I’m sure there are folks out there even more lax than myself.

I lost my birth certificate many years ago. I called the hospital where I was born and got a new one.

I lost that a few years ago.

Now I don’t remember where I was born (just city/state).

I lost my SS card back in the sixties. But I knew my number. (Well, actually I didn’t. When I lost my card instead of getting a new one I asked a friend in personnel at IBM where I worked what my number was.) I never had the card replaced so I haven’t had a SS card for almost 40 years. LOL

I got my first driver’s license during a period when I actually had a copy of my birth certificate. Since then (and I’ve moved to various states) all I’ve needed was a copy of my previous state’s DL to get my new one (and take tests of course).

The only reason I bothered to get a copy of my birth certificate was to get a passport…which has now long expired and I’ve since lost that too.

I no longer have a car but do renew my DL because that’s absolutely the only identification I own.

I bet there are plenty of people out there without even that.

I love America and the whole casual nature of our culture! But times they be changing.

I’m hoping this thread has come to an end because my confession of laxity is quite embarrassing. LOL

I believe there is an “ID on demand” case working its way up the court system out in TX or AZ. A police officer demanded ID from somebody with no possible probably cause. IIRC the guy had his pickemup pulled over to the side of some rural road and was outside the vehicle doing whatever and the cop asked for his ID. The guy refused, was arrested, now there’s a court case (or maybe the guy is suing).

I’m pretty sure we’d manage to maintain “probably cause” here. Obviously “probably cause” has a great deal of built in flexibility and is, ummm, pretty context-rich. If there is no need to show and ID and there is no good reason to demand one from you, then you don’t need to produce one just because some policemen was feeling all studly. But this has nothing to do with a national ID. If they can demand an ID they can demand ID whether its national or nothing more reliable than a state DL.

Maybe I’m just really gullible, but I just can’t imagine the police running around rousting people randomly for no good reason on any national scale (unless we let things really go to hell in a handbasket – I love that cliche even though it makes no sense whatsoever). We have way too many people and way too few cops for that and most of our cops keep live a few blocks away and have kids in the same schools and attend the same churches… In major metro areas the police are a “force”, but everywhere else their something closer to neighbors who happen to be cops.

You say, “By publicizing such events they only fan the flames of anti-Arab feeling”. I say, “If the shoe fits, wear it”.

There is absolutely no reason to obscure the TRUTH except to satisfy some warped idea of political correctness.

In fact, at this time in our world’s life, it is correct to note that threats to the world’s security are coming predomninantly from “Arab” or “Muslim” or “Islamist” individuals or groups. It is also certainly correct that most individuals belonging to these groups are by no means a threat to world security, but it would be to their benefit if they would more often stand up as a group and condemn the many acts of atrocity commited by members of their group under their group’s banner.

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.

I think we are in agreement about proactivity.

I have read the Patriot Act, and the surprising thing is the level of care taken in there to protect civil liberties. Almost all of the well publicized complaints about the act were simply lies.

Somehow, a good act was drawn up. I believe one person in the Justice Department did the primary work, although the whole thing is quite long.

There might be one or two areas that need tuning up, but our national inability to debate such issues rationally meant that it was a simple up/down sort of discussion and vote.

I do wish they had come up with another name. Everybody I know who is nervous about the government (which seems to be everybody) was immediately made suspicious by the name.

Giving any sort of power to the government is a risk. However, the primary purpose of government is protection, and I think some degree of privacy can (and will ultimately) be sacrificed [warning: he who quotes Benjamin Franklin in response runs high risks]. The ultimate reason is that modern technology allows lots of people to create and use WMDs – specifically bioweapons and chemical weapons, but more the former.

Hence we live in an age man has never experienced before – one where a single individual or a small group can produce and release something that can kill from hundreds to billions of people.

This development is very dangerous. It isn’t clear if it is possible to continue a modern society in these circumstances. The danger is not only from on Islamic terrorism, but also from cults (like Aum Shinrikyo) or other groups including eco-extremists such as people like these. Aum Shinrikyo was remarkably inept, fortunately, carrying out several biological attacks that nobody noticed. We can’t count on this for everyone.

Image a Ted Kaczynski who is a virologist rather than a mathematician. Kaczynski is brilliant, he just has one little problem: schizophrenia.

Because of this radical change in the potential for devastation in society, I believe we have to start some new thinking – National ID cards are just a tiny piece of that. I don’t hear anyone (other than Bill Joy) really focusing on this.

If it is possible to prevent these events, how do we do so? Do we outlaw certain technology or put it under tight control? Do we watch people with certain knowledge? What about foreign countries – like Cuba with its advanced biotechnology (and no doubt bioweapons) capability, or rogue nations?

As a technologist, I like progress in technology. Yet for the first time (well, starting maybe a decade ago) I see a danger in technology that occurs at the individual or small group level instead of major nation state.

Today, a number of people are worried about nanotechnology. Chrichton even wrote a silly novel about it. But the real nanotechnology danger is biological – it will be a long time (if ever) before artificial nanotechnology will catch up to biological systems in sophistication and ultimately, danger.

I’m not a biologist, although I have a decent bakground in the subject. My daughter is a neuroscientist who has ended up working with brain viruses (some really nasty) and also genetic engineering of brain tissue. So I pick up knowledge of genetic engineering from her – and it’s pretty clear that genetic engineering is closely allied to hacking – a lot of the thinking is the same, and with the manufacturers providing lots of stuff, you don’t really have to know in depth organic chemistry to do it (although it definitely helps). In any case, my daughter learned enough as an undergraduate to be able to do this stuff, as did everyone who took a biology related major at her university.

In summary, it’s a brave new world – and a damned dangerous one – and we haven’t even come close to the level of devastation and single biological weapons strike could cause.

If anybody has any real life practical solutions dealing with terrorists, that would be them.