Not really, you can easily get any information you want on the police arresting you.
Tell that to the large number of people arrested on terrorism charges- it can take until the trial to find out what you were arrested for, and you may *never* find out who arrested you to begin with. Anonymous agents working for the government that you don't have the power to do anything to are a BIG part of the problem.
So it is okay for the majority to hurt their fellow citizens? One need not be anonymous to do great harm, after all everyone knew who Stalin and Mao were and yet they committed the worst genocides in known history.
Correction- they ORDERED the worst genocides in known history- anonymous lower functionaries actually carried out the program. In addition to that, both were elected by tyranny of the MINORITY- if you weren't a party member, you weren't allowed to vote. Add to that they were elected to positions of supreme power. What do you think would have happened to them if the people they were committing genocide against could have had a vote? Or worse yet, with a single message on a computer bulletin board, started a petition for recall and treason proceedings?
That is impossible, as I said such a system is inherently unstable as those in power will find a way to hide.
A sufficient RealID and Computerized Public Records Law won't allow them to have a way to hide- anything.
After all, national security requires a lot of information and actions to be hidden for the good of the nation.
Not neccessarily- if your defenses are *solid* then there is no problem with national security. You don't actually have to invade anybody for national security- but you can't have any international trade with that option.
In the end there is no one to watch the watchman as humans and their constructs are inherently flawed.
Thus the public records law- so that all information is available to everybody all the time.
As a result democracy and a police state are incompatible except in some magical land. It's the same problem as communism, it requires people to not abuse the hell out of a system which we inherently do.
Let people try to abuse the system- with every movement recorded, every movement available to anybody who cares to look, every transaction able to be tracked, and a majority voting public able to enact laws *directly* and take full control of the national budget. Let them try- with no anonymity possible, and a single vote able to replace any governmental official at *ANY* time.
Likewise you seem to think that such a system is optimal, yet it is unlikely to be so (no system is) and since you cannot allow change you force stagnation in an inferior system.
Who said anything about "cannot allow change"? In a total electronic democracy, change is as easy as posting your petition and getting a majority of people to agree with you.
Democracy and a police state are mutually exclusive in anything but the shortest term. The people in power quickly realize that they can stay in power even longer by getting rid of a democratic process. A police state and the social climate required for one gives them enough power to do so with a good chance of succeeding (anyone who tries to fight them is quickly rounded up). In turn the resulting dictatorship is likely run by utter self serving nitwits resulting is massive social problems. No method is left for fighting against the dictatorship as the police state in being formed has removed all such methods. Also true democracy allows for tyranny of the majority.
That is the way it has worked in the past- because the police have been allowed to be anonymous. I have no problem with a tyranny of the majority- I have a problem with nonconformists and those who would be anonymous to hurt their fellow citizens. That kind of police state is only possible if the leaders in a society can hide- and I want *NOBODY* to be able to hide.
So your not talking about an invasion.. your talking about immigration. I charge that the US does not have an immigration problem. The US has a welfare problem. If we lived in a socialist society and there were a limited number of jobs then we would have a problem.. but in a land of freedom.. you don't need someone to employ you.. you can employ yourself and create your own jobs that need to be filled. If we give immigrants freedom yet with no social handouts they wont steal anything from us.. indeed they will make our industry and economy strong.
Look at Mexico- if they could make OUR industry and economy strong, would they have started at home?
They insure it with a 1 million dollar guarantee.. They loose your ID, you get 1 mil. If the government looses your ID because of incompetence.. oh well, nothing you can do.. but if a private industry does.. they can be held liable.
No, you misunderstand. What's my guarantee, as a business, that somebody possessing a lifelock ID is who they say they are? Is there a similar $1 million guarantee on the other side as well?
Already possible.. have you heard of gated neighborhoods?.. aside from that.. the governments not going to provide a ID scanner for your yard or neighborhood.. and if they did it would be a total police state.
I have no problem with a police state that responds to elections and where EVERY decision made by EVERY bureaucrat is public and actionable.
Government is not a "good" thing. We can look to history to see how well governments have served man. The very worst examples of tyranny, oppression, war and murder, slavery, rape and theft were committed by government hands. even if our elected officials are somehow holy saints today.. they may not always be so and a system like this will never go away if they become some day.. less saintly.
A lack of anonymity is a sword that cuts both ways- tyranny and oppression are impossible where every second is watched by an informed electorate.
Your making assumptions about me. I'm not afraid to be tracked. I stand with my feet in the ground and say "You do not have the authority to track me."
I fail to understand the difference. If you're not afraid to be tracked, then you're not afraid to give *anybody* the authority to track you. Only if you have reason to hide something do you have reason not to be tracked.
