Look at Napster: it (in itself) is not illegal, it just has the possibility of being used for illegal purposes, yet we support it. Now switch the word "illegal" with "bad" and the word "Napster" with the phrase "National ID Card" and instantly our opinion chanages.
One of the key concepts of Western Civilization is that individuals should get the benefit of the doubt, but government should be kept on a choke chain. Thus, the different treatment of the two concepts is perfectly proper.
For the limited occasions when proof of identity is legitimately needed, an 8x10 glossy is obviously far superior to a typical DMV thumbprint photo. Ditto for a thumbprint image, etc.
Thus, I would propose the "National ID Plaque", something about the size and thickness (for durability) of a magazine, bearing a good-sized portrait on one side and blown-up thumbprint image on the other, with the bearer's name and one of those anti-tamper holograms embossed into either (or both).
The fact that the plaque would be too much of a PITA to carry around would prevent the sort of mission creep that linked the Social Security number (which was originally supposed to be presented to an employer when taking a new job, and used for no other purpose) to everything in sight. As an additional precaution, it would include no encoded information of any sort (this also insures that zapping it in a microwave, putting it under a magnet, etc, won't damage it).
As you helpfully point out, your argument is known as a slippery slope argument, a classic error. The mistake is that the introduction of a national identity card does not imply the apocalyptic consequences you describe.
The slippery slope argument is perfectly valid when applied to a person or organization with a proven record of sliding down the slippery slope.
For instance, the fact that someone with a record of throwing firecrackers at cats and fighting dirty in schoolyard brawls does not necessarily mean that he's eventually going to kill or maim someone. However, nobody in his right mind would knowingly hire such a person to baby-sit their toddler.
Similarly, nobody in his right mind would trust the government that brought us COINTELPRO, political tax audits, Carnivore, etc. with the additional power that could be excersized under a "national ID" scheme.
Every French and Swiss person legally has to have a national ID card and carry it with them at all times, on pain of arrest.... That's the theory: in practice, no one carries them or is ever asked for them, and if you are, you can just say "I forgot."
Correction: in practice, if you're "the right sort" (in US terms, a respectable-looking white guy), you can just say "I forgot"; if you aren't "the right sort", you get to be the Bride of Bubba until the authorities deign to "get it straightened out".
And how much of a royalty does the RIAA get on the sale of hard drives/MP3 encoders/iPods/Nomads? I'm sure Ms. Rosen will gleefully point out to our well-intentioned friend in Congress that she's more concerned about CD-to-MP3 copying than CD-to-CD, which might, unfortunately, render Rep. Boucher's argument moot.
Irrelevant. The royalty was part of the AHRA deal -- and the first release of broken CDs should have resulted in the arrival of a federal marshal to get all the money back, now, with a bunch of Teamsters to start hauling off the office furniture if this was not forthcoming.
Did they think we are not going to build the best products possible? Did they think we were going to just be fat, dumb and happy and not continue to win business? Did they think we were going to forget about taking care of our customers???
There's precedent for this sort of thing -- a dig through Robert Bork's video rental records during his confirmation hearings led to the Video Privacy Protection Act.
Aside from that minor point their philosophy is as different as Day and Night. Osama beleives that america's capitalism and the way we 'spread' our philosophies to be evil. Hillary believes in Amercian capitolism.
No, she doesn't. She believes in "state capitalism" in which government, not the market, picks the winners and losers.
"desktop system" means not running any servers
"compromise" doesn't include DoS (ping of death, etc)
"remote" apparently means the user doesn't have to do anything.
And we're still waiting for Bill Clinton to explain what "is" means.
Easy -- they find somebody stupid enough to believe that it will work, and then sell spamming services. Even if (when) it doesn't work, the spammer still has the money. Lather, rinse, repeat.
If we have the right to send email to whomever we please, and to do so without the content of our email being checked by a third party, shouldn't that privilege extend to companies wishing to promote a product - however irritating it might be?
The issue here is one of property rights, not speech rights. Freedom of speech does not cover spamming for the same reason it doesn't cover painting graffiti on people's houses.
Why is it that nearly every press release or announcement about a digital music playing device describes the storage capacity in terms of the number of songs it can hold?
Because then they can puff up the advertised capacity by using 2-minute songs coded at 64 Kbps. They mention the actual capacity in standard units (and even there they puff it up by using K=1000 instead of K=1024) in the fine print, and would avoid even that if they could get away with it.
