(Compulsory) national ID cards

You really are bad at this. I never said that I thought it was a 4th amendment issue. I specifically said 5th & (arguably 9th). 5th because the private data could be used to incriminate you, and 9th because while the right to privacy is not explicitly granted, I think it's one of those that would fall under it's umbrella.

If all the databases are kept separate, why combine them in the first place? Like the voter ID issue, I see it as an overzealous solution to a non-existent problem.

I realize any scenario where some high ranking government official "kills" my identity is extremely unlikely, and can still happen even with the systems we currently have in place. It doesn't matter to me if it's more 1984 than reality, because this sort of system would be a step towards 1984. I find it comforting that all my data is not in a single location, that it takes time for the police to access them all. It makes the likelihood of abuse less since a person would have to be determined to mess with them all. The fact that this isn't happening now is not a convincing argument (to me) for making it easier for it to happen in the future. This simply is not a power I want my government to have. I do not mid that it takes 15 minutes for a cop to run my license. I do not mind that the system is inefficient or redundant. I do not care that the government can get the same data currently as I feel the protections in place against them superfluously accessing it are adequate (except for the phone records bit that the Patriot Act made a trivial task). I don't care that I already share some of this data voluntarily with banks and other companies. I do not want this sharing to be mandated or forced in any way.

Leaving aside the pro/con argument of a national ID card for a moment:

I was discussing this thread with Mrs. Dim, and realized that it does feel kind of strange to me that a state-issued permit (namely, a driver's license) has been deemed the identification authority of first resort in our country.

Maybe it's a reflection of the pervasiveness of our car culture, but it struck me as odd. Does anyone know what US folks used as identification prior to the 50's? Were passports used domestically in the context of proving identity? Or was it less of an issue since society wasn't as mobile, and everybody knew that Doug the drifter wasn't actually Baron Quicheknickers?

My Google-fu must be weak tonight, as the only sources I'm finding appear to be kooks.

I don't think you had to prove identity except in very rare cases. For the most part, you told people your name, and they accepted that as who you were. Even if you wanted to work, or fly somewhere. You didn't have to prove anything to anyone in daily life.

Malor wrote:

I don't think you had to prove identity except in very rare cases. For the most part, you told people your name, and they accepted that as who you were. Even if you wanted to work, or fly somewhere. You didn't have to prove anything to anyone in daily life.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/lMZy8l.jpg)

The 5th amendment does not stop data that is on your credit cards etc from incriminating you.

The 15 minute cop scenario broken down another way is that if certain systems are taking too long to respond they've found that the cop doesn't always wait for them to finish which brings up the potential for errors/omissions (remind that two of the 9/11 hijackers were on watch lists and didn't get flagged going through the airport).

I often forget I'm not addressing an IT crowd even though people on the site tend to be more tech oriented. Just because you have a nationalid where the information of the various systems is centralized for easy access doesn't mean that every application that makes requests gets the full info. So the databases aren't "kept separate", but the access granted to applications in your local hospital would not be the same access granted to the police which would not be the same access granted to other agencies. The issue today is that if a cop pulls over a Michigan driver in Idaho, they may not be able to easily get the info they need to determine whether the person in the car has warrants out for their arrest or that their license is even valid. I do believe the 2 hijackers in question drove from their state and boarded in a different state deliberately to try to game the system and it worked.

I'll just point out again the massive costs involved with operating 50 different BMV systems, each hospital implementing their own medical records system, etc. Especially the medical thing. Many people on these boards I've seen are pro single-payer. I don't think many people realize the massive expenses involved with interacting with 50 state departments of insurance, each hospital creating their own medical record storage applications for the standard codes, each insurance company and providers having to come up with workable interfaces which are often different than what medicare demands, etc. It's a clusterfark, highly inefficient, highly expensive, and totally unecessary burden placed upon our medical system.

And our benefit from all that is just about zero. We can only lose in this scenario. Everything that we need to do, we can do now. The convenience factor isn't an issue, because most of our forms of ID are used so rarely. And avoiding centralized control is a BIG feature.

All of these supposed benefits you list are benefits for the government, not benefits for us. And this government does not need any more tools to make people's lives miserable, whether through malice or simple incompetence.

We don't want a single ID, bandit. You're not going to convince us otherwise. And the purported medical benefits can be arrived at simply by standardizing record formats; that doesn't even need government intervention.

Let the market sort it out.

Oh, and bandit? The whole point of the United States of America is that you can get away with some stuff here. That's a feature, not a bug.

Malor wrote:

Oh, and bandit? The whole point of the United States of America is that you can get away with some stuff here. That's a feature, not a bug.

I think that's the main difference between bandit's position and mine/yours. Bandit is very correct that a unified ID system would make it much easier and more efficient to identify and persecute criminals (from people driving with suspended drivers licenses, to illegal immigrants, to terrorists). My view is that it is not worth the sacrifice of our privacy/freedom. I'm fairly certain that this is going to end up as an "agree to disagree" situation, since it's extremely unlikely that one side will convince the other.

