Free Republic

Policy and regulation | Privacy The notion of a national ID number is being considered for a variety of reasons: the Social Security number was never intended as a national ID number, but is used that way, the illegal immigration crisis is due in part to the difficulty of identifying valid U.S. citizens, and law enforcement, insurance agencies, and health care providers all like the idea of having a better way to keep tabs on people. Meanwhile, we have Google and the credit card companies tracking and aggregating information on everything we do. For an idea of how this might...

JERUSALEM – Following the 9/11 attacks, President Obama's nominee for a top intelligence post advocated that to effectively combat terrorism, the U.S. government should implement a national identity system, "so we better know who is who." In testimony before the 9/11 commission, Charles "Chas" Freeman, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, also recommended conducting the war on terrorism primary as a law enforcement effort. Freeman is slated to head the U.S. National Intelligence Council, or NIC, a crucial component of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. The NIC serves as the center for midterm and long-term strategic...

September 23, 2008 Exclusive: How Many Subprime Mortgages Were Awarded to Illegal Aliens? This short news report [see my comment below] might have been a bit longer if it had been written a couple of weeks later than it was. This story is dated September 5th and deals with one of the key issues about immigration that virtually no one is willing to talk about - especially politicians and others who subscribe to the open borders philosophy and to the idea of providing the millions of illegal aliens who are in our country with a Guest Worker Amnesty Program and...

A California bill that would allow undocumented immigrants to get drivers licenses is one step closer to becoming a state law. State senate bill 60 passed through the assembly Friday. If the bill becomes law, legislators say the estimated 2.2 million undocumented immigrants in California will apply for one, an idea that's creating a lot of controversy. "I think they should be able to get licenses just like everybody else," said Nicole Holland, a Fresnan who supports the bill. "They are already committing a crime coming over here," said Albert Ratliff, a Fresnan who opposes the bill. "I don't think...

Madison, WI - If you're irked by long waits at the Division of Motor Vehicles, brace yourself. Things could get worse.The state Department of Transportation is asking legislators to approve a funding package today that includes $3.7 million to remodel DMV service centers — much of it to go toward expanding the waiting areas of four centers. Also included in the package is $1.4 million to install or upgrade take-a-number systems at 33 centers because drivers will soon have to make two trips from the waiting area to the service counter. In all, the department is asking lawmakers to release...

Nevada Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign today announced the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has awarded more than $2.8 million to Nevada under the 2008 REAL ID Demonstration Grant Program.  Nevada is one of four states receiving funds for partnering with the lead hub state, Missouri, for pilot implementation and verification testing.This program is designed to standardize drivers’ licenses and protect against fraud and identity theft.  These funds will be used to help the Department of Motor Vehicles enhance the integrity of driver’s licenses and ID cards, their issuance and security. “I am pleased...

The State Department will soon begin production of an electronic passport card that security specialists and members of Congress fear will be vulnerable to alteration or counterfeiting. The agency has contracted with L-1 Identity Solutions Inc. to produce electronic-passport cards as a substitute for booklet passports for use by Americans who travel frequently by road or sea to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. About the size of a credit card, the electronic-passport card displays a photo of the user and a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip containing data about the user. The State Department announced recently that it will begin...

Technology already exists that could lead to the tracking of purchases and people. Critics fear a loss of privacy. Here's a vision of the not-so-distant future: • Microchips with antennas will be embedded in virtually everything you buy, wear, drive and read, allowing retailers and law enforcement to track consumer items — and, by extension, consumers — wherever they go, from a distance. • A seamless, global network of electronic "sniffers" will scan radio tags in myriad public settings, identifying people and their tastes instantly so that customized ads, "live spam," may be beamed at them. • In "Smart Homes,"...

Phil from the UK anti-ID-register group NO2ID sends in this nugget -- note the call to action there. We've got a sensitive government document revealing the British government's plan to trick us into a database state and we need as many copies as possible, as quickly as possible! If you mirror this document, please add a link to it in the comments for the post. UK campaigners NO2ID this morning enlisted the help of bloggers across the world to spread a leaked government document describing how the British government intends to go about "coercing" its citizens onto a National...

The personal and bank details of 25 million people - almost every child in the country as well as their parents and carers - have been lost by HM Revenue & Customs, the Government admitted today. Names, addresses, dates of birth, employment and bank details all went missing when two CDs containing the information were mislaid. Alistair Darling told the House of Commons that the discs containing the highly sensitive information failed to arrive after they were sent in the ordinary internal mail between government departments. MPs gasped as they heard the scale of the catastrophic breach of security guidelines....