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With a Segway, I can ride to the grocery store.
Yes, if you're going there to hang out and not to actually buy groceries.
The reaction to the national ID card isn't so much a reaction to an identity proof as it is to the use of an identity document as the keystone for a surveillance state apparatus. There'd be less opposition, IMO, if there were a credible way to guarantee that the only information available to someone swiping the card is either "This is Gary Goodguy; he's OK" or "This is Nick Nogoodnik; he's WANTED by [agency] for [list of surveillance and arrest warrants]"
I think the advocates of the notion have only themselves to blame for not presenting a good-faith attempt at that goal.
Your social security number is already a national id card. Link it with a driver's license and you're set.
They allowed that, then mandated it, several years ago.
Nope -- I have a number on my (VA) license that has no connection to my SSN.
What happened is that 1)Rep. Lamar Smith pushed through a bill that would have mandated that the driver's license become a de facto national ID card bearing the SSN, 2)Rep. Smith in particular and Congress in general caught hell, 3)Some members of Congress (notably Rep. Ron Paul) are trying to repeal the original bill; failing that, they've pushed back the deadline and/or forbidden the spending of any money on the program year after year.
If they ever DO mandate a national ID card/number I want it to be mandatory to provide it for registration in federal elections and to be collected federally and checked for uniqueness. That would go a long way toward eliminating election fraud.
Actually, I was thinking that attaching this mandate to any "National ID" bill that came down the pike would be just the poison pill to kill it D-E-D dead.
So after a bunch of banks lose a lot of their customers' money because of Passport, what do you think they will do? Run to Open Source? No, they'll close their online doors, and you'll be back to waiting in line and paying an arm and a leg for teller access to set up some stupid bill payment.
In theory, banks could cut back on robberies by having airport-like security at the door. The reason they don't is that their customers simply wouldn't stand for it.
Absence of online access is similarly unacceptable to a growing percentage of the customer base. Thus, banks would be forced to try something else once Microsoft failed them (and, if M$ hid behind its no-liability clause in the wake of a big exploit, they wouldn't have to be forced very hard).
A brick-and-mortar company has a relatively small pool of suspects to investigate when it finds out that somebody stole a customer's credit card number. A hack into any Passport-like database could have come from any of millions of people anywhere in the world.
Supporters of this program claim that such a program will allow day-to-day communications among law-abiding citizens to remain private, whilst still allowing the FBI and CIA to monitor the communications of suspected terrorists(with a warrant, of course).
A backdoor which does not require anyone outside the agency to assist, or even know about, the tap makes the warrant requirement unenforceable, of course.
The liberal media opposition to this initiative
What color is the sky in your world? If anything, the opposition to increased government snooping is from the conservative and libertarian factions of US politics.
For the purposes of this post, I'm going to ignore the fact that nowhere in our Constitution or Bill of Rights, are we guaranteed anonimity or absolute privacy.
It seems to me that if we cannot trust our policing agencies to be responsible with the power they have been given, the problem is not with the cryptography, but the government itself, and this problem needs to be addressed as such.
The obvious first step in addressing the problem of government abuse is to avoid aggrivating the situation by giving the abusers additional powers.
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One of the key concepts of Western Civilization is that individuals should get the benefit of the doubt, but government should be kept on a choke chain. Thus, the different treatment of the two concepts is perfectly proper.
Thus, I would propose the "National ID Plaque", something about the size and thickness (for durability) of a magazine, bearing a good-sized portrait on one side and blown-up thumbprint image on the other, with the bearer's name and one of those anti-tamper holograms embossed into either (or both).
The fact that the plaque would be too much of a PITA to carry around would prevent the sort of mission creep that linked the Social Security number (which was originally supposed to be presented to an employer when taking a new job, and used for no other purpose) to everything in sight. As an additional precaution, it would include no encoded information of any sort (this also insures that zapping it in a microwave, putting it under a magnet, etc, won't damage it).
The slippery slope argument is perfectly valid when applied to a person or organization with a proven record of sliding down the slippery slope.
For instance, the fact that someone with a record of throwing firecrackers at cats and fighting dirty in schoolyard brawls does not necessarily mean that he's eventually going to kill or maim someone. However, nobody in his right mind would knowingly hire such a person to baby-sit their toddler.