I know I stand for liberty regardless of what others think. Despite what laws you try to create I will do the right thing.. Lets say I'm government.. and I wrote down on paper. "Its legal to murder, have fun folks." and you do.. Is that still wrong? I maintain despite any law or any paper that it is always wrong to kill. Laws are "legal fiction" Yet I follow them.. and you would not believe the regulations and hoops I need to jump through to have a business.. I practically have to hire someone to keep up with it.
And there would be LESS need for regulation in a situation where everybody was tracked. If anybody could get your total business history on the web, there'd be no need for GOVERNMENT regulation at all- your business history would speak for itself, and people would simply choose not to do business with you if you had a bad track record.
I'll tell you, I have no problem with that, I prefer you know so you will know where to come again if you need my services.. I have a problem with people using force against me.
Then the simple answer is don't defraud anybody. No need for force if everything can be tracked.
Didn't you read the post above? That's an excellent way to raise your value as a resource- if your employer is prevented from exploiting other resources.
Depends on how bad the cheating was, and the likelyhood he will do it in the future. With RealID- the possibility exists of merely putting a big popup warning for anybody looking at his record on the national website "don't do business with this individual". In other words- stop him from harming his fellow citizens.
Why not, exactly save for there being no reason to?
Hmm- falling wages, union busting, the big credit fraud debacles, and consumer fraud. I see plenty of reason to rebel- but lots of stuff preventing us from doing so.
Please do enlighten me. I mean you seem to be scared shitless of a few dozen terrorist yet claim that a hundred thousand people (including many members of the armed forces) couldn't do anything at all?
Rather, they were prevented actively from doing something by a system that values freedom for criminals over the lives of civilians.
The US revolution had a 30% support rate I believe and an equal number who were indifferent.
True- but it also had an enemy with a 6-month round trip supply chain.
Novel? Please go read a history book and look up every uprising and revolution in there. It's only novel if you're the typical sort of American idiot who can't tell where Europe is on a map even if its labeled.
Just war theory AND the concept of Jihad previous to this had the concept of Sufficient Authority. That concept has been done away with in al Qaeda.
Black markets exist in the US or do you think all those inner city gangs legally bought their weapons?
Well, Black Marketers really should be executed for treason- but then again, so should most of the "cheap labor" free market.
So would your transactions where you bought those pro-socialist books which suddenly leads you into a jail cell in South America in 10 years when the government decides socialism is truly evil. Or if you look up some anti-current-administration material and by pure chance match some pattern in a government system then find yourself in a jail on an island with no rights to a trial. We got damn close to it already with Nixon so it's not far from reality.
Well, by that argument I should be in Gitmo already- yet I'm not.
Also data mining royally sucks at this due to the very small amount of data on terrorists and their patterns. So claiming this will stop terrorism is beyond laughable. Just come right out and say you want to live in a police state and stop hiding behind the evil terrorists.
I've made no secret about wanting to live in a police state- as long as it's a democratic one in ALL ways, especially in resource allocation.
What does that have to do with anything, how would the states police themselves? Well?
Oregon back in the days of my big hero, Tom McCall, would have closed it's borders. There's no danger of foreign attack if the foreigners can't get to you- and that includes the Californicators.
How do you know he won't cheat you even if you do know who he is?
Because he'll only do it ONCE- I'll make sure the consequences of doing so are bad enough to keep him from ever cheating anybody ever again.
I of course reserve the right to cheap, kill or rebel if I see that as necessary. History has taught me that societies do not last and that power corrupts, revolutions are inevitable and good in the long scheme of things. A lack of them would lead to stagnation , social decay, widespread unhappiness (likely a perpetual regime of happy drugs would keep that in check) and the eventual extinction of humanity by our own hands or those of nature (sooner or later something bad will happen and social decay means we won't be able to stop it).
* Invasion? How will your little card protect you from an invasion? An armed and well regulated militia does this best, or the national guard.
I completely agree- but since the interstate commerce clause now prevents us from protecting the borders in this fashion, second best is having a national identity card and verification website- to prevent illegals from getting jobs, buying food, etc.
* Fraud? You want the government who is not liable for anything they do wrong to protect you from fraud? There is a private company LifeLock http://lifelock.com/ that already does this, better and cheaper than the feds could, if they screw up you can sue them, AND they can't throw you in jail if you loose your lifelock card.
Now that's interesting- I had not known about them. But there are two sides to fraud- how does lifelock insure that you know who you are dealing with? Will they turn over the address of a con artist who uses a lifelock card?
Security? ID is NOT security.. they are not the same thing. The 9/11 hijackers had ID, Timothy Mcvay ID, Cho Seung-Hui had ID. The Washington snipers had ID. What can we assume from this? ID makes us NO safer.
