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Jewish World Review Oct. 17, 2005 / 14 Tishrei, 5766 It's time the U.S. grows up and gets an ID card By Robert Robb
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
There is a flurry of activity about making identification documents more
reliable and secure:
All the major immigration reform proposals include a new, less forgeable
Social Security card.
Congress recently passed new requirements for state driver's licenses,
including verifying the legal status of recipients.
An election reform commission headed by former President Jimmy Carter and
former Secretary of State James Baker recommends using the new state
driver's licenses for voter identification, including tracking Social
Security numbers on a nationwide basis to avoid duplicate registrations.
Those without a driver's license would be given a voter ID card subject to
the same verifications.
All of these proposals dance around the central issue: It's time for a
grownup discussion about a national ID card in the United States.
In the modern era, there is a continuous need to establish that we are who
we say we are. There is also a need to guard against others making false
claims to be us.
After 9/11, there is also a security imperative to making sure that those
who are here have a legal right to be here and are doing what they are
legally entitled to do while here. If our immigration laws had been
enforced, most of the hijackers either never would have gotten into the
country or would have already left.
The United States already has the practical equivalent of a national ID
card. Americans frequently have to show their driver's license or reveal
their Social Security number to do a variety of things. But these documents
were never intended to be a secure way of establishing one's identity and
are, at present, easily forged or falsified. Hence the various proposals to
make them more secure and informative.
But if it is important and necessary to be able to establish one's identity
frequently, why not have a single document designed to do precisely that,
and to do it well?
There are two primary objections to a national ID card. The first is that
it leads inevitably to a police state.
But the existence of such a card does not a police state make, any more
than requiring a Social Security number to work or a driver's license to
use the roads have created a police state. There is nothing about a
national ID card that dilutes the 4th Amendment, which protects "the right
of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects"
and against "unreasonable searches and seizures."
Whether to have such a document is a separable issue from when and under
what circumstances government can compel its production or track its use.
The more serious objection is that a national ID card may further invade
privacy. But government already has the information that would likely be
part of a national ID card.
Various technological approaches are possible to make identification
documents more reliable and less forgeable — a digital picture or a
biometric identifier, such as a fingerprint or retinal scan. That's
certainly yielding some privacy to government. But they are already being
proposed for Social Security cards, driver's licenses, passports and visas.
Why not make them part of a more reliable and universal ID card?
To protect privacy, some suggest that national ID cards be limited to
government purposes. But that makes no sense. We have a more frequent need
to establish who we are outside of government. If there is a reliable
document that does that, why limit its use?
The way to truly protect privacy is to give people an enforceable property
right to personal information about themselves, including financial
transactions and consumption patterns. Others would not be permitted to
sell or exchange such information without permission.
The Blair government in Britain is pushing for a national ID card. The
discussion is underway in Australia, France and Canada as well.
Yet, in the United States, we continue to nibble around the edges, trying
to make a combination of other documents suffice.
It's time to get to the central issue. In the modern age, there's a
continuous need to establish that we are who we say we are. There should be
a reliable and secure document that does that.
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JWR contributor Robert Robb is a columnist for The Arizona Republic. Comment by clicking here.
© 2005, The Arizona Republic |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||
