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"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy...Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." (Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead, pp. 684, 685.)
"Laissez Faire": Leave us alone!
Even as those involved in Laissez Faire City work to increase your economic privacy and thus, in Rand's words, make us more "civilized," the supporters of the omnipotent State are promoting the "virtues" of stripping us of all but the last vestiges of that precious privacy.
Calls for a national identification card required for citizens have waxed and waned over the years. Long gone are the days when we could, for instance, travel aboard sans passports or other identifying papers. The foundations for the current de facto ID card we must now possess to exist in mainstream society were laid by that paragon of fascism and corporativism, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The Social Security card virtually all Americans have was originally sold as a means solely to track our retirement "contributions," i.e., taxes. Indeed, the front of my card explicitly states that the card and number are "for social security and tax purposes -- not for identification."
Have you tried to cash a check lately without that number available for the teenaged store clerk to peruse? Try to get a credit card or a loan without it? File your taxes? Get a job?
A frighteningly large percentage -- 70% -- of Americans support the statists' vision of a Brave New World. Nearly 85% of citizens of the more highly nationalized United Kingdom eagerly endorse opening themselves to greater scrutiny.
Fear is a great motivator, and politicians are not bashful in exploiting and preying on the legitimate fears engendered by the recent attacks on the World Trade Center towers. They delight in increasing the pace of their insidious stripping away of our privacy. They will, of course, do all they can to assure us that they are doing this for our own good. Making their depredations palatable is always a priority for these privacy vampires.
In the online London Times, Jill Sherman reports the concern British authorities have for the doubts of their subjects in accepting a compulsory national ID card: "The card could also function as a driving licence, credit card and store card to make it more useful and therefore more acceptable to consumers." No need to be bothered by a handful of cards cluttering up your wallet. Reduce them all down to one convenient card that "...should be made as user-friendly as possible."
Yes. No muss, no fuss as you go about shedding any last bits of your privacy.
As Wired writer Julia Scheeres tells us, such cards will "increase police power," "facilitate information-sharing among government agencies," and "streamline government interactions with the public." To politicians or law enforcement agents, these facts are selling points -- not valid objections -- for the introduction of national ID cards.
Let us not, however, ignore the opinions of certain powerful private citizens who are enthusiastic about this unique opportunity. Oracle bigwig, Larry Ellison -- simultaneously one of the richest people in the world and one of the most ignorant about basic free enterprise principles; his tech company helped sic the Clinton "Justice" Department on Microsoft, after all -- Ellison is cheerleading for mandated ID cards. He thinks matching government databases with passenger ID's at airports to increase our security is a wonderful idea.
"We need a national ID card with our photograph and thumbprint embedded in the ID card," he tells us, as reported by SiliconValley.com and other sources. Indeed, he's so enthralled with selling American citizens down the river that he assures us that, "We're quite willing to provided the software for this absolutely free."
Gosh. Such a thoughtful, generous guy he is.
Hmm. I wonder if the fact that the CIA was his company's first big customer and that the name "Oracle" comes from a project his people did for the CIA has any influence on his warm embrace of this incredibly statist idea?
Nah! Couldn't be...could it?
As for petty angst that certain worrywarts have for transgressions of their privacy, Larry echoes that great philosopher, Alfred E. Neuman: "What? Me worry?"
"Well," Larry says wisely, "this privacy you're concerned about is largely an illusion. All you have to give up is your illusions, not any of your privacy." After all, your neighbors can garner tons of info on you, he tells us, simply by logging on to the Internet. Of course, the fact that my neighbors cannot legally use that information to limit my freedom as can my national guardians apparently does not enter into Larry's constricted calculations.
Ross Kerber of the Boston Globe online offers us another voice chastising us for our silly anxieties. Congressman George Gekas says that "for all intents and purposes we're practically at the situation where the identity of every American is readily available."
Well. By all means then. If we already have a national ID in fact if not in name; if we've already lost our privacy, then, heck, let's just accept this fait accompli and quit arguing. How foolish of constitutionalists like me to oppose what is already a reality.