So, basically you could get to see how this would shake out fairly soon, eh?

I hadn't heard of this system until just now so it's quite scary the amount of problems that it could kick up for americans. This story is pretty much what i'd be afraid of in a compulsory national ID scheme:

Calabrese cited the example of a Florida telecommunications worker who took a well-paying job, but was rejected by the e-verify system. She went to the Social Security Administration, who told her her records looked fine. But the employer continued to get non-confirmations from the system. After months of fighting with bureaucracy, she was finally forced to take a new, lower-paying job. Calabrese said she later learned that the problem was a data-entry error by her employer.

Calabrese argued that the story points to serious due-process problems with the system. "You essentially have no remedy" if a mistake is made, he said. "If everyone says 'it's not my fault,' you're basically out of luck." This can be especially hard on workers with limited skills and education; they often have neither the time nor the sophistication to navigate the federal bureaucracy and vindicate their right to work.

There's no way to fight something that you can't control or effect yourself.

Right, exactly. When you set up automated systems as gatekeepers to critical life functions, it's going to fail sometimes, and people are going to be really f*cked up by it. In some cases, people are going to die.

The more centralized control we avoid, the less damage we do to the innocent. Yes, it means that some people breaking laws will escape that otherwise wouldn't, but punishing the innocent to get the guilty is the central pillar of evil governments. In many ways, I'd call it a defining feature of what constitutes an evil government.

Every so often an innocent person goes to jail. Surely we should dismantle the justice system. After all those people get really f*cked up by it.

Hey, I have an idea. Instead of that ridiculous false dichotomy, let's come up with a justice system that's really sure not to punish the innocent.

Punishing innocent people to get the guilty ones is a hallmark of evil societies.

edit to add: I mean, Jesus f*cking christ, that is such a MONSTROUS failure of empathy. And I mean 'monstrous' in the sense of being a monster, not in the sense of being large. What if it's you, or your sister or your mother, that's thrown into prison because of either a malicious prosecutor or a simple clerical error?

I don't know what to do with people that can seriously make the argument that it's a good idea to punish the innocent to make sure we get the guilty.

Sociopathy is the lack of empathy -- and I would argue that most of our current "justice" system is a sociopath's wet dream. Can whole societies go sociopathic?

I DO NOT WANT you to have that much power over my life. Keep your hands the f*ck off my ID.

Could you please provide a citation of your assertion that central control does more damage to the innocent? Can you show any evidence that in any of the dozens of other countries that national id exists that it has caused a death? Do you have any reason to believe that there wouldn't be an appeal process for any issues? Can you at least quantify the number of Americans jailed for clerical errors? Bottom line I think you are blowing smoke.

You just made the assertion that because a system might, MIGHT, have an issue that the status quo is better. You have no data of the number of issues the current system causes, you seem to assume that a system must be flawless to have merit.

I never said it is "good" to punish the innocent. I just pointed out that many other systems have flaws. However you seem to be too busy cursing to have a rational discussion.

Let's get down to brass tacks.

A national ID would centralize a lot of systems that are otherwise disparate. It provides some measurable advantages. It provides some measurable disadvantages.

Putting aside the privacy issues, implementing a new national ID system would cost a lot of money. Assuming the federal government would manage to convince or force state governments to stop providing their own ID system, it would also cost a lot of jobs. There would also be a (likely heavily bureaucratic and tedious) process to migrate to a national ID system. The creation of an ID that would replace your driver's license, social security card, birth certificate, and unify your medical records would be long, difficult, and costly. None of the advantages of a national ID that have been mentioned in this thread, or conceived thus far to my knowledge, would justify that cost. Especially in an economy as frail as this one, where there are much bigger, more important problems to fix.

NSMike wrote:

Let's get down to brass tacks.

A national ID would centralize a lot of systems that are otherwise disparate. It provides some measurable advantages. It provides some measurable disadvantages.

Putting aside the privacy issues, implementing a new national ID system would cost a lot of money. Assuming the federal government would manage to convince or force state governments to stop providing their own ID system, it would also cost a lot of jobs. There would also be a (likely heavily bureaucratic and tedious) process to migrate to a national ID system. The creation of an ID that would replace your driver's license, social security card, birth certificate, and unify your medical records would be long, difficult, and costly. None of the advantages of a national ID that have been mentioned in this thread, or conceived thus far to my knowledge, would justify that cost. Especially in an economy as frail as this one, where there are much bigger, more important problems to fix.

I think you vastly overestimate the costs. If you expand an existing service (like passport) you already have a loose system in place. Also consider people would still need easy access to stations to make changes so those BMV workers just get repurposed.

bandit0013 wrote:

I think you vastly overestimate the costs. If you expand an existing service (like passport) you already have a loose system in place. Also consider people would still need easy access to stations to make changes so those BMV workers just get repurposed.

Who is going to pay those repurposed workers? The states are not going to pay the salaries of employees performing federal jobs, and the states would never consent to simply writing a check to the federal government for the savings they garners from relinquishing the ID responsibility to the federal government.

