Q: What is a national ID card?
A: There are many different ID proposals floating around, but a full-fledged national ID card would be a mandatory identification card for all citizens and residents of a nation.
In his book The Limits of Privacy, Amilai Etzioni--an enthusiast for national ID and other forms of round-the-clock surveillance of innocent people--defines national ID cards as "domestic passport-like documents that citizens of many countries, including democracies, are required to have with them at all times."
Etzioni states that such a card has three characteristics: 1) All citizens and residents "of a given jurisdiction" must have it. 2) All who have it must carry it, and present it upon request by authorities. ("Note that presenting such identification is required even when there is no specific evidence that a crime has been committed or a regulation violated," he helpfully explains.) Finally, the card must be linked to a database with other information about the person.
Obviously, some nations have imposed national ID cards before the onset of the computer age. But most if not all current proposals for an accelerated identification regime in the U.S. tout the virtues of being able to link the cardholder to a national database of information about all citizens and residents. The proposals vary only with respect to what kind of information is to be included in the database, which would aggregate and combine data from all the sundry existing databases. With respect to the proposed "trusted traveler card" for airline passengers, many proponents would like every possible kind of information about you to be included in the database, everything from your criminal record to how you bought your tickets to your record of travel so far. The more info, the more robust will be the "profile" of you that is constructed on the basis of that info.
Q: Do we already have a national ID card in the United States?
A: On the 13-step road to a full-fledged national ID card, we're probably at step 7 or 8. The Social Security number--often in conjunction with the state-issued driver's license--has become a kind of de facto universal identifier. That's the case despite the fact that the original purpose of the Number was "only" to log the "contributions" of participants in the Social Security program.
For many years, the official Social Security card bore the legend "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION." Nevertheless, the Social Security Number is now used continuously for purposes of identification. At the same time, it ain't that hard to get hold of somebody else's Social Security Number if you know just a little bit about them. The rise of the Internet is one factor that has made such information more easily accessible to everyone, making it easier and easier to commit crimes like credit card fraud and identity theft. Annoyingly, this mandatory vulnerability of the individual is often cited by proponents of national ID as a premier reason why our privacy must be violated even further!
In the post-911 world, the most urgent reason we hear for imposing a national ID card is the "need" to track and monitor everyone at all times, the better to predict and prevent crime and especially terrorism. The implicit premise is that no one can be "secure" unless everyone is treated as a criminal suspect.
Q: How might a full-fledged national ID card be imposed on Americans?
A: The government would probably not succeed in ordering all Americans to report to their local post office today to apply for mandatory national ID cards. The outcry would be too great. But the government might accomplish the task gradually, by establishing precedents that make it just a little bit harder for people to function if they lack new quasi-mandatory forms of ID. Once the populace had grown accustomed to living with a particular new violation of their privacy and freedom of movement, the stage would then be set for winching the noose even tighter.
As they say, the only way to boil a frog is--slowly.
But the flame is being turned up. Ten years ago, nobody could have imagined that to fly from Manhattan to Albany, you'd first have to obtain authorization from the government, by presenting a government-issued ID card. Once that coercive violation of air-passenger privacy had become routine, it was a small matter in the post-911 world to require passengers to present ID up to three separate times before being allowed to board a plane. It's also not so easy any more to evade ID requirement with cheap knockoffs.
Two new quasi-mandatory forms of ID now in the works could set the stage for a full-fledged national ID card.
The "trusted-traveler" card would be a card passengers could obtain to (presumably) make it easier to get through security checks on-site. To get the card, you'd need to submit to a background check. The card would be linked to a database of financial and other information about you so that you could be flagged as a security risk if, say, you have a criminal record, or you bought your ticket in cash, or have a flying routine that is a little bit different from "the norm." If the card is successfully swiped without any alarm bells going off, voila, you're on board.
The Transportation Department is now authorized by Congress to look into developing such a card. Right now, the aim is to prepare such a database-linked card for anybody who might work in the travel industry. Then the card would be extended to passengers on a purely voluntary basis.