ID alone doesn't. ID Plus data mining does. An ID is only a primary key.
* Theft? How does they government tracking you physically and digitally help against theft? I can SILL steal your lawn mower if you don't lock it up and your little card does nothing. Maybe you mean ID theft.. see lifelock above.
If you had to show an ID to come into my neighborhood or on to my property, and you steal my lawn mower, you can expect vigilante justice to show up VERY soon.
*wallet? Right now you don't have to carry any card in your wallet if you so choose.. You can still get on air planes without ID. This is freedom. It's how it should be.
Freedom is overrated if it's just the freedom to be a criminal.
We can't secure our schools, we cant secure our shopping malls, hell... we cant even secure our prisons and that's about as secure as I can imagine. I'll have you know that I am a honest small business owner and I will not accept this card. I flat out refuse to do so even if they have to throw me in Jail.. is that fair? for me to go to jail because you want to *feel* secure in your Police state? This is my breaking point. I will not be traced and tracked and have every action purchase and message I send analyzed by the state.
Then you just lied. You're not an "honest small business owner" if you're afraid to be tracked- you're a dishonest crook who is probably taking money away from your workers at one end and your customers at the other- and you're afraid they'll find out and your past sins will come to haunt you.
Will you be willing to destroy my life because I don't want to be tracked? How many more like me are there? 100? 1,000? How about them? At what point does using force on others in your aims become ok?
Anonymity is only usefull to crooks. Why should I be your customer if you're afraid to tell me who you are?
1) Base documents. How will you get a Real ID? You will have to present base documents (driver's license, birth certificate, passport, social security card, proof of address, whatever) to prove your identity. These can already be forged and already are to get perfectly valid driver's licenses. Without fixing the base documents, there is no foundation for Real ID. Someone can quite happily get the fake documents they need to get a very real document which will be accepted for a gold standard. What does someone do when they go to the government to get their Real ID, and someone says "Can't, someone's already got one."?
Have you READ the RealID act? Fixing the base documents IS the first step- it really tightens up the requirments.
2) Existing identity theft. Issuing a new ID won't straighten out the existing tangled records. Which fraudulent credit lines go to which real person? How about income taxes and criminal records? You can't fix IDs that have already been stolen with a new document based on the already bad information.
True enough on this one- the credit reporting agencies will likely face some problems until they clean up their act and stop taking fake IDs.
3) Electronic transactions. An ID won't help you in electronic communications. You can't present your ID to a web page. They might start collecting Real ID numbers, but, like SS numbers, they can be stolen.
Not if you index it to a fingerprint scanner- cheap enough these days, I have one on my cell phone.
4) Lack of verification even in person. Right now, businesses and agencies are not required (and don't have the ability) to check the information that is there, like the fact that a given Social Security number belongs to a two year-old girl, not a thirty year-old man applying for a job. This is the source of a lot of fraud.
This is also a MAJOR part of the RealID act- instant web verification, like the banks already do on SSNs.
Yes. Clearly the Founding Fathers were never under the threat of a rag tag bunch of disorganized fanatics. They were merely under the threat of one of the greatest empires the world has ever known. I would hazard a guess that the threat the British Empire posed to the United States in 1776 was much greater than Al Qaeda could ever hope to be.
Depends upon how you look at the threat. Al Qaeda's real strength is in a rather novel new concept- individualized warfare, where anybody can declare war on anybody even without an army to back them up. The British Empire in 1776 had a 6 month round trip supply line to supply their soldiers in the Colonies- Al Qaeda uses what is already on hand in the country they are attacking. Cut off the supply line- and the British Empire had no hope of ever coming close to winning. Cut off Al Qaeda's supply line, and their soldiers will merely merge into our society and bide their time until they can rejoin the Jihad. Which is more deadly to you?
Consider two things, A) Foreign terrorists will not have a REAL ID since they are not citizens, B) Domestic terrorists are already here. Both of these problems are not solved by a REAL ID.
Consider this- those who do not have a REAL ID will find it much harder to buy and sell; thus cutting off Al Qaeda's supply line. Domestic terrorists who are already here will find their transactions recorded and much easieer to trace by the police- also saving time and trouble. But best of all would be if the States were just given the right to actually police themselves better- but oh no, we can't do that, the interstate commerce clause prevents it.
Also, everyone in the United States still lives in a country that has not been attacked by "weapons of mass destruction".
Once again, depends on your definition- To many, the Oklahoma City Bombing certainly fit the definition.
But to say that we should simply give up and declare "them" the winner? The 'owners' of our lives and our destinies? If you really believe that, then why not just kill yourself now?
Far more fun to learn to be a useful resource- and find your freedom elsewhere.
