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IP: Chicago Tribune editorial on national IDs
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 18:40:42 -0700
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 15:07:28 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com> Our special report on national IDs: http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/article/0,2334,14202,00.html Chicago Tribune September 1, 1998 EDITORIAL; Pg. 14 TOWARD A NATIONAL ID CARD? Americans have never voted to establish a national identity card, and you'd have to look far and wide to find any politician who ever got elected by promising to do so. But while Americans weren't looking, they were being transported halfway toward such a document. And a new proposal by the Clinton administration threatens to take us a good ways further. That is a development that should worry anyone concerned about protecting personal privacy and limiting government control over our lives. The Department of Transportation has drafted regulations that would effectively require all 50 states to put Social Security numbers on driver's licenses. DOT has to act because in the 1996 immigration bill, Congress ordered measures to make driver's licenses a better document for verifying identity. The idea was to combat illegal immigration by making it harder for undocumented foreigners to obtain phony citizenship documents. Under the DOT rule, a driver's license would not be accepted for identification purposes by federal agencies unless it contains your Social Security number. These numbers were emphatically not supposed to be used for identification when the retirement system was created. But over the years, they have become the most common method of establishing identity. What's wrong with that? One big problem is that it facilitates "identity theft." If a crook knows your name and your Social Security number, he has a good chance of being able to get credit by pretending to be you. Another problem is that it makes it easier for people to compile information about you from a variety of sources that all rely on the same means of identification. Some privacy experts think the battle to restrict the proliferation of uses for Social Security numbers is hopeless. They have a point: Many states, including Illinois, already put them on driver's licenses. But critics spanning the ideological spectrum have united in opposing the DOT proposal for making a bad situation worse. Before long, it may be impossible to apply for Medicare, open a bank account, get a passport, get on an airplane or do any number of other things without producing a driver's license with a Social Security number-without showing what amounts to your national ID card. It's not clear that the change would do much to stop illegal immigration. But even if it would, Americans ought to ask whether that potential benefit is worth the risks it raises. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe: send a message to majordomo () vorlon mit edu with this text: subscribe politech More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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