizenship document. It simply allowed too much control concerning how people could move freely across borders. The passport was *guaranteed* to be a temporary document which would be terminated at the end of World War I (I would like to say that the job of the termination fo the document was in the hands of Wilson's League of Nations...and the failure to put that together is why the passport stuck around.)
I think one thing that bugs Americans is the idea of being forced to do something. No one forces you to pay taxes (you're not forced to work after all, or buy stuff) or vote, or get an SSN...or whatever. But a national ID card would force you to do something you may not want to do. Is it appropriate
Re:there is a national ID system
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Beyond Fear
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And California is about to massively devalue that ID by issuing drivers licenses to undocumented (aka illegal) aliens.
Which would do wonders for fraud in California. You see, the problem is that the California driver's license, for no damn good reason, is trusted way too much. I could do more harm with a California license than any other state ID or license card.
California issues out no less than 25,000 ID cards per day and even at an amazing rate of accuracy and security, you would still be looking at a pretty good number of "bad" cards in the stack. (Sacramento Bee said that the DMV said they issued 100,000 bad cards in 2000. That's what the DMV themselves were claiming.) Every one of those bad cards is trusted way too much. Anything that can take the trust value (my term) down a few notches would help.
Other states do issue illegals licenses...not just California. But the focus is on California, though honestly I wouldn't have trusted one of those cheap pieces of plastic in the first place.
(Speaking of that 100,000 number...I was amused because in 1982 the CA DMV claimed that it was 2000 per year, and that's why they needed to have mandatory license fingerprinting. A lot of good that it did.)
Re:What's wrong with national IDs?
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Beyond Fear
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I live in NJ, the state with the license that's easiest to forge.
Yes...but the advantage is that NJ doesn't have very much severe fraud committed with the photo driver's licenses (and non-photo licenses.) Everyone knows they can be easily forged so no one trusts them for all that much. As things go, I rather have some under age alcohol consumption than serious credit/financial fraud (which is far more severe in states with much more "secure" licenses, like California or Texas.)
he asked me why my HP calculator was growling at his calculator.
For the same reason the cuddly geek would scowl at the dumb-as-rocks jock. Sure he could come up with a lame answer faster...but why was that enough to get all the girls?
There's so many things wrong here. For starters, Federal tax dollars (aka "your money") are being spent to push the paperwork on a car that only the super-wealthy will ever drive.
While this law was drawn for them...it's entirely possible that a far smaller car collector would benefit. They may want a rare european car whose value is no where near the value of a 959, and import it into the US...they would be able to under this law. It's not just for the super rich.
What you should be pissed off (and that you left out of your rant) is the fact that the article noted that the DOT had a major bug up its ass about the 959, and wanted to set some type of example with it. When an institution makes those types of decisions, they have to deal with the consequences, in this case, a bunch of people trying to override them (and the simple pleasure of busting a federal bureaucracy's balls is worth the law to me.) On the other hand, DOT nursed its wounds and then wrote out a huge amount of time and money wasting bureaucratic regulations to enforce a law that's fairly straightforward, simply because it's ego was hurt.
Echoing what another reply said to your post, why they don't allow you to sign a waiver form in the first place is beyond comprehension.
The thing that struck me about this article was how screwed up the US political system is whereby bills are all bundled together
This is a peculiarity of Congress. States usually have constitional requirements for single subject bills (with names that identify what the bill does, none of this "Save the babies and orphaned Hamsters act of 2003" shit) as well as line item veto.
I happen to know that several states, like my Ohio, and Illinois, get pretty mean on enforcement...courts have no problems throwing out laws simply because they were codified under a bill that had multiple subjects.
I've worked at quite a few companies that handle important customer data and to be honest not one of them made any effort to protect that data either from employees or crackers.
Addressing the first part, I believe that 2/5 Americans have access to sensitive data (SSN, birth dates, et cetera) simply because of their jobs.
As for the second part...all employers deal with that type of data, at least on a human resource level. It still isn't in the culture yet to mitigate security concerns yet.
a.) fraud goes up (because of counterfeiting) b.) so jurisdictions start issuing harder to counterfeit cards c.) new harder to counterfeit cards have too much trust, justifying criminals to use whatever means possible to get them d.) fraud goes up e.) eventually...return to b.)
Uh, maybe because it's not a contract, it's a government issued licence?