That which can be taken away can be likely taken back. On much smaller scale, many bad laws have been reversed in the past. The areas in which privacy has been eroded and removed can be restored. In fact, many of the horrible ideas and changes can be reversed. People just have to want it and take some action. I take my own personal actions and I speak to all who will listen. I speak of simple things like getting out of and staying out of debt and refusal to finance. It's our whole culture of debt financing that is responsible for a lot of the mess we find ourselves in today. Now I save more money than ever before, and I'm all but completely out of debt. When more people start doing this, we'll find that prices of many things will start to drop since people will be less willing to go into debt to finance things any longer.
That's only half the problem though. The other half is that we don't have any local manufacturers anymore- so we have to rely on stupid stuff like this Real ID act for security, instead of doing the obvious and closing our borders down until we know every atom that crosses them. If we had local manufacturers.
It's a States Rights issue. This is just another example of the federal government sticking its nose into the affairs of states.
I'd agree with that, both in problem and solution. Take away the interstate commerce clause, give Oregon the right to control our own immigration and fraud policies up to and including using the death penalty against those who would defraud us, and I'll be glad to give up on a single national ID card.
A federal ID card is a poor second to a well-protected state.
The founding fathers were criminals with respect to the British government.
All the more reason why anonymity is a danger- it's dangerous to do business with people you don't know and can't trust. In fact, it's stupid to do so. If you can't hit a man in the nose when he cheats you, how do you know he's not going to cheat you? What you're really arguing for is the right to commit fraud against your neighbors.
Freedom is a dream that failed when the corporations took over our economy. You aren't a person anymore, just a resource to be used and abused, like everybody else. We haven't had freedom in the United States since the 1950s.
Now that's a good reason- nobody else had given me one quite this good yet. Here's my answer- a national ID card does NOT neccessarily imply a single national database. It just means a single primary key that allows us to link tables in disparate databases together to autocorrect such mistakes. What good does it do you to claim to be John Doe- when there are 50 others?
And no, thanks to fraud over the last several years, your Social Security Number is not neccessarily unique.
I want one of two situations:
1. State's right to protect that state's borders and an end to interstate commerce and immigration that isn't already ok'd by the state the goods are going to or transversing, or that the people are moving to.
2. A federal ID.
Unfortuneately #1 is banned by current court interpretation of the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution. #2 is the next best thing.
And if I choose to opt out of your super-tech-mega-ID then what is my penalty?
Depends- one of three things, depending on where you were born and how well you cooperate:
1. Don't want to tell us who you are? Fine, then you don't deserve anything but a permanent rubber jail cell for being a sociopath.
2. Born here- returned to your state of origin and not allowed to travel beyond state borders- and possibly thrown into internal exile if your state has it (got to protect everybody else's right to know who you are- otherwise you could be defrauding your fellow citizens).
9-11 style attack is the least of our worries. We don't even know who is crossing the border *right now*. And as for the 9-11 hijackers being in the country legally, have you seen their applications for visas? NO bureaucrat in their right mind would have issued any of them a visa- if they had been required one to even step off the plane.
Like I said- luddites will be against this. Maine isn't exactly a high tech center- except when you realize that while the Government hasn't done it, Wal*Mart has their OWN RealID Act....that even tracks people who spend cash, and data mines to know which advertisements to send to your zip code. Privacy is dead- if it isn't Big Brother Government, it's Big Papa Retail.
If you can't show one on demand, you are detained (to wit: your participation in society is suspended) until your license to exist or one is issued, or you are removed from society.
Good. It's the one thing the founding fathers messed up on- if you can't control your borders, you don't have a country. If you don't know who is in the country, then defacto you have relinquished your ability to control your borders.
Only criminals should be removed from society, of course- but unless you've got an identity system, you don't even know who the criminals ARE.
Not exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind when creating a free country.
The Founding Fathers were living in a country that had never been attacked with weapons of mass destruction. I think we can be relatively safe in utterly denying them any voice in 21st century security discussions. Anonymity is just the right to take away rights from your neighbors.
Knowing who people are is the first step towards knowing how to truly protect people from fraud and invasion. Privacy as we knew it is dead. Get over it, and let's get ONE card that identifies us down to the DNA level so that we don't have to keep a bazillion cards in our wallet. Only luddites and con artists would be against this- as it would make identity MUCH harder to steal....
All users ever want fixed is the symptoms. So fix the symptoms and flag the machine for replacement in the next cycle. For a user machine, that's the most that should EVER be done.
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Not really, you can easily get any information you want on the police arresting you.
Tell that to the large number of people arrested on terrorism charges- it can take until the trial to find out what you were arrested for, and you may *never* find out who arrested you to begin with. Anonymous agents working for the government that you don't have the power to do anything to are a BIG part of the problem.
