This is beyond Orwellian, entering a dystopian fantasy dreamed up by H.P. Lovecraft and featuring some Cthulian nightmare.
Deep within the diseased bowels of the 800 page immigration reform bill is a profound threat to privacy in the US; an authorization for the Department of Homeland Security to create a bio-metric data base of every adult male in the US.
Does this info come to us via some hysterical, far right wing website? Actually, it’s the tech site Wired that is sounding the alarm:
The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.
Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf) is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.
Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.
This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.
“It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things,” said Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”
For now, the legislation allows the database to be used solely for employment purposes. But historically such limitations don’t last. The Social Security card, for example, was created to track your government retirement benefits. Now you need it to purchase health insurance.
“The Social Security number itself, it’s pretty ubiquitous in your life,” Calabrese said.
David Bier, an analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, agrees with the ACLU’s fears.
“The most worrying aspect is that this creates a principle of permission basically to do certain activities and it can be used to restrict activities,” he said. “It’s like a national ID system without the card.”
If history teaches us anything about the power of government, it is if they can get away with it, they will take it. It’s that simple. No exaggeration or embellishment. The track record of government when promising to exercise power only so far and no farther is abysmal.
Even some Democrats should be appalled at this government overreach. Perhaps a bi-partisan effort can be mounted to rid the immigration bill of this noxious law.
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