How The Plan To Force Vaccination Gave Birth To The National ID, A Government Health Records Database, and the End of Medical Privacy History of Mandatory Vaccination Immunization laws in the US are not federal, but state mandates. The authority of U.S. states to promulgate regulations which protect the public health and safety is well established, having historical roots in health regulations created in the colonial states during the 18th century. A seminal Supreme Court decision in 1905, Jacobsen v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), affirmed the authority of state legislatures to assign "police powers" to health officials to enact...

One of the more clever country song titles I ever heard was If the Phone Don’t Ring, You’ll Know It’s Me.That’s something like the predicament of searchers after the menace of voter fraud, who can’t seem to find much of it. The New York Times today reports that “scant evidence” exists of a significant problem.Voter fraud is the idea that individuals might vote multiple times, in multiple jurisdictions, or despite not being qualified. This is distinct from election fraud, which is corruption of broader voting or vote-counting processes. While voter fraud (and/or voter error) certainly happens, it is apparently on...

REALITY CHECK National IDs: One way or the other By David Berlind December 5, 2001 Since September 11, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy have become this country's most vocal cheerleaders for forgery-proof digital identification. Civil libertarians in turn have twisted the messages of both men into something they are not, creating a national ID opposition movement. Idiots. My father used to repeat his favorite rule of life to me every time I said something stupid (which is still pretty often). "Put your mind into gear before your mouth into motion." As McNealy implied in my recent ...

Last week a federal judge in Georgia upheld a state law requiring photo identification to vote. Courts have upheld similar laws in Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi and Arizona. The trend is encouraging. And as U.S. District Judge Harold Murphy noted in his 159-page ruling, arguments that these laws disenfranchise minorities don't hold up to scrutiny. "Voters who lack photo ID undoubtedly exist somewhere," wrote Judge Murphy, "but the fact that plaintiffs, in spite of their efforts, have failed to uncover anyone 'who can attest to the fact that he/she will be prevented from voting' provides significant support for a conclusion that...

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham said Tuesday he will introduce legislation to replace all paper Social Security cards with plastic biometric cards that can't be duplicated, so employers can be certain of the legal status of their workers. The South Carolina Republican said Congress must address the out-of-control illegal immigration problem, and last month's defeat of comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate means the problem must be tackled piecemeal.

SHENZHEN, China, Aug. 9 — At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity. Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens. Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background,...

The Federation for Identity and Cross-Credentialing Systems (FiXs) -- a little-known group of non-profits, government contractors, commercial entities, and government agencies -- has just unveiled a first-of-its-kind global infrastructure to support distributed, integrated identity management and cross-credentialing across organizations. The implementation combines several existing security technologies along with a set of trusted models, policies, and operating rules to insure the accurate identity of personnel accessing physical sites or logical systems. Already in a pilot mode at a handful of government agencies and defense contractors, the FiXs identity management initiative does not have a hard date for broad deployment, although the...

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff today joined Senator Lindsey Graham, Graham a leading proponent of amnesty, to promote a new crackdown on illegal workers. .... CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff traveled to South Carolina, home to Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham. The visit was disguised as a demonstration of an upgrade to the nation's eligibility employment verification system, which checks social security numbers. CHERTOFF: I came here because we have a senator who I had the privilege of working with who I think is about as clear eyed and farsighted an observer and a...

The U.S. Senate definitively rejected President George Bush's immigration bill on Thursday, just hours after senators expressed deep misgivings with portions that would have expanded the use of a national ID card. Because the procedural vote was 46 to 53, with 60 votes needed to advance the immigration legislation, the proposal is likely to remain dead for the rest of the year. Privacy advocates were quick to claim that a vote against Real ID cards the previous evening doomed the bill. Wednesday's vote showed that senators were willing to delete the portion of the labyrinthine immigration bill that would require...

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -- New Hampshire on Wednesday rejected the federal Real ID Act as tantamount to requiring a national ID card, joining five other states in opposing it. South Carolina, Montana, Washington, Oklahoma and Maine also have rejected the federal act. ``Here in New Hampshire, we pride ourselves on being frugal, and here in New Hampshire, we pride ourselves on respecting the privacy of our neighbors,'' Gov. John Lynch said at the bill signing. The law's supporters say it is needed to prevent terrorists and illegal immigrants from getting fake identification cards. Critics say it is too intrusive, too...