This conservative is for national ID cards

Jewish World Review ^ | Jan. 25, 2002 | Mona Charen

[Shenandoah]

MENTION national identity cards, and absolutists on the right and left go into a tizzy. "It'll be like Nazi Germany," say the liberals. "America will be indistinguishable from the Soviet Union," warn the conservatives. This is hysteria.

In the first place, let's not kid ourselves: A modern society cannot function without some form of identity papers. Ours could not and does not. We have identity cards, but they are far too easy to get and to counterfeit. I speak, of course, of the driver's license. A driver's license is necessary to cash a check, open a bank account, obtain a credit card, take a ride in an airplane or train, enter many public buildings, buy a drink or a pack of cigarettes (if you are under 30 or so) and register to vote.

They are so indispensable for identity purposes that most departments of motor vehicles issue "nondriver licenses" as well. But with 50 states issuing driver's licenses and no central data bank to compare licensees, it is possible -- in fact easy -- to get any number of different, legitimate-looking aliases in America.

Our distaste for anything resembling identity papers has handicapped us in a variety of ways when it comes to fighting terror and other crimes. In the first place, it makes it nearly impossible to track those who enter the country illegally, or those who enter legally and then overstay their visas.

When you travel in Europe, most countries require that you produce your passport in order to stay at a hotel. Information about every guest is reported to the police. This does not make France or Holland a police state. If every person staying in any hotel anywhere in the United States had to produce his national ID, it would be far easier to catch illegal aliens. If you were a citizen, your ID would so state. If you were a tourist, you would have a tourist ID or visa (with the expiration date highlighted). Legal permanent residents, students and others would all have cards identifying their status.

Officials at the ACLU object that "If terrorists are sophisticated enough to hijack passenger airliners and fly them into buildings or to manufacture anthrax, it would be naive to think they could not create counterfeit identification cards." Well, in the first place, the hijackers who committed the Sept. 11 crimes were not so much sophisticated as utterly fanatical and suicidal. What they accomplished was completely low-tech and uncomplicated (though, obviously, stunningly savage). In the second place, as the case of Richard Reid, would-be shoe bomber demonstrated, not all terrorists are rocket scientists. And third, isn't it in our interests to ensure that forging ID papers and other preliminaries to terrorist acts be made as difficult as possible?

American driver's licenses today are primitive. We have the technology to make them extremely difficult to forge using unique biological traits like irises, voice prints, hand prints and retinal scans. It is hard to imagine that such an identity card (or driver's license, we could still call them that for comfort's sake) would infringe upon our liberty. The police can already ask you to show your driver's license for the smallest infraction of traffic laws. More than one of the Sept. 11 hijackers was stopped for a traffic violation in the days before the attack. If they had been obliged to produce an ID, the plot might have unraveled.

And far from placing special burdens on non-white or Middle-Eastern-looking people, a national ID would permit them to avoid some degree of special scrutiny. Obviously, if someone is behaving suspiciously, citizenship or permanent residence is no bar to questioning by authorities, but many people who might have been questioned only because they fit a particular profile (young, male, Middle-Eastern-looking man traveling alone) could sail through security at airports with less delay if we had a relatively tamper-proof national ID.

A national ID would make it easier to track individuals who enter the country on student or tourist visas and overstay their welcome. It would also improve our ability to apprehend the estimated 300,000 convicted criminals who have managed to escape the justice system and are on the lam.

The national ID is overdue. We already use a makeshift ID system that is creaky and easily faked. The feared loss of liberty in a national ID is trifling, while the potential gain in security is substantial.

[Jay W]

That "conservative" is a Trotskyite liberal statist, but won't admit it.

[cincinnati_Steve]

This was already posted a couple days ago. I got flamed for pointing out that Ms. Moaner is displaying her lefty tendencies, regardless of her past opinion pieces. Any "conservative" who thinks this is a good thing is a RINO.

[meenie]

We have identity cards in the form of driver's liscenses. What we need is to do away with motor voter and require all aliens to have photo ID with date of expiration.

[Shenandoah]

I wasn't aware this had already been posted. I did a search.

[thatsnotnice]

But with 50 states issuing driver's licenses and no central data bank to compare licensees, it is possible -- in fact easy -- to get any number of different, legitimate-looking aliases in America.

So what serves as the basis for obtaining a "national ID card?" My existing drivers license? Or some other piece of ID that is easy to fraudulently obtain or alter? With two notarized statements I can get a "documentation of birth" or whatever they call it in most states. It's not a birth certificate, but is a substitute for one. With that can I get the new foolproof National ID?