So it is okay for the majority to hurt their fellow citizens? One need not be anonymous to do great harm, after all everyone knew who Stalin and Mao were and yet they committed the worst genocides in known history.
Correction- they ORDERED the worst genocides in known history- anonymous lower functionaries actually carried out the program. In addition to that, both were elected by tyranny of the MINORITY- if you weren't a party member, you weren't allowed to vote. Add to that they were elected to positions of supreme power. What do you think would have happened to them if the people they were committing genocide against could have had a vote? Or worse yet, with a single message on a computer bulletin board, started a petition for recall and treason proceedings?
That is impossible, as I said such a system is inherently unstable as those in power will find a way to hide.
A sufficient RealID and Computerized Public Records Law won't allow them to have a way to hide- anything.
After all, national security requires a lot of information and actions to be hidden for the good of the nation.
Not neccessarily- if your defenses are *solid* then there is no problem with national security. You don't actually have to invade anybody for national security- but you can't have any international trade with that option.
In the end there is no one to watch the watchman as humans and their constructs are inherently flawed.
Thus the public records law- so that all information is available to everybody all the time.
As a result democracy and a police state are incompatible except in some magical land. It's the same problem as communism, it requires people to not abuse the hell out of a system which we inherently do.
Let people try to abuse the system- with every movement recorded, every movement available to anybody who cares to look, every transaction able to be tracked, and a majority voting public able to enact laws *directly* and take full control of the national budget. Let them try- with no anonymity possible, and a single vote able to replace any governmental official at *ANY* time.
Likewise you seem to think that such a system is optimal, yet it is unlikely to be so (no system is) and since you cannot allow change you force stagnation in an inferior system.
Who said anything about "cannot allow change"? In a total electronic democracy, change is as easy as posting your petition and getting a majority of people to agree with you.
Democracy and a police state are mutually exclusive in anything but the shortest term. The people in power quickly realize that they can stay in power even longer by getting rid of a democratic process. A police state and the social climate required for one gives them enough power to do so with a good chance of succeeding (anyone who tries to fight them is quickly rounded up). In turn the resulting dictatorship is likely run by utter self serving nitwits resulting is massive social problems. No method is left for fighting against the dictatorship as the police state in being formed has removed all such methods. Also true democracy allows for tyranny of the majority.
That is the way it has worked in the past- because the police have been allowed to be anonymous. I have no problem with a tyranny of the majority- I have a problem with nonconformists and those who would be anonymous to hurt their fellow citizens. That kind of police state is only possible if the leaders in a society can hide- and I want *NOBODY* to be able to hide.
So your not talking about an invasion.. your talking about immigration. I charge that the US does not have an immigration problem. The US has a welfare problem. If we lived in a socialist society and there were a limited number of jobs then we would have a problem.. but in a land of freedom.. you don't need someone to employ you.. you can employ yourself and create your own jobs that need to be filled. If we give immigrants freedom yet with no social handouts they wont steal anything from us.. indeed they will make our industry and economy strong.
.. they can be held liable.
.. aside from that.. the governments not going to provide a ID scanner for your yard or neighborhood.. and if they did it would be a total police state.
Look at Mexico- if they could make OUR industry and economy strong, would they have started at home?
They insure it with a 1 million dollar guarantee.. They loose your ID, you get 1 mil. If the government looses your ID because of incompetence.. oh well, nothing you can do.. but if a private industry does
No, you misunderstand. What's my guarantee, as a business, that somebody possessing a lifelock ID is who they say they are? Is there a similar $1 million guarantee on the other side as well?
Already possible.. have you heard of gated neighborhoods?
I have no problem with a police state that responds to elections and where EVERY decision made by EVERY bureaucrat is public and actionable.
Government is not a "good" thing. We can look to history to see how well governments have served man. The very worst examples of tyranny, oppression, war and murder, slavery, rape and theft were committed by government hands. even if our elected officials are somehow holy saints today.. they may not always be so and a system like this will never go away if they become some day.. less saintly.
A lack of anonymity is a sword that cuts both ways- tyranny and oppression are impossible where every second is watched by an informed electorate.
Your making assumptions about me. I'm not afraid to be tracked. I stand with my feet in the ground and say "You do not have the authority to track me."
I fail to understand the difference. If you're not afraid to be tracked, then you're not afraid to give *anybody* the authority to track you. Only if you have reason to hide something do you have reason not to be tracked.
