[OT] Re: [Forwarded] RealID: How to become an unperson.

[J.A. Terranson]

On Tue, 5 Jul 2005 hadmut at danisch.de wrote:

> your ID card. Exactly that circular problem as mentioned in the
> posting.
>
> But when I explained that circular problem, they checked by phone with
> the town's registry office and gave me the copy of the birth
> certificate without an ID card to solve the problem.

While I am glad it worked out for you, I somehow doubt that the workers of
the once great city of New York would be quite as accomodating :-/
Fortunately, I found a way around the problem that didn't force me to try
and find out though!

> But nevertheless, I do not understand why americans are so afraid of
> an ID card. It has by far more advantages than disadvantages, and

This is probably a uniquely american thing - culturally we are a bunch of
loners, who all believe that the government has no *right* to "identify"
or otherwise monitor us.  As a scrappy bunch of loners with attitude
problems, the pros vs. cons of The Card really never make it to the
equation: as a people, most of us just naturally have a Time May reaction
to authority in general and government authority in particular.
Personally, I'd rather go back to the old paper license I used to have in
the 80's that had no pic and was not usable as ID, but I know it isn't
going to happen.  Sigh...

-- 
Yours,

J.A. Terranson
sysadmin at mfn.org
0xBD4A95BF


"Never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public
plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to
the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always
be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by
predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty."

Joseph Pulitzer
1907 Speech

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