IP: Chicago Tribune editorial on national IDs

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

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.






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