I know I stand for liberty regardless of what others think. Despite what laws you try to create I will do the right thing.. Lets say I'm government.. and I wrote down on paper. "Its legal to murder, have fun folks." and you do.. Is that still wrong? I maintain despite any law or any paper that it is always wrong to kill. Laws are "legal fiction" Yet I follow them.. and you would not believe the regulations and hoops I need to jump through to have a business.. I practically have to hire someone to keep up with it.
And there would be LESS need for regulation in a situation where everybody was tracked. If anybody could get your total business history on the web, there'd be no need for GOVERNMENT regulation at all- your business history would speak for itself, and people would simply choose not to do business with you if you had a bad track record.
I'll tell you, I have no problem with that, I prefer you know so you will know where to come again if you need my services.. I have a problem with people using force against me.
Then the simple answer is don't defraud anybody. No need for force if everything can be tracked.
Didn't you read the post above? That's an excellent way to raise your value as a resource- if your employer is prevented from exploiting other resources.
What consequences do you want? Want him executed?
Depends on how bad the cheating was, and the likelyhood he will do it in the future. With RealID- the possibility exists of merely putting a big popup warning for anybody looking at his record on the national website "don't do business with this individual". In other words- stop him from harming his fellow citizens.
Why not, exactly save for there being no reason to?
Hmm- falling wages, union busting, the big credit fraud debacles, and consumer fraud. I see plenty of reason to rebel- but lots of stuff preventing us from doing so.
Please do enlighten me. I mean you seem to be scared shitless of a few dozen terrorist yet claim that a hundred thousand people (including many members of the armed forces) couldn't do anything at all?
Rather, they were prevented actively from doing something by a system that values freedom for criminals over the lives of civilians.
The US revolution had a 30% support rate I believe and an equal number who were indifferent.
True- but it also had an enemy with a 6-month round trip supply chain.
Novel? Please go read a history book and look up every uprising and revolution in there. It's only novel if you're the typical sort of American idiot who can't tell where Europe is on a map even if its labeled.
Just war theory AND the concept of Jihad previous to this had the concept of Sufficient Authority. That concept has been done away with in al Qaeda.
Black markets exist in the US or do you think all those inner city gangs legally bought their weapons?
Well, Black Marketers really should be executed for treason- but then again, so should most of the "cheap labor" free market.
So would your transactions where you bought those pro-socialist books which suddenly leads you into a jail cell in South America in 10 years when the government decides socialism is truly evil. Or if you look up some anti-current-administration material and by pure chance match some pattern in a government system then find yourself in a jail on an island with no rights to a trial. We got damn close to it already with Nixon so it's not far from reality.
Well, by that argument I should be in Gitmo already- yet I'm not.
Also data mining royally sucks at this due to the very small amount of data on terrorists and their patterns. So claiming this will stop terrorism is beyond laughable. Just come right out and say you want to live in a police state and stop hiding behind the evil terrorists.
I've made no secret about wanting to live in a police state- as long as it's a democratic one in ALL ways, especially in resource allocation.
What does that have to do with anything, how would the states police themselves? Well?
Oregon back in the days of my big hero, Tom McCall, would have closed it's borders. There's no danger of foreign attack if the foreigners can't get to you- and that includes the Californicators.
How do you know he won't cheat you even if you do know who he is?
Because he'll only do it ONCE- I'll make sure the consequences of doing so are bad enough to keep him from ever cheating anybody ever again.
I of course reserve the right to cheap, kill or rebel if I see that as necessary. History has taught me that societies do not last and that power corrupts, revolutions are inevitable and good in the long scheme of things. A lack of them would lead to stagnation , social decay, widespread unhappiness (likely a perpetual regime of happy drugs would keep that in check) and the eventual extinction of humanity by our own hands or those of nature (sooner or later something bad will happen and social decay means we won't be able to stop it).
As if we're able to rebel NOW.
It's quite available already in my profile and online. Has been for about 20 years now.
* Invasion? How will your little card protect you from an invasion? An armed and well regulated militia does this best, or the national guard.
I completely agree- but since the interstate commerce clause now prevents us from protecting the borders in this fashion, second best is having a national identity card and verification website- to prevent illegals from getting jobs, buying food, etc.
* Fraud? You want the government who is not liable for anything they do wrong to protect you from fraud? There is a private company LifeLock http://lifelock.com/ that already does this, better and cheaper than the feds could, if they screw up you can sue them, AND they can't throw you in jail if you loose your lifelock card.
Now that's interesting- I had not known about them. But there are two sides to fraud- how does lifelock insure that you know who you are dealing with? Will they turn over the address of a con artist who uses a lifelock card?
Security? ID is NOT security.. they are not the same thing. The 9/11 hijackers had ID, Timothy Mcvay ID, Cho Seung-Hui had ID. The Washington snipers had ID. What can we assume from this? ID makes us NO safer.
