National ID Cards - Coming Soon to Your Wallet

[WyrreJ]

National ID Card FAQ

Unless this emergency spending bill is voted down in the Senate on MONDAY, we are all going to get internal passports in a couple of years.

You can very easily send letters to your senators about the issue via this web page:

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If you are like many who haven't really thought too much about national ID cards one way or another, here' are just few reasons they are bad:

1) They make us less secure because now all id forgers have just one target instead of the ~50 or so we have today, economies of scale will kick in and criminals will be able to buy cheap incredibly high quality forgeries if they wish.

2) They make us less secure because the national id-card database will be a perfect target for identity thieves. Knowning the way our government works, the thieves won't even have to break in and steal the database, they will be able to buy access to it.

3) The USA is suppossed to be the home of the brave and the land of the free. Internal passports sure are not about freedom and the only way this stuff gets sold to the public is on the fear of "terrorism."

On Oct 21, 2001 Osama bin Laden said - "I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in -- and the West in general -- into an unbearable hell and a choking life."

[crager34]

Does "Show me your papers?" ring a bell to anyone?

[Tone]

I'm ok with it - I'm a proud owner of a US Passport and understand the difficulty in verifying 50 states differing driver's licenses and varying requirements to obtain one. What they do with any data is another thing but every stop by police now generates an entry into a database. Every credit card transaction is online somewhere so I don't see it as any big deal unless you are hiding something. Of course there are other countries accepting citizens....

[WyrreJ]

I don't see it as any big deal unless you are hiding something.

Tone, you are the last person I would have thought would buy into the "only the guilty have something to hide" fallacy. In other areas you seem to relish pushing the boundries, for example reselling uncertified HID kits which itself is a black and white violation of NHTSA rules. Particularly when such a violation of our constitutional rights won't even serve the purpose that it is being sold as - namely increasing our safety. National ID cards can only make us less safe, not more.

Maybe you are unfamiliar with the reference - internal passports are what countries like China and the former USSR require their citizens to maintain in order to simply travel within the boarders of the country. Those are not the kind of countries we should be taking our cues from.

Of course there are other countries accepting citizens....

I'm with Senator Carl Schurz on this one, he said:
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right!"

[thebear54]

Does "Show me your papers?" ring a bell to anyone?

It does ring a bell here at my house...MY parents went throught the hell of WW II in Holland.
But...on the other hand with the INS chasing illegals around 24/7 and spending untold millions of our tax dollars trying to figure out "who is who in America", I am all for it as long as the Data Base is secured to the max.
It took my family eight months to secure a legal permit to move here back in 1961 when there were no threats of terrorism.
REMEMBER 9/11.
John

[redline]

I'm another Proud owner of an American passport .Finally everyone will have to get one. Both of my parents immigrated from Hungary. Some people don't realize How good they have it here.

[kpaske]

I normally have strong opinions on current issues, but this one I'm a bit torn on. On the one hand, I'm all about security, and I'm willing to give up a little bit of personal freedom to benefit our nation (hey, I joined the Army for 4 years shortly after 9/11, so what does that tell you?). On the other hand, I'm all about freedom and don't really appreciate someone watching over me all the time.

I'm not sure I buy the argument about having one single ID card as being less secure than 50 state ID cards. When it comes to counterfieting, there are some states with ID cards simple enough to replicate using Photo Shop. But have you checked out a much more secure card, like an alien registration card, for instance? That bad boy would be VERY difficult to duplicate. Combine that card with a few choice biometrics, some cryptography, and maybe even a personal passphrase or pincode and you'd have one hell of a secure card that would be extremely difficult and expensive to replicate.

According to that article, the card will store your ID number, name, birthdate, address, sex, and a digital photograph. I personally don't see a major problem with this, as most of these items are already stored in thousands (if not tens of thousands) of national databases.

I do see some possible benefits from this type of system. For instance, if public key cryptography were used, the card would be a much stronger identifier for anything from online transactions to airport security. The possessor of the card, in combination with a pin code, passphrase, or even a biometric, could authenticate themselves in a way much more securely than any regular photo ID.

I don't really see the correlation between a national ID card and communist states. I don't think anyone is suggesting that our movements within our own country would be monitored. If the feds want to do that, they've already got that ability with credit card records, cell phone records, etc. Having a national ID card would only facilitate that if a record was stored, using our national ID number, every time we displayed the card. I think THAT is the type of thing we need to be leary of. In fact, if we want to protect our freedom, it should be required by law that nobody can store the information retrieved off the card, outside of the national registration database, which would be used only for authentication purposes.

What worries me the most is that if the laws pass without the public sufficiently aware of the exact implications and without understanding exactly how the technology works, there certainly is a lot of room for abuse. And I certainly wouldn't put it past our government, especially the Bush administration, to try to slide one past us.

[WyrreJ]

Read what Bruce Schneier has to say about the issue. Schneier is one of the foremost security researchers in the USA - his crypto algorithm, Blowfish, was one of the finalists for the recent DoD encryption standard (AES) which replaced the decades old IBM developed DES.

