Why a national ID card is to be feared

E-mail | 10/07/2001 | A friend

[Eala]

This e-mail was sent to a local radio talk-show host by a friend. For his privacy I have removed identifying information before posting.

[GOPJ]

Maybe the "hate Bush" groups are paid professionals. It's not beyond the democrats to pay public relations firms to be their "grassroots".

[PatrioticAmerican]

What do national ID cards and hating Bush have to do with each other? If Bush tries to put them in place, I would hate Bush, too.

[Age of Reason]

"The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist."
-Marshall McLuhan

[JOHN ADAMS]

I'd stack my conservative credentials up against anybody's, but I just do not get the insistent hostility to national ids that's displayed on this board. We pretty much have them now anyway, in the form of driver's licenses. Descending down the slippery slope -- first it tracks murderers, then it tracks hand gun owners -- just doesn't seem very likely to me, largely because in most places it's legal to own a hand gun. And if it's not, then the solution is to change the law, not sneak around breaking it. (Current events, and their impact on gun ownership and everyone's feeling of the need to defend themselves, are helping with that one already.)

I'd much rather that we had these cards, with as many technological toys as possible like fingerprints, medical/criminal history, etc. -- how about immigration status? Think that could've helped if these cards had been swiped before the Sept. 11 crowd enrolled in college, bought a plane ticket, rented a car, etc???. I think having to produce them, and carry them, is the same as having to wait in line at an airport and submit to a search there (if I were to go to an airport, which these days I wouldn't). It's a necessary response to dealing with these lunatics. I say, bring it on. I've got nothing to fear, and I doubt the other people on this threat do either.

[Irma]

President Bush "is not even considering the idea" of issuing a national ID card, White House spokesman told reporters.

And lawmakers who advanced the idea are now backing away from it.

Source
 

[Eugene Tackleberry]

We pretty much have them now anyway

OK then, if we have them now anyway as you say, then there is no need for a national ID card. Case closed.

[Wm Bach]

Maybe the "hate Bush" groups are paid professionals. It's not beyond the democrats to pay public relations firms to be their "grassroots".

What the...Are you going to keep blowing that one note horn on every thread? Geez, you're not even in tune!

[lelio]

Hey, this is a wonderful tool for tracking deadbeat dads
This is the "its for the children" mantra of the authoritarians.

[samtheman]

Irma, you are right. Whatever the merits of ID cards, or the threat of ID cards (however you see it), ID cards are "not in the cards" at this time.

Personally, I don't think ID cards would stop terrorism. Not when there are a million legal visitors from suspect countries in the USA right now. Card or no card, some of them are already plotting the next attack. The only solution is to send them all home.

[max61]

Wow, the first completely inane statement today.

?

---max

[NittanyLion]

If for no other reason, I do not want an additional massive bureaucracy whose sole purpose is to issue and maintain Nat'l ID cards. Why should additional tax dollars be spent in support of a system that would be so susceptible to fraud, in effect rendering the idea useless?

[freeeee]

We pretty much have them now anyway, in the form of driver's licenses

Then why do we need another ID?

Are you aware of the expanded capabilities and uses of national ID? What of biometrics? What of travel and purchase tracking? What of smartcard capabilities?

A drivers license is merely a license to drive. A national ID is a license to exist. Do you not see the difference?

I just do not get the insistent hostility to national ids that's displayed on this board

The fed's abuse of SS#'s, and its utter contempt for the 4th Amendment has done nothing to earn our trust.

I've got nothing to fear

Would you have a problem with cameras inside your home? If you have nothing to hide, why would you? If you can understand why that would be intolerable, you'll understand our concerns.

[gitmogrunt]

Is this a naive libertarian post?

[JOHN ADAMS]

Let's see if I can answer these arguments, which, by the way, I know are being offered in good faith by decent people (just wanted to get that issue out of the way). First, the home argument is compelling because your home is, as a matter of constitutional law, common sense, John Locke, and lots of other good things, different. It is certifiably private. It's where you bathe your little children, it's where you make love to your wife, it's where you go to the bathroom, it's where you go out naked at 1 in the morning to make sure the garage door is closed and locked. That's very different from going out in public. Public is public -- it's not home, and it's not private. It's public. That's why our last great president couldn't claim that the debaucheries he was committing with Monica were private -- because he was doing them on our (public) time, and in a public place (to wit, a federal office building), and he was using the public power we gave him (well, not us freepers, but you know what I mean) to procure the women he was doing that stuff with.

As far as already having them, we do but they don't help track illegal immigrants and other lunatics. If they were smart cards and were used that way they'd be more valuable. At my kids' school every teacher, administrator and visitor has to wear a badge around their neck all the time. The kids know that anybody who isn't wearing one of those is a danger. This is the same thing, and cops could use them that way.

As far as the cost is concerned, I doubt it'd be that much and I think it would be outweighed by the law enforcement benefits. Federal bureacracies stink but mostly they just deaden the people who work there (or they employ the almost dead). I'm not too worried about the well being of those people.

[JOHN ADAMS]

You all might want to have a look at Larry Ellison's piece on the WSJ editorial today (see opinionjournal@wsj.com), advocating a voluntary national id to speed airport security check ins, etc. One of the things he talks about is the very large extent to which the travel, spending etc. data people on this board are worried about having collected is already being collected, and sold, by lots of people including VISA and AMEX. it seems pretty silly to me that some dopey bank can access my info to decide to send me a "preapproved" credit card, but my government can't access the same data to protect me from lunatics.

[GOPJ]

You bet I am. I don't care if it's the democrats or Bin Laden who's paying the PR firms to trash Bush.

Maybe the "hate Bush" groups are paid professionals. It's not beyond the democrats to pay public relations firms to be their "grassroots".

What the...Are you going to keep blowing that one note horn on every thread? Geez, you're not even in tune!