ID alone doesn't. ID Plus data mining does. An ID is only a primary key.
* Theft? How does they government tracking you physically and digitally help against theft? I can SILL steal your lawn mower if you don't lock it up and your little card does nothing. Maybe you mean ID theft.. see lifelock above.
If you had to show an ID to come into my neighborhood or on to my property, and you steal my lawn mower, you can expect vigilante justice to show up VERY soon.
*wallet? Right now you don't have to carry any card in your wallet if you so choose.. You can still get on air planes without ID. This is freedom. It's how it should be.
Freedom is overrated if it's just the freedom to be a criminal.
We can't secure our schools, we cant secure our shopping malls, hell... we cant even secure our prisons and that's about as secure as I can imagine. I'll have you know that I am a honest small business owner and I will not accept this card. I flat out refuse to do so even if they have to throw me in Jail.. is that fair? for me to go to jail because you want to *feel* secure in your Police state? This is my breaking point. I will not be traced and tracked and have every action purchase and message I send analyzed by the state.
Then you just lied. You're not an "honest small business owner" if you're afraid to be tracked- you're a dishonest crook who is probably taking money away from your workers at one end and your customers at the other- and you're afraid they'll find out and your past sins will come to haunt you.
Will you be willing to destroy my life because I don't want to be tracked? How many more like me are there? 100? 1,000? How about them? At what point does using force on others in your aims become ok?
Anonymity is only usefull to crooks. Why should I be your customer if you're afraid to tell me who you are?
1) Base documents. How will you get a Real ID? You will have to present base documents (driver's license, birth certificate, passport, social security card, proof of address, whatever) to prove your identity. These can already be forged and already are to get perfectly valid driver's licenses. Without fixing the base documents, there is no foundation for Real ID. Someone can quite happily get the fake documents they need to get a very real document which will be accepted for a gold standard. What does someone do when they go to the government to get their Real ID, and someone says "Can't, someone's already got one."?
Have you READ the RealID act? Fixing the base documents IS the first step- it really tightens up the requirments.
2) Existing identity theft. Issuing a new ID won't straighten out the existing tangled records. Which fraudulent credit lines go to which real person? How about income taxes and criminal records? You can't fix IDs that have already been stolen with a new document based on the already bad information.
True enough on this one- the credit reporting agencies will likely face some problems until they clean up their act and stop taking fake IDs.
3) Electronic transactions. An ID won't help you in electronic communications. You can't present your ID to a web page. They might start collecting Real ID numbers, but, like SS numbers, they can be stolen.
Not if you index it to a fingerprint scanner- cheap enough these days, I have one on my cell phone.
4) Lack of verification even in person. Right now, businesses and agencies are not required (and don't have the ability) to check the information that is there, like the fact that a given Social Security number belongs to a two year-old girl, not a thirty year-old man applying for a job. This is the source of a lot of fraud.
This is also a MAJOR part of the RealID act- instant web verification, like the banks already do on SSNs.
Yes. Clearly the Founding Fathers were never under the threat of a rag tag bunch of disorganized fanatics. They were merely under the threat of one of the greatest empires the world has ever known. I would hazard a guess that the threat the British Empire posed to the United States in 1776 was much greater than Al Qaeda could ever hope to be.
Depends upon how you look at the threat. Al Qaeda's real strength is in a rather novel new concept- individualized warfare, where anybody can declare war on anybody even without an army to back them up. The British Empire in 1776 had a 6 month round trip supply line to supply their soldiers in the Colonies- Al Qaeda uses what is already on hand in the country they are attacking. Cut off the supply line- and the British Empire had no hope of ever coming close to winning. Cut off Al Qaeda's supply line, and their soldiers will merely merge into our society and bide their time until they can rejoin the Jihad. Which is more deadly to you?
Consider two things, A) Foreign terrorists will not have a REAL ID since they are not citizens, B) Domestic terrorists are already here. Both of these problems are not solved by a REAL ID.
Consider this- those who do not have a REAL ID will find it much harder to buy and sell; thus cutting off Al Qaeda's supply line. Domestic terrorists who are already here will find their transactions recorded and much easieer to trace by the police- also saving time and trouble. But best of all would be if the States were just given the right to actually police themselves better- but oh no, we can't do that, the interstate commerce clause prevents it.
Also, everyone in the United States still lives in a country that has not been attacked by "weapons of mass destruction".
Once again, depends on your definition- To many, the Oklahoma City Bombing certainly fit the definition.
But to say that we should simply give up and declare "them" the winner? The 'owners' of our lives and our destinies? If you really believe that, then why not just kill yourself now?
Far more fun to learn to be a useful resource- and find your freedom elsewhere.
