AGAINST ID CARDS

Thu Oct 4 18:41:44 EDT 2001

I too am very nervous about the prospect of national ID cards.  I 
have an idea for a possible compromise, but I have not made up my 
mind on it. I'm interested in hearing other people's opinions.

The idea is a federal standard for secure  drivers' licenses. These 
would be cards containing a chip that stores an electronically signed 
and time stamped data file consisting of the driver's name, date of 
birth, height, address, photo, and scanned signature, as well as 
endorsements such as truck, school bus, motorcycle and hazmat 
operator licenses. All this information is contained in existing 
drivers' licenses, but in a way that is too easy to forge.

The licenses would still be issued by the states so there would be no 
new bureaucracy.  People who don't drive could get "proof of age" 
cards using the same technology. Many states now issue such cards in 
conventional formats for liquor purchase. There would be pressure to 
expand the use of these licenses to other uses. That has already 
happened for conventional DLs with liquor purchase and airline 
boarding. Some new uses might be acceptable, e.g. using the cards to 
contain  pilot or boating licenses. Limitations on new uses could be 
included in the enabling legislation.

The security model of the card would be privacy oriented, i.e. 
limiting who could access the cards to authorized users and the 
owner. The integrity of the information would come from the 
electronic signatures.  As I understand it, much of the forgery of 
DLs that now takes place involves unauthorized use of the equipment 
that produces legitimate cards. The secure DL would cut down on this 
because the information on the card would be signed by by the 
operator of the equipment, making the forgery more traceable. The 
data would also be signed using a key that is only available at a 
central location and a copy of the signed info would be retained in 
the driver database (this information is already collected anyway). 
This would make it more difficult to change just the photo on the 
license, for example.

The main difference between a secure driver's license and a national 
ID is that there would be no new requirement to obtain or carry the 
card.  One can look at it as the nose in the camel's tent or as a way 
to deflect pressure for more Draconian solutions.

Thoughts?

Arnold Reinhold

At 1:47 PM -0400 10/3/2001, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
>--- begin forwarded text
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>Status:  U
>To: WashingtonBulletin at topica.com
>From: "National Review D.C." <nrdc at ix.netcom.com>
>Subject: AGAINST ID CARDS
>Date: Wed,  3 Oct 2001 13:58:40 +0000
>Reply-To: nrdc at ix.netcom.com
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>Washington Bulletin: National Review's Internet Update for
>October 3, 2001
>http://www.nationalreview.com
>
>AGAINST ID CARDS
>[The worse way to fight terrorism]
>
>Only a bare majority of Americans--51 percent--support the creation of a
>national identity card, according to a new poll by Fabrizio, McLaughlin
>& Associates. This is a substantial loss of support since the Pew
>Research Center found 70 percent endorsing the concept in a survey it
>conducted immediately after the September 11 attacks.
>
>Yet plenty of warning signs remain. Westerners are only demographic
>group with a majority opposing ID cards (53 percent) and senior citizens
>are the only segment with a plurality against it (47 percent).
>Republicans and men are evenly split on the issue, with Democrats and
>women likely to favor it. Most troubling, however, may be that the poll
>shows overall support jumping to 61 percent when the ID card is
>described as ìa measure to combat terrorism and make the use of false
>identities more difficult.î
>
>If ever the American public was primed to accept an ID card, the time is
>now. A recent Washington Post survey reports that 64 percent of
>Americans say they trust the federal government to do the right thing
>ìnearly alwaysî or ìmost of the timeî--the highest level of trust
>recorded since 1966 and twice the level measured just a year ago. ìThis
>is the most collective mood weíve seen in America for a long time,î
>Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told the New York Times. ìAnd itís
>coming off one of the most individualistic eras in American history.î
>
>The Bush administration already has signaled through a spokesman that it
>does not support the idea, though several members of Congress have
>embraced it and House immigration subcommittee chairman George Gekas, a
>Pennsylvania Republican, says ID cards will definitely receive
>consideration. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has said his company, a leader
>in databases, would donate the software to make it happen.
>
>Conservatives must oppose these internal passports with vigor. They may
>be promoted now as tools for combating terrorism, but their potential
>for abuse is enormous. How long before the federal government also
>starts tracking gun sales through them? Or auditing income-tax returns?
>And donít forget the little prop President Clinton held up during his
>health-care speech to Congress in 1993: a ìhealth-security cardî that
>would have enabled the governmentís takeover of a whole industry.
>
>Terrorism is obviously worth fighting, but ID cards arenít the only way
>to do it or even the best way.
>
>(Yesterday, NRO published a symposium on ID cards:
><http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-symposium100201.shtml>.
>And one of your correspondents, in a previous life, co-authored an
>assessment of ID cards for the Cato Institute:
><http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa237.html>.)
>
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