Nope...definitely a contract. Clearly it's a license, but in order to get that license, you have to agree to the terms and requirements of the license contract as set forth by the state legislature and outlined in the fine print for that contract, most of which (and possibly all) is found in the driver's handbook.
I should say that, in light of this, I remember that the state legislature has the ability to exempt minors and allow them to participate in some contracts (like the driver's license contract.)
If you go onto ebay and look for old driver's licenses, you'll find that the back of some of the old non-photo licenses had the terms and conditions of the license contract, and that's where you signed your license. Today the relationship between signing the license and affirming your signature to the license contract is lost, since we assume its related more to identity.
This statement came from a very different time in history. You could reasonably say this when the entire laws of a state filled just one book, the laws were clear and concise, and rarely changed (I read that as people would cross into a new state, if they were gonna be there for any length of time, they could buy the book of state laws to learn about the new state. But this was 150 years ago, when people really started moving West aggressively.)
Abraham Lincoln taught himself law...in a very short period of time (2 years I believe.)
This doesn't necessarily refute your argument for Mrs. Torres (basic civil/criminal actions) but it does refute others. The bible is 770,000 words, but the IRS income tax code is nearly 7 million...the expectation that the average american know and understand all of the US income tax code is absurd and, thankfully, non-existant. Courts and the IRS tend to be lenient with the complexities of the tax code, as long as it's shown that they weren't purposefully defrauding/evading the system.
It's not that minors can't asssume debt, it's that they can't enter into legally binding contracts.
I'm going to say that this is for the most part true, especially contracts that have a debt component. (Debt contracts are uniquely governed from other contracts)
But there are exceptions...the main one I can think of is the driver's license (which is really just a contract.) While most, if not all states, require parental authorization to get a driver's license, that's a new thing related to motor vehicle safety and allowing the parent to have a say concerning whether they want their child to have a license. It used to be that a 16 year old (or sometimes a 14 and a 15 year old) could show up at the DMV and get a license without their parent...even today, the parental authorization is just an authorization (not a consigning), it doesn't actually bind the parent into their child's driver's license contract.
Also, many states have their ages of consent at 15-16...consensual sexual relations can be thought of as a type of contract.
There are other exceptions, I just can't thin of them at the moment.
Re:Biometrics are hated by real security geeks.
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Why, then, do biometrics keep getting press?
Yes, you're right in saying that it's partially because they are so sexy and that millions of development dollars are going into them...and there is quite a lot at stake. Biometric companies have to make sure that people trust their products for the job at hand, and they're putting their money to that task.
People really do not understand security issues...they seem to think of security as a very basic transaction. If you click the link in my.sig, you'll find my security document theory whitepaper, which talks about photo ID cards. People think of the photo ID card concept in such simple terms, when it's really a very ugly, complex security model. (I have this theory that people are bedazzled by the photograph, and really don't think much about where that photograph came from. Honestly, you could probably do quite a lot of crimes if you had a laminated photo ID hanging around your neck. )
With regards to biometrics, I believe the trust comes from the 1 to 1 correspondence idea. When an indivdual is professionally fingerprinted, and then later the same individual is profesionally fingerprinted again, the likelyhood that you would choose the wrong individual is very low, that's why fingerprints work so well in establishing identity of criminals. People assume that that can therefore be translated into some sorta security authetication system, which is simply not the case.
A fingerprint is simply an image. Nothing more, nothing less. Yes, it's an unusual image, small and compact. Sometimes this image isn't scanned visually, but scanned 3 dimensionally (like with a small electrical current...that's how some of the more advanced fingerprint readers work.) But it's still a damn image. Same applies to retinal scans, facial recognition, palm prints (which then may combine heat with an image. Ooo. Temperature...how unusual.) Since a counterfeit photo ID card is really just a plastic card with...an image, how are biometrics any different?
(Incidentally...how did photo ID cards become so popular? Cuz photo ID card manufacturing companies through a lot of money at convincing us they're worthwhile. You didn't see the photo driver's licenses (in the US) until Polaroid came up with instant color photography.)
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This is Isreal, and you are free to not answer their questions.
Not if you actually live in Israel, and your ID card indicates that you're not Jewish.
The way ID cards exist and are used in each country of the world is unique, and the experience with Israel could fill volumes.
For a Jew, it represents a complex sense of identity, that really is a personal thing...there was quite a lot of argument concerning those who had become Jewish through non-orthodox conversion, and whether they should be able to have "Jewish" on their ID cards...which pissed off the orthodox establishment.