I'm not sure I buy the argument about having one single ID card as being less secure than 50 state ID cards. When it comes to counterfieting, there are some states with ID cards simple enough to replicate using Photo Shop.

And thus they are not highly trusted, which is a good thing.
Putting all your eggs in one basket is a bad idea from all kinds of perspectives.
And if these national id cards can't be highly trusted either, what then is the point in the first place?

But have you checked out a much more secure card, like an alien registration card, for instance? That bad boy would be VERY difficult to duplicate. Combine that card with a few choice biometrics, some cryptography, and maybe even a personal passphrase or pincode and you'd have one hell of a secure card that would be extremely difficult and expensive to replicate.

1) How much do you want to pay for your card to make it secure? $50? $100? $200? What exactly will that $50 tax buy you in additional security?

2) Sooner or later it will get forged, with at least 16 million illegal aliens in the USA already the market demand for such a forgery is enormous. If this document becomes the centrally important document, then people will easily pay over $100 per forgery. That's a "research budget" of at least $160 million. No way will it remain secure in the face of that kind of money.

According to that article, the card will store your ID number, name, birthdate, address, sex, and a digital photograph. I personally don't see a major problem with this, as most of these items are already stored in thousands (if not tens of thousands) of national databases.

There are a couple of problems:

1) Those databases are not centralized. Centralization creates all kinds of new problems that people haven't even thought of before. Its like county land ownership records. Public knowledge, but only available on paper down at the county court-house they were not seen as a risk. As soon as someone digitized them and put them in a computer, you could now look up anyone's address by name and the amount and total value of all property they owned at a whim. Centralization and digitization, no matter how carefully guarded almost always invokes the law of unintended consquences.

2) Those databases are supposed to be voluntary. Just because some people have given away some of their privacy does not mean that all law abiding citizens should be forced to do the same. Even if some of them are de facto involuntary - for example I had to give up my prints to get my DoJ and DoD clearances which I needed if I wanted to work - that does not mean all law-abiding citizens should be forced to do the same.

I do see some possible benefits from this type of system. For instance, if public key cryptography were used, the card would be a much stronger identifier for anything from online transactions to airport security.

Is this rather trivial benefit really worth the price of our freedom? Not to mention the actual dollar cost of implementing the system?

Do we actually need stronger id for online transactions? I use single-use credit card numbers for all my online purchases. The two major banks implementing these single-use numbers - MBNA and Citi - have reported that over the 5+ years that they have been using them there has not been a single case of fraud involving single-use numbers. Even if that were not the case, why should our tax dollars go to make life easier for businesses? Shouldn't they have have to fund their own systems? Isn't that the free market?

As for airport safety, anyone who has flown recently knows that airport security is a sham, meant to waste our time to convince those among us who have not mastered critical thinking that "the government is protecting us." Considering that the 9/11 hijackers all had valid, authentic IDs, having a cryplographically signed id does not seem like it will make any more difference than the song and dance we all do for the TSA at the airport today.

I don't really see the correlation between a national ID card and communist states. I don't think anyone is suggesting that our movements within our own country would be monitored.

We are already at the point were ID is all but necessary to travel. Airplanes require ID, trains require ID, busses require ID and of course driving yourself requires ID. You can walk, bicycle and hire a taxi - not very practical for most people. A national id will soon lead to swipe terminals at all these points of travel, to make it "easy" and once it is computerized, it will be linked. We should be rolling back the requirements for travel, not tightening them up.

If the feds want to do that, they've already got that ability with credit card records, cell phone records, etc.

So, if the feds can already do all this, what benefit is there in such a system to you and me?

I'm willing to give up a little bit of personal freedom to benefit our nation

I don't know if you chose that wording on purpose or not, but it so closely mimics Benjamin Franklin that I think it is worth posting his famous quote on the subject:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety"

(hey, I joined the Army for 4 years shortly after 9/11, so what does that tell you?)

When someone joins the military, to me and my family it has always meant that they wanted to preserve the American way of life. Freedom being the founding principle of that way of life.

redline said
Both of my parents immigrated from Hungary. Some people don't realize How good they have it here.

On the contrary redline. I do realize how good we have it here, and that is precisely why I wish to keep it that way. What good will it have done for your parents to immigrate here if we allow our country to eventually devolve into the kind of repressive system that they left behind?

[WyrreJ]

Here's the deal guys. Even if you think national id cards are a good thing, do you think that a proposal that has had minimal public debate ought to be slipped through as a rider on the tail of an emergency spending bill?

Shouldn't something like this get a full and complete airing in congress so that at the very least it is implemented properly with appropriate safeguards?

If you have any doubts at all about the way this is being implemented "in the dead of the night" so to speak, you should call on your senators to give it a proper evaluation. It takes less than two minutes to tell your senators that they need to do their jobs and give this issue a thorough analysis so that if they are going to do it, they can at least do it right -- just use this website:

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