That which can be taken away can be likely taken back. On much smaller scale, many bad laws have been reversed in the past. The areas in which privacy has been eroded and removed can be restored. In fact, many of the horrible ideas and changes can be reversed. People just have to want it and take some action. I take my own personal actions and I speak to all who will listen. I speak of simple things like getting out of and staying out of debt and refusal to finance. It's our whole culture of debt financing that is responsible for a lot of the mess we find ourselves in today. Now I save more money than ever before, and I'm all but completely out of debt. When more people start doing this, we'll find that prices of many things will start to drop since people will be less willing to go into debt to finance things any longer.
That's only half the problem though. The other half is that we don't have any local manufacturers anymore- so we have to rely on stupid stuff like this Real ID act for security, instead of doing the obvious and closing our borders down until we know every atom that crosses them. If we had local manufacturers.
Name calling is only name calling when it is inaccurate. Political correctness is for those people who are afraid of the truth.
It's a States Rights issue. This is just another example of the federal government sticking its nose into the affairs of states.
I'd agree with that, both in problem and solution. Take away the interstate commerce clause, give Oregon the right to control our own immigration and fraud policies up to and including using the death penalty against those who would defraud us, and I'll be glad to give up on a single national ID card.
A federal ID card is a poor second to a well-protected state.
The founding fathers were criminals with respect to the British government.
All the more reason why anonymity is a danger- it's dangerous to do business with people you don't know and can't trust. In fact, it's stupid to do so. If you can't hit a man in the nose when he cheats you, how do you know he's not going to cheat you? What you're really arguing for is the right to commit fraud against your neighbors.
Freedom is a dream that failed when the corporations took over our economy. You aren't a person anymore, just a resource to be used and abused, like everybody else. We haven't had freedom in the United States since the 1950s.
Now that's a good reason- nobody else had given me one quite this good yet. Here's my answer- a national ID card does NOT neccessarily imply a single national database. It just means a single primary key that allows us to link tables in disparate databases together to autocorrect such mistakes. What good does it do you to claim to be John Doe- when there are 50 others?
And no, thanks to fraud over the last several years, your Social Security Number is not neccessarily unique.
I want one of two situations:
1. State's right to protect that state's borders and an end to interstate commerce and immigration that isn't already ok'd by the state the goods are going to or transversing, or that the people are moving to.
2. A federal ID.
Unfortuneately #1 is banned by current court interpretation of the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution. #2 is the next best thing.
And if I choose to opt out of your super-tech-mega-ID then what is my penalty?
Depends- one of three things, depending on where you were born and how well you cooperate:
1. Don't want to tell us who you are? Fine, then you don't deserve anything but a permanent rubber jail cell for being a sociopath.
2. Born here- returned to your state of origin and not allowed to travel beyond state borders- and possibly thrown into internal exile if your state has it (got to protect everybody else's right to know who you are- otherwise you could be defrauding your fellow citizens).
3. From another country- deportation.
9-11 style attack is the least of our worries. We don't even know who is crossing the border *right now*. And as for the 9-11 hijackers being in the country legally, have you seen their applications for visas? NO bureaucrat in their right mind would have issued any of them a visa- if they had been required one to even step off the plane.
wise folks of Maine
Like I said- luddites will be against this. Maine isn't exactly a high tech center- except when you realize that while the Government hasn't done it, Wal*Mart has their OWN RealID Act....that even tracks people who spend cash, and data mines to know which advertisements to send to your zip code. Privacy is dead- if it isn't Big Brother Government, it's Big Papa Retail.
If you can't show one on demand, you are detained (to wit: your participation in society is suspended) until your license to exist or one is issued, or you are removed from society.
Good. It's the one thing the founding fathers messed up on- if you can't control your borders, you don't have a country. If you don't know who is in the country, then defacto you have relinquished your ability to control your borders.
Only criminals should be removed from society, of course- but unless you've got an identity system, you don't even know who the criminals ARE.
Not exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind when creating a free country.
The Founding Fathers were living in a country that had never been attacked with weapons of mass destruction. I think we can be relatively safe in utterly denying them any voice in 21st century security discussions. Anonymity is just the right to take away rights from your neighbors.
Knowing who people are is the first step towards knowing how to truly protect people from fraud and invasion. Privacy as we knew it is dead. Get over it, and let's get ONE card that identifies us down to the DNA level so that we don't have to keep a bazillion cards in our wallet. Only luddites and con artists would be against this- as it would make identity MUCH harder to steal....
All users ever want fixed is the symptoms. So fix the symptoms and flag the machine for replacement in the next cycle. For a user machine, that's the most that should EVER be done.
Related to this is average time to trouble ticket resolution- assuming you use a trouble ticket system to keep track.