Similarly, nobody in his right mind would trust the government that brought us COINTELPRO, political tax audits, Carnivore, etc. with the additional power that could be excersized under a "national ID" scheme.
Correction: in practice, if you're "the right sort" (in US terms, a respectable-looking white guy), you can just say "I forgot"; if you aren't "the right sort", you get to be the Bride of Bubba until the authorities deign to "get it straightened out".
Irrelevant. The royalty was part of the AHRA deal -- and the first release of broken CDs should have resulted in the arrival of a federal marshal to get all the money back, now, with a bunch of Teamsters to start hauling off the office furniture if this was not forthcoming.
Oh, and which of the two countries held one of our aircrews hostage a few months back?
Well... yes, actually....
There's precedent for this sort of thing -- a dig through Robert Bork's video rental records during his confirmation hearings led to the Video Privacy Protection Act.
No, she doesn't. She believes in "state capitalism" in which government, not the market, picks the winners and losers.
Here's a little statement from Clinton himself: "I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky."
The two statements bear the same relationship to reality.
"desktop system" means not running any servers
"compromise" doesn't include DoS (ping of death, etc)
"remote" apparently means the user doesn't have to do anything.
And we're still waiting for Bill Clinton to explain what "is" means.
Microsoft standard "Take Me, I'm Yours" default settings strike again.
Easy -- they find somebody stupid enough to believe that it will work, and then sell spamming services. Even if (when) it doesn't work, the spammer still has the money. Lather, rinse, repeat.
They also corrupted our politicians and dumped dihydrogen monoxide into the water supply.
Thank you for having the courage to speak the truth about the brutal and tyrannical Chinese occupation of Tibet....
The issue here is one of property rights, not speech rights. Freedom of speech does not cover spamming for the same reason it doesn't cover painting graffiti on people's houses.
Because then they can puff up the advertised capacity by using 2-minute songs coded at 64 Kbps. They mention the actual capacity in standard units (and even there they puff it up by using K=1000 instead of K=1024) in the fine print, and would avoid even that if they could get away with it.
Yes, if you're going there to hang out and not to actually buy groceries.
I think the advocates of the notion have only themselves to blame for not presenting a good-faith attempt at that goal.
They allowed that, then mandated it, several years ago.
Nope -- I have a number on my (VA) license that has no connection to my SSN.
What happened is that 1)Rep. Lamar Smith pushed through a bill that would have mandated that the driver's license become a de facto national ID card bearing the SSN, 2)Rep. Smith in particular and Congress in general caught hell, 3)Some members of Congress (notably Rep. Ron Paul) are trying to repeal the original bill; failing that, they've pushed back the deadline and/or forbidden the spending of any money on the program year after year.
Actually, I was thinking that attaching this mandate to any "National ID" bill that came down the pike would be just the poison pill to kill it D-E-D dead.
...a CIA team tried to chemically treat a cat's dander so that it would rub up against Fidel Castro and cause his beard to fall out.
In theory, banks could cut back on robberies by having airport-like security at the door. The reason they don't is that their customers simply wouldn't stand for it.
Absence of online access is similarly unacceptable to a growing percentage of the customer base. Thus, banks would be forced to try something else once Microsoft failed them (and, if M$ hid behind its no-liability clause in the wake of a big exploit, they wouldn't have to be forced very hard).
A brick-and-mortar company has a relatively small pool of suspects to investigate when it finds out that somebody stole a customer's credit card number. A hack into any Passport-like database could have come from any of millions of people anywhere in the world.
A backdoor which does not require anyone outside the agency to assist, or even know about, the tap makes the warrant requirement unenforceable, of course.
The liberal media opposition to this initiative
What color is the sky in your world? If anything, the opposition to increased government snooping is from the conservative and libertarian factions of US politics.
For the purposes of this post, I'm going to ignore the fact that nowhere in our Constitution or Bill of Rights, are we guaranteed anonimity or absolute privacy.
That's good, because the Constitution specifically requires that position.
It seems to me that if we cannot trust our policing agencies to be responsible with the power they have been given, the problem is not with the cryptography, but the government itself, and this problem needs to be addressed as such.
The obvious first step in addressing the problem of government abuse is to avoid aggrivating the situation by giving the abusers additional powers.