Of course, once all the kinks have been worked out and many (or not-so-many) passengers have signed up for the card voluntarily, officials would then "realize" that there isn't much point to the trusted-traveler card unless absolutely everybody has got one. After all, would-be terrorists with something a little odd in their background would probably not rush get the card. (At the same time, of course, terrorists with a squeaky-clean record would want the card as a way of deflecting attention from themselves at the airport, if indeed possession of the trusted-traveler card would enable one to evade the highest levels of scrutiny.) At that point, getting the card could then become mandatory for every singe air passenger. And once that level of surveillance were typical, the next step would be to require all inhabitants of the country to carry such a card, not merely those who sometimes go on a trip.
Another route to national ID is "beefing up" the state-issued driver's licenses. The federal government may require that all state driver's licenses be uniform in appearance, include biometric information like digitalized fingerprints, and be linked to a single national database. This, too, is a very live proposal.
If both the trusted-traveler card and the amalgamated driver's licenses are installed, the government could eventually merge them into a universally mandatory ID card--a national ID card. Though either one alone could also do the trick.
Q: Are there any benefits to a national ID card?
A: Yes, the card would enable people who have no business knowing about your private affairs to have instant and regular access to information about your private affairs. It is very good for people who want to be able to treat other people as criminal suspects, even when there is no evidence of criminal activity that could provide grounds for a warrant.
Let's try a reductio ad absurdam. Would there be any benefits to simultaneously throwing everybody in the country in jail? Granted, everybody's rights would be grotesquely violated. Granted, the economy would grind to halt. Granted, the country would be rendered susceptible to attack from the outside; even Canada would be able to conquer us. But at least no existing domestic criminals would be able to rob a bank or commit murder. And isn't that a benefit?
Any systematic, arbitrary violation of individual rights MIGHT stop some criminal from carrying out some criminal act, at least temporarily. The problem is that each such violation ALSO makes it all that much harder for the rest of us to live our lives and to defend ourselves against such criminal acts. And we have rights.
Q: Would terrorists be able to commit their terrorist acts if they have to apply for a national ID card?
A: Well, Israel has a kind of national ID card (not yet a "smart card" with a magnetic stripe, though; they're looking into it). Yet there seem to be many methods available of slaughtering innocent people if your own life or death is not a consideration, and even if your corpse might later be identified.
But there's more than one way to skin a cat, and terrorism can be combated by many means. For example, by targeting terrorists--their networks and their sponsors--just as criminals can be combated by targeting criminals. People will debate, as they should, exactly what methods of doing so are best and most moral. But policymakers should and must at least draw the line at specifically targeting and investigating--everybody.
Q: Will the national ID card endanger my privacy and security?
A: Only if being forced by law to give the police copies of the keys to your apartment would endanger your privacy and security. Only if being banned by law from closing your door or drawing your window shades would endanger your privacy and security.
Even your bank transactions could end up being routinely added to a national database to which anybody with a right to request your card could have access. All it would take is a) computer memory and computing power; and b) the political ability to add that information to the database. The rationale would be: "Well, the more information we have about a person, the more accurate will be the 'profile' our analytical software can build of him." It doesn't look like the evolution of computers is going to slow down any time soon. So what happens next will depend on what those in power are willing and able to do. Which in turn depends on us: what are we willing to let them get away with?
Remember, if somebody wants to sabotage your life in some way, it helps if they know something about you. Like where you live and everything you've ever done of which some official notation has been made. The ability to ignore the constitutional prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure makes the process a whole lot easier.
And remember, totalitarian governments love "papers." That's a great tool for them. The more they know about everybody--and the more easily they can gain access to that information--the easier it is for them to push everybody around, round up undesirables as necessary, etc. That doesn't mean that the United States will become totally totalitarian if it adopts a national ID card; there are many countervailing forces in our heritage. But it sure would be a huge step in the wrong direction.
Keep your eye on the frog...
Q: If the advocates of a national ID card swear up and down that a national ID card will never be used for Purpose X, does that mean a national ID card will never be used for Purpose X?