On the other hand, turning 16 is hell for a Palestinian. You stand in line at one office which gives out ID cards in Palestine, and then you're hassled for the rest of your life.
Several years ago the bottom was hit when Israeli police were confiscating ID cards of Palestinians. Since the card is required for you to move around, it basically made them non-entities who couldn't go anywhere (this practice was ended after much international criticism.)
I still hear stories of Israeli police who, after examining a Palestinian's ID card, throw the card onto the ground, as opposed to handing it back. It's a quick and dirty way of insulting them and their identity, and reminding them that they are not in control, and what really is in control is a cheap piece of plastic...and the people who issued it.
I mention all this because the Israeli experience with ID card is a great reason why not to adopt ID cards.
I also mention that, in a truly bizarre finding, the Israeli ID card experience 90% mimics that of the Nazi Germany ID card experience (right down to the letter "J" indicating if the person is Jewish or not.)
-I may or may not want info like eye color, hair color, weight, height etc.. I hesitate because I don't think they are particularly usefull in identification. I've never had anyone actually check my eye color when I present ID.. and I know women who change thier hair color more often than thier desktop background.
:-)
This information is an anachronism...from the time when driver's licenses didn't have photos on them...and that information was used to make sure the card belonged to that driver. Once photos were added, no one bothered to actually remove the info...or at least, they saw no particular reason to. (Countries that issued ID cards that started out as photograph based, don't have this info on em.)
The information is still collected because if you don't have your license on you, and you get pulled over, the police could confirm identity by double checking the info from the DMV database.
As for your idea, you're always fighting with the fact that identity card systems simply don't work well with too many people. California, for instance, issues 25,000 photo ID cards per day. Even with a very very low rate of bad card issuance, they still issue out 100,000 bad cards per year (photo ID cards that can be used to misrepresent yourself.) Sure your idea takes away a major failure point (database accumulation) but it assumes that people wont' lose the cards, the documents that are associated with them, and honestly, it really doesn't change all that much from what we currently have.
But check out my Security Document Theory document and get back with me.
Normally I don't point out language errors, usually they aren't that important...however I find myself "uncomfortable" with the idea that a "ban" can be "revoked."
After all, it was the initial screening abilities that were revoked in the first place...can revoke be used to mean "reverse" in this instance?
(Revoke implies to me that some ability associated with another person is being annuled. Here, the ban was not placed by the other party, but by the same party who will be reversing it.)
Rich... very, very rich people. Their families can hire very, very, very expensive lawyers to make a corporation pay very, very, dearly for their mistake.
On a civil case like this, lawyers go on contingency, so no money is out of pocket for the individual. This scenario is very likely since a settlement is virtually guaranteed. Therefore being really rich has no particular bearing on the situation.
Lots of money for lawyers helps on criminal cases (when you're the accused) or when the case does not have a guaranteed settlement, and you wish to use lawyers to irritate someone.
Incidentally, let's say this were the case anyway...and flying really rich people around was a higher insurance risk due to the liabilities if something happened. The insurance companies who underwrite the airline woudl take this into consideration and charge higher premiums. Those higher premiums would translate into higher airfares for those rich individuals, meaning that they were essentially insuring their own expensive asses.
What are some other example of technology regression, I wonder?
Electric hand dryers.
I wouldn't give up my model M for anything. However there is this one interesting issue...when you got one girlfriend on the phone, and the other online, the one on the phone gets pissed off saying that you're not paying attention to her because she can hear you typing in the background.
Throw a serial ATA card into your PC and get one or two Westerm Digital Raptor drives (37.6GB) You won't be at 50GB, but you'll get 10k rpm performance and a five year warranty...drive is about $120-$150.
:-)
And then you can keep your left nut
Actually...I happen to be an Ohioan, and I think the verticalized license document is pissing in the wind...though slight better than what they've done in the past (different backgrounds, different colors in the title bar...et cetera.)
It's possible for someone to be over 21 and have a verticalized license...though I can't say for sure why I've been told of people being more successful than not with the verticalized license.
Incidentally, I'm working on legislation to allow individuals to get a license without a birthyear on it (if they don't use it for age related ID...but they use it for ID, and don't want to show their age everywhere.) It only makes sense that this license would be vertical...
It's just a 2d barcode...same principle...slightly more information in the barcode, rarely are they encrypted (though I think the Georgia 2d is.) It's an ISO 2d barcode standard either way.
All you need is a fake mexican consular id and you can be anybody.