Of course, if we're "there already," why are such stalwarts as Representative Gekas and CEO Larry Ellison so eager, so bold -- so desperate? -- in cramming this project down our collective throats?
According to the Drudge Report, an anonymous ["anonymous"...how's that for irony...] White House source tells us in regard to a mandatory ID system, "I can tell you this, the president is very reluctant. But we must look at all options."
Golly. As long as he's reluctant to strip us of our privacy, perhaps we critics should simply slip away into our holes and cease our endless hectoring of someone "reluctant" to violate our liberty.
Not to be left out, Congressman Richard Gephardt sadly informs us that, "This event will change the balance between freedom and security."
How true. Sadly, how true. Why is it, though, that during a crisis, the balance never tilts in favor of more freedom, the only avenue we have for ever achieving real security?
Across the Big Pond, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a typical let's-have-it-both-ways approach, says he wants a "voluntary" system. Unfortunately for the full-steam-ahead-crowd, compulsory ID's conjure up dark images of Nazis. Arresting citizens with the temerity to wander the sidewalks without being able to prove to the authorities who they are is bad PR, don't you know.
The police do have a right to know who you are. Don't they?
I'm sure to the regret of wafflers like Blair, most authorities believe, however, that only a compulsory system will "work" in the sense of clamping down on privacy, er, crime. Mustn't fall behind Greece and Argentina where the ID-less can find themselves tossed behind bars. In traditional stiff-upper-lip toughness, British Home Secretary David Blunket believes, according to Drudge, that "politicians' ability to act must not be hamstrung by an excessively legalistic approach to human rights."
Heavens, no. We wouldn't want "too much law" -- or pesky principles -- to interfere with running roughshod over citizens' rights, now would we?
Let's look at how this promised panacea might be brought to fruition, shall we?
An embryonic national ID card is currently gestating in the form of the Social Security/driver's license combo mentioned above. Most states already are formatting their driver's licenses to comply with the "National Standard for Driver License/Identification Card." Uniformity is the name of the game when it comes to tracking citizens. When your ID is linked with a national database, you could be scanned and checked regardless of what jurisdiction you happen to be in at the time. Since random traffic stops are already common, the odds of being swept up in such an illegal search increases the more you drive.
Of course, this standardization of ID would be extended to non-drivers, as well. Indeed, I recently corresponded with a woman who has no driver's license but who thinks this development would be peachy; that it would "simplify" her life.
Hmm.
Magnetic stripes are currently the primary means of encoding your personal information. Those black bars can be counterfeited, however, so the momentum is flowing towards computer chips. An additional "virtue" of "smartcards" is the sharp increase in potential data storage available to our eternal watchers.
Whatever the mechanism for encoding your life, the options for what to include are numerous. First are the "normal" facts most of us already must surrender to drive and survive: your name, signature, weight, height, eye and hair color, sex, date of birth, and photograph.
Coming soon to an ID card near you: Fingerprints, thumbprints, and the face and retinal scans of millions of citizens. Since it's up to the authorities to decide what they believe to be "important" to track, we aren't done yet.
Your criminal history, your credit report, your gun and ammunition purchases, your employment history, welfare payments you've received, your birth certificate (standardized, of course), your marital status and sexual preferences, your health record (remember the Clinton's hoped-for-but-not-yet-realized national health care with its attendant "Health Security Card"?), including sexually transmitted diseases you've contracted, drug use, genetic testing and DNA code, your religion, and any potential "terrorist" organizations you might belong to such as Gun Owners of America.
As Stephan Moore of the Cato Institute says, the State is infinitely creative in uncovering new uses for their dictatorial toys. You can rest assured that "...new and at times urgent alternative purposes for the registry will doubtless arise. Those who favor big government will find many uses for a centralized computer database every time a new 'national crisis' emerges: to help fight the war on drugs, to control the spread of disease, to combat terrorism, and so forth." In total disregard of the Tenth Amendment, state records will be federalized to an unprecedented degree.