A: The track record is not good. Remember, the Social Security Number was "not for identification." It was just a little ol' accounting method for keeping track of how much you put into the Social Security system and how much you would take out, upon retirement. Even if present promises are made in good faith by present-day implementers of policy, those promises don't exactly indenture everybody else, either now or in the future.
It's not as if, under a national identification regime, only the President would be able to demand your national ID card and swipe it and gain access to what the national database has to say about you. Any rogue cop, any criminal with dough to bribe a clerk, any clerk who wants to exact revenge against an old girlfriend, anybody at all who can ask for your card and misinterpret what he sees on the screen--in other words, a lot of people--will be newly empowered under the national ID regime to cause you trouble. IRS agents have been caught riffling through presumably confidential tax records when they weren't supposed to, without suffering any great penalty for having done so.
Despite all the talk of requiring biometric identifiers so nobody can steal your identity, the actual security of the cardholder is not the main concern of those who advocate the national ID card. If your privacy and security were the main concern, everybody would be advocating a roll-back of the Social Security Number, liberty to open bank accounts without having to present personal information about oneself, etc.
By contrast, under a full-fledged national identification regime, there would be a single key to your personal kingdom. If you lose that key, or if somebody steals it, you're in BIG trouble. Doesn't matter if all the national ID proponents assure us now that precautions would be taken to prevent any such thing. Databases are not infallible; they contain errors. Nor are the humans who would be guarding the system infallible. If you have to have "permission to live," once that permission is impaired or revoked, living becomes a lot harder.
Nobody is as motivated to preserve and protect your own personal security as you are. Under a national identification regime, your ability to do so would be largely stripped away. You'd be a perennial criminal suspect, always having to worry about when and whether some smart criminal or dumb clerk will turn your life into a living hell.
Q: Where can I get more information about the dangers of national ID cards, and the current status of various crypto- and proto-national-ID proposals?
A: Check out the web sites of the Privacy Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or Privacy International (links to these are supplied below). When in doubt, plug phrases like "national ID," "identification card," "the venomous schemer Larry Ellison of Oracle," etc., into a search engine like Google. (Ellison is the head of Oracle, a software firm. He wants to give the government "free" national database software to go with any national ID card. The database would amalgamate information from every existing electronic track record of your actions.)
Q: What if despite all the efforts of good-hearted champions of freedom across America, a full-fledged national ID card is eventually imposed anyway? Must I then resign myself to living in a society in which I am perpetually obliged to "present my papers"? Must I become a number like the McGoohan character in the TV series "The Prisoner"?
A: As Barbara Branden told the New Zealand magazine Free Radical, the day a national ID card is imposed in this country--assuming we have survived the boiling thus far--will be the day for civil disobedience.
However, why wait until then? If you care about your liberty and privacy and about the fate of the United States, the time to be an obnoxious propagandist is right now.
--David M. Brown, 6/2/02
[UPDATE 5/18/05 I'm making available at no charge a 40-page paper that I wrote a few years ago, "Your Papers, Please," about the national surveillance regime we seem to be heading toward. It is available in pdf format. CLICK HERE for table of contents and how to contact me to request your free copy.]
RECOMMENDED READING
The End of Privacy, Charles J. Sykes. Tells the story "of citizens who have had their conversations monitored, movements spied upon, medical and financial records accessed, sexual preferences revealed, homes invaded, possessions confiscated, and even lives threatened--all in the name of some alleged higher social or governmental good."--Laissez Faire Books. GET IT
How to Be Invisible, J.J. Luna. Advice from a man who had to learn to be invisible in Franco's Spain. Do you know what is the one thing you must never do if you wish to achieve a bare-bones level of privacy? GET IT
The Prisoner, Patrick McGoohan. Complete set of 10 DVD videos; also available in video. Are you a number or a free man? Find the answer--maybe--in one of the most interesting and independent-minded television shows ever made. GET IT
More books about privacy, including No Place to Hide and National Identification Regimes. GET THEM
Web sites of privacy-promoting organizations:
Privacy Foundation
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Privacy International
I Am Not a Number