Normally I would just fake a birth certificate and a Social Security Card, which seems a pretty reasonable and common way of doing things.
Or I could take your idea, and fake a matricular consular card, which is only held by people who are illegal immigrants, because for some reason, there is some advantage to me to pretend to be a fucking illegal immigrant.
In addition to simply demagnetizing the stripe, you could re-encode the stripe with new information...like you're really over 21...or your name is really something else, et cetera.
With barcodes you can always put a sticker with a new barcode over the original barcode. You would have to be looking really hard to notice, if done right (remember people printing up new UPC barcodes for Wal Mart products?)
The only type of machine readable document implement that is difficult to change are simultaneously human readable...the readable characters on the passport (found on the first page on most passports and have lots of little >>>>>>>> thingies) were originally conceived on a privacy basis, because people would always know what's encoded in their passports. I cite the security advantages, since a human can read what the machine can read, and its easy for a human to double check that.
Not that they would. When a human has a machine to read a document, they will almost always just trust what the machine says, and not check what the document says.
Swiping licenses is used to prevent fake ids and it works very well.
The hell it does not. Anyone with the ability to produce a half way good looking photo ID has the ability to encode a magnetic stripe.
In my Security Document Theory whitepaper I discuss why machine readability is a bad idea on other fronts.
Here's the nuts and bolts of it...in a class transaction like checking for age, usuall the bouncer/bartender isn't as interested in the photo as they are in the license (making sure it wasn't counterfeited.) This is why you can get away with a license that doesn't look like you.
The potential here, as you can see, is for a facial recognition system, but that's another story.
At any rate...you could very well hand over a license that's of you, but indicates that you're under 21. If the bouncer has a swiper machine, they won't check to see what the license says, all they have to do is swipe the license to see what the machine says, and let you get in regardless. All you really need to do is take your current photo ID document and re-encode the stripe so that it says what you want it to say...the front of the license will continue saying that you're under 21, but it doesn't matter as long as the machine says you're over 21...a human will trust the machine.
Which is exactly what is happening in the area I live in.
Agreed...the BBC effects were not just good for the time...and required a considerable amount of innovations given the technology they had, but still look very good to me now (albeit a touch dated in that Doctor Who sorta way.) I loved the look of the starship Heart of Gold...but my favorite thing was how they got the "teletype" to appear on the screen when the book was talking. To this day it remains my preference when words have to appear on screen in a movie/show (Gaiman's Don't Panic explains how the BBC did that.)
I don't understand why Americans are so afraid of national ID cards. Where I live we have standardized national ID cards that are used in most situations, and I can't say how it has made me any less free.
It should be said at this point that every country's experience with ID cards is very different. Many European countries use them for mostly bureaucratic functions (functions which are done in other countries, without difficulty, without ID cards. In fact, I like to say, if you don't have ID card fraud, they probably aren't all that useful int he first place. The reason why people in those countries do think they're useful in some way is simply because the "photo ID culture" is already ingrained there, and they can't imagine life without them.)
I once asked my Costa Rican relatives if there were any purpose to having an ID (Cedula de Identidad) in someone else's name...and they couldn't think of anything. But there's lots of ID fraud down there, because their cards indicate citizenship, residency status, and work rights. So illegal immigrants from other nations do need a fake card to work there.
Possibly the most fascinating example of ID cards is that of Israel...it could fill up volumes. The name on the card isn't important...but the cards indicate citizenship *and* religion. This is controversial even among Israeli Jews (the cards no longer indicate that someone is "Jewish" because indicating that a person who was Jewish who wasn't Jewish blood or Orthodox, would severely piss off the Orthodox Jews. The solution to this amuses me insanely, now they simply put a letter "j" on the cards (in Hebrew script...it can stand for Israeli or Jew and doesn't indicate what type of Jew) and not a single person has noticed that that is what the Nazi's put on their ID cards to note if someone was Jewish.)
On the other side of things, when a Palestinian turns 16 they have to get their ID card, and they're treated like rubbish during the process, and hassled for the card regularly. A friend of mine whose been to Israel says that Israeli guards examine the ID cards...and then throw them onto the ground, instead of just handing them back. This is a fascinating form of psychological power...implying that they are just as worhtless as the card they threw on the ground. In the late 1990's...Israeli guards would confiscate ID cards, essentially making the person unable to go home, or anywhere for that matter (ID card confiscation brought a lot of heat unto Israel from numerous organizations, and has since been stopped.)
