IP: Re: "Maybe we should brand all babies." -- our national ID #'s

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 11:33:10 -0700
> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> From: Jim Warren <jwarren () well com>
> Subject: Re: IP: "Maybe we should brand all babies." -- our national ID #'s
>
> Dave -- Your subject-line/title for the previous posting, about a national 
> ID card, reminded me:
>
> The United States already *has* a system for assigning a *unique* national 
> identity-number to each child of U.S. parents receiving a birth 
> certificate.  It has been operating at least since the early 1990's; 
> perhaps for several decades.
>
> It has nothing to do with the error-laden Social Security numbering system.
>
> This birth-based numbering system is administered by the National Center 
> for Health Statistics and provides the clerk-recorder of each county (and 
> parish, in Louisiana) with a number range that is unique to that 
> jurisdiction and endlessly expandable to cover any number of births in the 
> future.
>
> I first heard about it in 1994, from Ed Hernandez, then (and perhaps 
> still) the Director of the Bureau of Records and Statistics for San 
> Francisco's Depart of Public Health.  He casually mentioned it, during a 
> meeting of representatives of various  California County Recorders in 
> which I participated as a pro-bono computer consultant -- and outlined the 
> above details to me, when I asked about it (three years after organizing 
> and chairing the First Conference on Computers, Freedom & Privacy in 1991).
>
> So ... we already have a SOUND basis for a national id number -- issued at 
> the time of birth, as part of the birth certificate.
>
> Now, following the lead of a well-known previous government, that was 
> equally supportive of similarly zealous citizen tracking -- this unique 
> birth-number can easily be tattooed onto each baby ... perhaps as a 
> bar-code.  After all, we vassals WANT enforcers to be able to id us 
> irrefutably at any time ... right?
>
> --jim
> Jim Warren; jwarren () well com, technology & public policy columnist & advocate
> 345 Swett Rd, Woodside CA 94062; voice/650-851-7075; fax/off due to spam-glut
>
> [self-inflating puffery: Playboy Foundation Hugh Hefner First-Amendment Award;
> Soc.of Prof.Journalists-Nor.Calif. James Madison Freedom-of-Information Award;
> founded InfoWorld, Dr.Dobb's Journal, and Computers, Freedom & Privacy Confs.;
> Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award (in its first year), blah blah]


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