With such power at their hands, the State will be able to check movements of "suspects" and compare ID databases with watch lists of whomever is out of favor at that time. As the ACLU says, "A national ID card would essentially serve as an internal passport. It would create an easy new tool for government surveillance and could be used to target critics of the government, as has happened periodically throughout our nation's history."
Ah, yes. History. We all have learned from the mistakes of the past so we aren't doomed to repeat them in the future. Haven't we?
Who can forget:
Who can forget these outrages? Well...apparently nearly everyone.
Besides, we do want to make things easier for the State. Don't we?
Further down the line are computer chips injected under your skin that can be scanned automatically without ever needing to "bother" you with what the State is up to.
Nirvana, for sure. The end of terrorists and terrorism.
Right?
Darn! That nasty ol' reality keeps intruding into these utopian fantasies.
The use of national ID cards has not stopped car bombings in Spain, France, and Italy. According to the ACLU's Barry Steinhardt, "If we had had national ID cards two weeks ago, it would not have thwarted the terrorists. They were in the country lawfully and had identification documents on them." (At least most of them.)
According to Robert Post, law professor, University of CA-Berkeley, the proposed new ID cards "could be hacked or faked or evaded by capable terrorists."
Oops.
Indeed, such national ID cards might worsen the situation. They would hardly deter suicide attackers and could give the rest of us "a false sense of security when vigilance is required." (Philip Johnston)
Trevor Hemmings of the British Statewatch organization says that, "I think it's just one of a series of anti-civil libertarian measures they [the British government] want to put in place and they have been waiting years to do it." Seditious libel, no doubt.
Despite the perversions we can already imagine occurring should a compulsory national ID card be implemented, "...abuses of the proposed i.d. card that we cannot now envision would almost certainly occur when expediency takes precedence over safeguards of privacy rights and civil liberties. In fact, privacy rights have already been eroded." (Moore)
The fact that neither the Congress nor the president have constitutional authority to do what is proposed or to justify what is already in place is not slowing down this stampede towards "gentle" totalitarianism. Nor can we rely on the Supreme Court to save us. Supreme Court Chief "Justice" William Rehnquist believes that, "It is neither desirable nor is it remotely likely that civil liberty will occupy as favored a position in wartime as it does in peacetime." (emphasis added)
The price of this battle is eternal vigilance. If citizens succumb to their fears, to their emotions, and fail to heed the lessons of history we will soon be saddled with de jure national ID cards that "violate the most basic of American liberties: the right to be left alone." (ACLU) National ID cards are an "infringement of the citizen's right to remain anonymous if he chooses." (Johnston)
If we are to continue our progress towards greater civilization and not revert to the black realms of servitude, we must resist the Siren call of "safety" and "security" and refuse to bend our necks to our would-be masters.
Freedom entails risk, yes, but the alternatives carry far greater risks.
Have the courage to set men free from men. Seek liberty. Seek life. Seek your soul.
Drudge Report, "Bush Contemplates National ID Card For All Citizens." 9-23-01.
Johnston, Philip, "The Case For and Against Identity Cards." London Telegraph, online, 9-25-01.
Kerber, Ross, "ID, Please." BostonGlobe online, 9-24-01.
McCullagh, Declan, "Why Liberty Suffers in Wartime." Wired News online, 9-24-01.
Moore, Stephan, "A National Identification System; Testimony." Cato online, 5-13-97.
Reuters, "ID Cards 'Don't Stop Crime.'" Yahoo!News online, 9-25-01.
Scheeres, Julia, "ID Cards Are de Riguer Worldwide." Wired News online, 9-25-01.
Sherman, Jill, "Fingerprint ID Cards Possible in Two Years." The Times online, London, 9-25-01.
SiliconValley.com. "Oracle Boss Urges National ID Cards." Online, 9-24-01.
(URL's available upon request.)