For the Jews, the card is a form of empowerment and identity. For the Palestinians, it's a form of repression. (Interestingly, other than making sure that people stay in their neighboorhoods and keep to curfews, the cards play no role in security...this, in a country in which security is the most important thing above anything.)
The United States experience with ID cards has been that of fraud. Fraud from people trying to get alcohol (not really severe) and financial fraud. Our financial fraud issues are indeed unique, and why they occur is not easily figured out.
I bring up Europeans again...many European countries do have a national ID card. During World War I, the passport was introduced, and Europeans were horrified by the idea of a photograph based citizenship document. It simply allowed too much control concerning how people could move freely across borders. The passport was *guaranteed* to be a temporary document which would be terminated at the end of World War I (I would like to say that the job of the termination fo the document was in the hands of Wilson's League of Nations...and the failure to put that together is why the passport stuck around.)
I think one thing that bugs Americans is the idea of being forced to do something. No one forces you to pay taxes (you're not forced to work after all, or buy stuff) or vote, or get an SSN...or whatever. But a national ID card would force you to do something you may not want to do. Is it appropriate
And California is about to massively devalue that ID by issuing drivers licenses to undocumented (aka illegal) aliens.
Which would do wonders for fraud in California. You see, the problem is that the California driver's license, for no damn good reason, is trusted way too much. I could do more harm with a California license than any other state ID or license card.
California issues out no less than 25,000 ID cards per day and even at an amazing rate of accuracy and security, you would still be looking at a pretty good number of "bad" cards in the stack. (Sacramento Bee said that the DMV said they issued 100,000 bad cards in 2000. That's what the DMV themselves were claiming.) Every one of those bad cards is trusted way too much. Anything that can take the trust value (my term) down a few notches would help.
Other states do issue illegals licenses...not just California. But the focus is on California, though honestly I wouldn't have trusted one of those cheap pieces of plastic in the first place.
(Speaking of that 100,000 number...I was amused because in 1982 the CA DMV claimed that it was 2000 per year, and that's why they needed to have mandatory license fingerprinting. A lot of good that it did.)
I live in NJ, the state with the license that's easiest to forge.
Yes...but the advantage is that NJ doesn't have very much severe fraud committed with the photo driver's licenses (and non-photo licenses.) Everyone knows they can be easily forged so no one trusts them for all that much. As things go, I rather have some under age alcohol consumption than serious credit/financial fraud (which is far more severe in states with much more "secure" licenses, like California or Texas.)
he asked me why my HP calculator was growling at his calculator.
For the same reason the cuddly geek would scowl at the dumb-as-rocks jock. Sure he could come up with a lame answer faster...but why was that enough to get all the girls?
There's so many things wrong here. For starters, Federal tax dollars (aka "your money") are being spent to push the paperwork on a car that only the super-wealthy will ever drive.
While this law was drawn for them...it's entirely possible that a far smaller car collector would benefit. They may want a rare european car whose value is no where near the value of a 959, and import it into the US...they would be able to under this law. It's not just for the super rich.
What you should be pissed off (and that you left out of your rant) is the fact that the article noted that the DOT had a major bug up its ass about the 959, and wanted to set some type of example with it. When an institution makes those types of decisions, they have to deal with the consequences, in this case, a bunch of people trying to override them (and the simple pleasure of busting a federal bureaucracy's balls is worth the law to me.) On the other hand, DOT nursed its wounds and then wrote out a huge amount of time and money wasting bureaucratic regulations to enforce a law that's fairly straightforward, simply because it's ego was hurt.
Echoing what another reply said to your post, why they don't allow you to sign a waiver form in the first place is beyond comprehension.
The thing that struck me about this article was how screwed up the US political system is whereby bills are all bundled together
This is a peculiarity of Congress. States usually have constitional requirements for single subject bills (with names that identify what the bill does, none of this "Save the babies and orphaned Hamsters act of 2003" shit) as well as line item veto.
I happen to know that several states, like my Ohio, and Illinois, get pretty mean on enforcement...courts have no problems throwing out laws simply because they were codified under a bill that had multiple subjects.
I've worked at quite a few companies that handle important customer data and to be honest not one of them made any effort to protect that data either from employees or crackers.
Addressing the first part, I believe that 2/5 Americans have access to sensitive data (SSN, birth dates, et cetera) simply because of their jobs.
As for the second part...all employers deal with that type of data, at least on a human resource level. It still isn't in the culture yet to mitigate security concerns yet.