The medical records thing only makes sense to me if the United States had a national healthcare system. Otherwise it feels rather like the state deciding to administer my (warning: retro) Blockbuster card. One doesn't have anything to do with the other.

clover wrote:

The medical records thing only makes sense to me if the United States had a national healthcare system. Otherwise it feels rather like the state deciding to administer my (warning: retro) Blockbuster card. One doesn't have anything to do with the other.

I work as a software developer in the Healthcare industry and I work specifically with EMR and other medical record type systems. One of our current projects I'm implementing is the IHH initiative and its fun complexities, and hoo boy is there some crazy stuff happening. Anyone who thinks a new ID system that includes medical information wouldn't be expensive is out of their freaking minds. Not even counting the costs all the other supposed benefits for a unified ID system, the whole state vs federal laws on medical stuff would cost insane amounts of money through implementation and design as well as lawsuits when the states start suing the federal government over breach of the 10th amendment.

bandit0013 wrote:

I think you vastly overestimate the costs. If you expand an existing service (like passport) you already have a loose system in place. Also consider people would still need easy access to stations to make changes so those BMV workers just get repurposed.

After 9/11 it came out that the FBI's email system couldn't even handle attachments. The IRS still has data recorded on punch cards because Congress cut off funding to revamp it's IT systems.

You're talking about the mother of all systems integration projects and it will have a price tag to match. Hell, just think about what it would cost to integrate police systems--everything from podunk little towns (which would likely need to automated in the first place) to major metropolitan centers.

I could make the same argument about cost/benefit of green energy. I mean, do you want me to start citing short term costs over long term gain in other discussions? I think the cost concern is a weak position to take.

As for criminals getting away being a feature, that is all well and good until someone dies. Previous posters are concerned about an ID killing someone but I guarantee more people die today from weaker security than would die from a computer glitch. If we were that concerned about system safety and human life we wouldn't have cars, since car accidents and failures are the #1 cause of accidental death.

As far as stimulus via public works, which I know many of you support, getting the entire nation wired on high speed fiber + a better power grid could be one big project that would create a ton of jobs and provide lasting benefits besides solving the last mile problem you raised.

Hmm... the benefits of green energy could be the prevention of turning Earth into Venus's twin sister planet.

The benefits of a national ID... yeah, no. A grossly false dichotomy if there ever was one.

Thank goodness, she might have wanted health care or social security.

I'm confused, why doesn't she have a wheelchair? Also, from the article: "Her son says a clerk told them there was nothing they could do."

Um, if her son was there could he have just parked her in a folding chair or something and waited in the line for her?

I'm reasonably certain that the BMV must be handicapped accessible, but I'm reasonably certain that they're not required to have a place for every customer to sit.

Kind of a weak case for being against voter ID.

bandit0013 wrote:

I'm confused, why doesn't she have a wheelchair? Also, from the article: "Her son says a clerk told them there was nothing they could do."

Um, if her son was there could he have just parked her in a folding chair or something and waited in the line for her?

I'm reasonably certain that the BMV must be handicapped accessible, but I'm reasonably certain that they're not required to have a place for every customer to sit.

Kind of a weak case for being against voter ID.

Maybe she can't afford a wheelchair? Either way, should that be a requirement to vote? If she didn't have a son, should she be asked to stand in line for hours to get the vote? Does this *actual* scenario outweigh the potential fraud of one undocumented worker getting the vote?

bandit0013 wrote:

I'm confused, why doesn't she have a wheelchair? Also, from the article: "Her son says a clerk told them there was nothing they could do."

Um, if her son was there could he have just parked her in a folding chair or something and waited in the line for her?

I'm reasonably certain that the BMV must be handicapped accessible, but I'm reasonably certain that they're not required to have a place for every customer to sit.

Kind of a weak case for being against voter ID.

No weaker than the case for requiring a voter ID.

bandit0013 wrote:

I'm confused, why doesn't she have a wheelchair? Also, from the article: "Her son says a clerk told them there was nothing they could do."

Um, if her son was there could he have just parked her in a folding chair or something and waited in the line for her?

I'm reasonably certain that the BMV must be handicapped accessible, but I'm reasonably certain that they're not required to have a place for every customer to sit.

Kind of a weak case for being against voter ID.

She isn't an invalid. She simply can't stand for long periods of time and the story says quite clearly:

But the testing center was packed and there were no chairs available.

Yet more hurdles affecting American citizens and their cherished rights to vote in order to stem the mythical Boogie Man that voter fraud is so rampant in this country that voter ID laws are necessary.

bandit0013 wrote:

I'm confused, why doesn't she have a wheelchair? Also, from the article: "Her son says a clerk told them there was nothing they could do."

Um, if her son was there could he have just parked her in a folding chair or something and waited in the line for her?

I'm reasonably certain that the BMV must be handicapped accessible, but I'm reasonably certain that they're not required to have a place for every customer to sit.

Kind of a weak case for being against voter ID.

When I first read the story, I was going to make a joke about people excusing this by saying that she should have a wheelchair. Thank you for being a joke.