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SCAN THIS NEWS
12.07.2001
Must-read article...
---
What's Our National Identity?
By Duncan Frissell 12.06.01
http://sierratimes.com/archive/files/dec/06/eddf120601.htm
Oracle's Larry Ellison and Harvard's Allen Dershowitz have been all over
the media recently pitching a National ID Card. One poll indicates 70%
public support for the notion.
Most critics of a National Identity Card mention Hitler, police stops, and
personal privacy to argue against the proposal. Those are good reasons to
oppose a National ID Card, but they miss the idea's worst features.
Proponents of a National ID Card have a responsibility to tell us exactly
what the system will do to day-to-day life in America. They are unlikely to
do so because most thoughtful Americans would be alarmed at the prospect.
A National ID card is *not* really about identity. It is about
authorization.

A modern National ID System will:

* Require Americans to obtain federal government authorization to travel,
work, rent or buy housing, obtain medical care, use financial services, and
make many purchases.

* This federal authorization could be denied for many reasons including
database errors, a suspicious transaction profile, being a deadbeat parent,
failure to pay taxes or fines, and any other social control measures
Congress wishes to hang on the system.

* The system will almost certainly create an outlaw class - as large as 10
to 20% of the population - cut off from "normal" life in America. This class
will include political refuseniks as well as those whose behavior has caused
the system's software to deny their transactions. This outlaw class will
sustain the underground economy for the use of future terrorists (and
ordinary criminals).

                 Previous National ID proposals covered such activities as
                 travel, work authorization, national health care, and licensing
                 of drivers. All of these proposed systems were meant to deny
                 access to air travel, work, medical care, and driving to those
                 who were not authorized for these activities. The events of
                 September 11th mean that many more transactions will require
                 a National ID. It is likely that the ID will be required for the
                 purchase of alcohol, tobacco, Rx drugs, firearms, ammunition,
                 knives, fertilizer, flying lessons, or any other goods or services
                 the government considers dangerous. Additionally, in order to
                 track the movement of potential terrorists, the New Improved
                 National ID Card will have to control all transportation including
                 car rentals and purchases, accommodations and financial
                 services. A large chunk of our lives.

                 When you present your National ID to complete a transaction,
                 you will actually be asking the Federal Government for its
                 permission. It converts most significant transactions that you
                 make from private ones to public ones. It creates a
                 government license for all jobs, all travel, all medical care, and
                 many purchases. This is a profoundly troubling departure from
                 American traditions.

                 Beyond federal licensing there are all the reasons that the
                 system will reject your proposed transaction. A National ID
                 System can't control terrorists or illegals unless it uses
                 software based on credit card fraud detection software to
                 block suspicious transaction and then deny the use of the ID
                 Card and notify the appropriate authorities.

                 To understand how this will work, you have to understand how
                 modern credit card software works. A credit card authorization
                 system performs a large number of checks to decide whether
                 or not to authorize a proposed transaction. First, it checks to
                 see if the card is in the system, has not been reported stolen,
                 and has adequate credit for the transaction. But then it goes
                 further. It checks the customer's transaction history, it checks
                 the exact nature of recent transactions and of the proposed
                 transaction to see how they fit the customer's profile and the
                 profile of fraudulent transactions that it has stored in its
                 system. It then produces a "score" which it uses to determine
                 whether or not to authorize the transaction. This is real
                 "profiling".

                 But even if you are you, the ID card is valid, and your
                 transactions aren't suspicious; your right to travel, work, and
                 buy will still likely be blocked by social control measures added
                 by Congress or the administrative bureaucracy. We know that
                 this will happen because that is exactly what *has* happened
                 with drivers licenses. A drivers license once meant that your
                 state considered you a safe driver. Today, you can be denied
                 a license for failing to pay child support, failure to pay traffic
                 and other fines (including library fines), being a non-resident
                 alien, and for hundreds of other "offenses".

                 State legislatures could not resist the temptation to leverage
                 the drivers license system to control their populations. Their
                 actions were based on the idea that "driving is a privilege not a
                 right." The future abuse of the National ID Card will be based
                 on the idea that "living is a privilege not a right."

                 When your National ID Card is denied (for whatever reason),
                 you will find yourself in a very uncomfortable situation. But you
                 will not be alone. In America today, some 20% of the
                 population does not use credit cards or bank accounts because
                 they are unwilling or unable to perform the financial
                 management tasks necessary to maintain such accounts.
                 Similarly, the National ID card will produce a population of
                 political or life-style refuseniks who will or cannot use it. Such
                 populations do not disappear. They continue to survive as best
                 they can and support a robust underground economy with its
                 well-known negative effects on tax collection, obedience to
                 law, and social cohesion.

                 As convenient as a National ID card seems for law
                 enforcement, it is an unamerican notion. It comes from a
                 political system explicitly rejected by those men who founded
                 this country. The English language has a word for a system in
                 which the central government of a country must authorize in
                 advance all of its citizen's activities. That word is totalitarian.

                 ---- Duncan Frissell is an Attorney working in New York City.
                 His Social Security card reads "For Social Security and tax
purposes--not for identification."

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