Good situation that is a major party of my Security Document Theory whitepaper
a.) fraud goes up (because of counterfeiting)
b.) so jurisdictions start issuing harder to counterfeit cards
c.) new harder to counterfeit cards have too much trust, justifying criminals to use whatever means possible to get them
d.) fraud goes up
e.) eventually...return to b.)
Uh, maybe because it's not a contract, it's a government issued licence?
Nope...definitely a contract. Clearly it's a license, but in order to get that license, you have to agree to the terms and requirements of the license contract as set forth by the state legislature and outlined in the fine print for that contract, most of which (and possibly all) is found in the driver's handbook.
I should say that, in light of this, I remember that the state legislature has the ability to exempt minors and allow them to participate in some contracts (like the driver's license contract.)
If you go onto ebay and look for old driver's licenses, you'll find that the back of some of the old non-photo licenses had the terms and conditions of the license contract, and that's where you signed your license. Today the relationship between signing the license and affirming your signature to the license contract is lost, since we assume its related more to identity.
Ignorance of the law is not an excuse.
This statement came from a very different time in history. You could reasonably say this when the entire laws of a state filled just one book, the laws were clear and concise, and rarely changed (I read that as people would cross into a new state, if they were gonna be there for any length of time, they could buy the book of state laws to learn about the new state. But this was 150 years ago, when people really started moving West aggressively.)
Abraham Lincoln taught himself law...in a very short period of time (2 years I believe.)
This doesn't necessarily refute your argument for Mrs. Torres (basic civil/criminal actions) but it does refute others. The bible is 770,000 words, but the IRS income tax code is nearly 7 million...the expectation that the average american know and understand all of the US income tax code is absurd and, thankfully, non-existant. Courts and the IRS tend to be lenient with the complexities of the tax code, as long as it's shown that they weren't purposefully defrauding/evading the system.
It's not that minors can't asssume debt, it's that they can't enter into legally binding contracts.
I'm going to say that this is for the most part true, especially contracts that have a debt component. (Debt contracts are uniquely governed from other contracts)
But there are exceptions...the main one I can think of is the driver's license (which is really just a contract.) While most, if not all states, require parental authorization to get a driver's license, that's a new thing related to motor vehicle safety and allowing the parent to have a say concerning whether they want their child to have a license. It used to be that a 16 year old (or sometimes a 14 and a 15 year old) could show up at the DMV and get a license without their parent...even today, the parental authorization is just an authorization (not a consigning), it doesn't actually bind the parent into their child's driver's license contract.
Also, many states have their ages of consent at 15-16...consensual sexual relations can be thought of as a type of contract.
There are other exceptions, I just can't thin of them at the moment.
Why, then, do biometrics keep getting press?
.sig, you'll find my security document theory whitepaper, which talks about photo ID cards. People think of the photo ID card concept in such simple terms, when it's really a very ugly, complex security model. (I have this theory that people are bedazzled by the photograph, and really don't think much about where that photograph came from. Honestly, you could probably do quite a lot of crimes if you had a laminated photo ID hanging around your neck. )
Yes, you're right in saying that it's partially because they are so sexy and that millions of development dollars are going into them...and there is quite a lot at stake. Biometric companies have to make sure that people trust their products for the job at hand, and they're putting their money to that task.
People really do not understand security issues...they seem to think of security as a very basic transaction. If you click the link in my
With regards to biometrics, I believe the trust comes from the 1 to 1 correspondence idea. When an indivdual is professionally fingerprinted, and then later the same individual is profesionally fingerprinted again, the likelyhood that you would choose the wrong individual is very low, that's why fingerprints work so well in establishing identity of criminals. People assume that that can therefore be translated into some sorta security authetication system, which is simply not the case.
A fingerprint is simply an image. Nothing more, nothing less. Yes, it's an unusual image, small and compact. Sometimes this image isn't scanned visually, but scanned 3 dimensionally (like with a small electrical current...that's how some of the more advanced fingerprint readers work.) But it's still a damn image. Same applies to retinal scans, facial recognition, palm prints (which then may combine heat with an image. Ooo. Temperature...how unusual.) Since a counterfeit photo ID card is really just a plastic card with...an image, how are biometrics any different?
(Incidentally...how did photo ID cards become so popular? Cuz photo ID card manufacturing companies through a lot of money at convincing us they're worthwhile. You didn't see the photo driver's licenses (in the US) until Polaroid came up with instant color photography.)