This thread has probably long since run its course, but its been a very good one, IMO.

I’m trying to get a better understanding of the concerns of those who oppose a national ID system. From this thread, I believe they can be summarized as something like:

- creeping loss of civil liberties

- privacy

- security

None of these are standalone issues, they overlap a great deal.

Regarding civil liberties losses, there is always that possibility but there seem to be a whole lot of things we see as civil liberties that, it seems to me, have nothing to do with civil liberties.

Here’s an example. I have an acquaintence who is a lead foot. He drives way too fast way too often. Now, speeding isn’t, IMO, a “crime” that needs to have a national pogram instituted against it, but it is something we seem to have agreed, long ago, that we need to keep an eye on and discourage. This guy has long since lost his driver’s license in the state he resides for too many speeding violations. He is an expert on not only fighting off speeding violations but also on recovering one’s drivers license. This is REAL speeder, this guy. He is also privately employed (runs his own business that consists of him and only him, but it is a fully legal entity of whatever sort). The business has drawn him to live in other states for significant periods of time. He has “semi-legitimate” driver’s licenses from at least two other states. The reason I say “semi-legitimate” is that they are not fake, he produced whatever real documents were required to get them, but you’re not supposed to have more than one – as far as I am aware, each state that fives you a DL asks you to surrender your current DL in another state.

This is an absolutely true anecdote and I encourage people to ponder it for a while. The guy must have legitimate ID. That’s a given. But he’s an absolute scofflaw when it comes to speeding. So the state in which he lives keeps taking his DL (his quasi-national-ID) away from him AND has laws requiring mandatory auto insurance that make send his rates through the roof even when he has his DL. So the guy uses another DL from another state and his business to lease and insure automobiles.

What he is doing is using the weaknesses of the current system and achieving “authentication” (he is who his DL says he is) but is sidestepping all the access and authorization functions. He shouldn’t have access and authorization to drive in ANY state or, for that matter, to have auto insurance (probably).

A national ID that wasn’t based upon the ridiculous state DL system is nearly absurd. We don’t have any civil liberty, as far as I am aware, that says we can just drive any way we want to. But hey, we need ID and most of us need DLs. Why are these two things tied together? My “friend” has no inherent civil right to a half-false identity (he certainly doesn’t live where his other state DLs say he lives). If the guy couldn’t beat the system the way he does, he’d be forced to let the pedal off the medal and stop being a scofflaw or he’d lose his ability to make a living and function.

I’m not claiming we should build our system to stop “corner case” abuses, but it does highlight how easy the system is to abuse and, I believe, also highlights that some of what we believe are civil liberties aren’t. This guy believes that “speeding” is a civil liberty or, perhaps, that getting away with as much as possible is a civil liberty. I don’t see it that way. He’ll never get “caught” under the current system.

The next issue is privacy. Katherine, rightly, says that just because we already have no privacy in many very real ways doesn’t mean we don’t have some important shreds of privacy left and that we need to protect it. This is true. But nothing about a national ID system suggests that we cannot have a good look at what sorts of “privacies” are long since lost (where and when you travel and how much you spend and what you purchase is LONG gone if you take any advantage of modern conveniences and financial systems). I don’t believe people have generally stopped and thought about how little privacy we actually have anymore. Most everything about how we live is in a data repository somewhere and various levels of law enforcement have subpeona access to the info. We have ID on demand – you can’t fly commercially without presenting a picture ID. You can’t enter the country without your passport/green card/visa. If a cop stops you on the highway you are required to produce your DL-ID. We accept ID on demand for MANY ordinary day to day functions. The problem is that there are too many forms of ID and too many sources.

And we already have a personal number (SSN). This too is far too easy to falsify. And creeping uses has long since plagued the SSN ssytem. When it was designed it was supposed to be used ONLY for SSN purposes. Try getting a bank account without an SSN. In fact you are now REQUIRED to get one for your children who will not be paying SSN taxes for many years yet and may never see… never mind.

A national ID does not need to be a centralized individual data repository. It can be sucessfully limited to the functions of identification. We can keep an eye on it for creeping abuses (we do occassionally hammer on the IRS).

Security is something John has addressed.

Personally I relieve believe a national ID is inevitable. We just can’t keep going along with this creaky and silly system we have indefinitely. Maybe we can, but sooner or later I think we’ll just have had enough. There are just too many non-Dl functions tied to DL’s. DLs should be DL’s. Now they are DLs plus IDs plus voting document and, well, STOP IT!!

It is not some solution to terrorism. It would help with that, to some degree, within our own borders. But it would also potentially help us gain some sanity in our immigration and visa system. And it would stop some abuses of “civil liberties” (we really don’t have a right to fake or half-fake ID or to beat the system as far and long as we can get away with it).

I find the arguments against it unconvincing. I have nothing but honest and deep respect for those who have lived under tyrannical systems and have some experience with even non-tyrannical socialist systems. But the Soviet Union was never the US and neither is Sweden. Different histories, diffferent cultures, different issues surrounding IDs and national IT and benefit systems.

I’d rather we have a sensible look at designing a national ID system and do it BEFORE we are screaming for one and slap one together with spit and chewing gum and then start suffering all the failures.