Also, I don't particularly think the Feds are interested in "catching" illegal aliens. If that were the case they would have rounded up 95% of them long ago. They're not exactly hiding.

[sinkspur]

That "conservative" is a Trotskyite liberal statist, but won't admit it.

You make her point beautifully.

[Mike4Freedom]

There is no doubt that a national ID card is all down side with absolutely no up side at all.

The terrorists will either have ID or will pay for it, no matter how hard it is to counterfeit. The clerk level of police states always make a good living on the side. Besides, will everyone remember that all 19 hijackers plus the shoe bomber had VALID identification.

The down side comes from the data base that is behind the card. I am reasonably sure that GWB will not use that data to pick up his enemies, but he will not always be president and the data base will stay when he goes. It can then be used to identify anyone who is part of some future demonized group. We have no way to know what group that might be anymore than the Japanese Americans who honestly answered the ethnic origin question on the 1940 census had any inkling that it would get them years in a US concentration camp.

The less the government knows about us, the better!

[Shenandoah]

"Sign ze paper, olt man!"

[stylin19a]

Since ID cards can be faked & magnets can do damage to bar code strips, mabe the author, in order to be absolutely certain about true identify, could entertain have the ID tattooed on our arms ? *sarcasm off*

[Shenandoah]

Hear! Hear!

[Tacis]

Yes, there might be some conceptually positive aspects of national ID cards just as there might be some conceptually positive aspects of prohibiting private ownership of pistols. In reality, however, there is room for nothing but evil. It would be a matter of months before some dumbocrap bureaucrat discovered some social goal that could be much more easily achieved because, well, we all have a national ID card. The leftie pols would get around the fact that illegals, criminals, felons and other bad guys could have an ID card by giving them and "alternative ID card." The positives for a national ID card would be subverted and the negatives would be exploited and, as with pistol prohibition, only the honest, law-abiding citizen would suffer.

[Harp]

We'll get something like a national ID, but it won't be called that. It'll be an electronic passport and/or a driver's license done to Federal standards that also include biometrics. But . . . it probably won't happen unless, sadly, even more American's die from foreign terrorists.

[Quix]

Have lived in two totalitarian states in SE Asia for years total.

In peacetime, it's not been a huge burden.

Lots of things can be tolerable under wonderful circumstances.

If you want to go on record as supporting what will feed so easily and quickly into the Biblically proscribed satanic mark of the world gov, help yourself. Given that God IS God and by definition THE BOSS; given HIS hostility to The Mark, I think it's exceedingly stupid on that count alone.

On maybe an easier level for you to understand, anything that slows down the gestapo when they schedule coming for you, all to the good. Whether the delay is hours or days, weeks, months or years--I'd rather use every extra bit of time possible rather than submit to the guilliotine earlier than necessary.

OF course, if you want to march off to the camps and an earlier death than necessary--or perhaps if you by increments are going to end up siding with the destroyers--help yourself--you'll reap what you sow. I'd hate to be one of your family, though.

[Doctor Doom]

Ms. Charen (assuming you reallly are a woman):

I am a free man born in a republic founded on the concept of liberty.

I do not need, nor will I accept, a license to exist.

-DD

[america-rules]

The military started issuing new ID Cards two months ago and they have a chip in them that:

- Name, Rank, Unit, SSN etc. - GPS tracking capability
- Complete health information--blood type etc.
- Pay information

What would stop the Gov't from using these chips in a national ID against someone?

[Doctor Doom]

You want to see my ID? Okay here it is right here.

[Buckeroo]

You have the "guts" to post this trash on FR?

There is only an illusion that a "card" shall create a glorious statement of proper citizenry. Beyond the illusion, a "card" shall not protect any method of well being. Hitler tried it, too.

[savedbygrace]

More to the point, the arguments she advances in this piece are sophomoric.

1. She magically leaps from national ID cards to State driver licenses. The value of one doesn't justify the other.

2. She waves her journalistic hand dismissively at the sincerely held beliefs of many that the United States Constitution forbids a national ID card, and refers to this as "our distaste."

3. She craves for the United States to exchange its roots in liberty for the chains of lesser nations, like France and Holland. Why is security more valuable than liberty?

4. Finally she says that this national ID card would make it easier to track individuals who enter the country on student or tourist visas and overstay their welcome." Well then, limit the card to ONLY non-citizens. This is a no-brainer. Oops, forgot who I was talking about.