AAMVA National ID Forum scheduled for Feb 26-29 in Houston [priv]

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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To: declan () well com, gnu () new toad com
Subject: AAMVA National ID Forum, Feb 26-29
Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2004 18:33:09 -0800
From: John Gilmore <gnu () toad com>

They call it the "2004 Driver Licensing and Identification Security
Forum".  But what it really is about is making "one individual, one
document, one database record" -- in other words, one national ID per
person in the US, that happens to be issued by the US states (and
Canadian provinces and Mexican states).

Join the bureaucrats who are plotting to make this happen, in scenic
Houston, Feb 26-29.  (Don't forget to show your ID to travel there,
and also to check in to the Westin Galleria, "of course".  That
requirement is why I won't be there; I'm under regional arrest because
I refuse to get, or show, such an ID.)  Feb 29th is specially set
aside as "Canada Day" for dealing with how Canadian provinces are
going to issue these coordinated "US National IDs".

  http://www.aamva.org/events/mnu_evt2004IDSecuritySummit.asp
    (Meeting Contact: Lucia Osterbind, +1 703 522 4200)

This AAMVA project is a multi-year effort that started before 9/11 but
accelerated afterward, in a misguided attempt to categorize and file
every person on the continent so we'll then know all the "good guys"
from the "bad guys" and can merely lock up all the bad guys and then
we'll feel safe.  The bills that authorize and enable this cross-state
collaboration are due to be introduced in state legislatures STARTING
NOW, and need active opposition from local privacy groups.  But
first, you need information about what they're up to -- so attend.

Privacy activists and journalists should converge on this conference,
to find out what's really happening, and to ask them if they've lost
their minds.  Curiously, the scheme is being perpetrated by middle
level bureaucrats in state motor vehicle agencies, who actually think
they are doing good for the world by tracking every citizen from the
cradle to the grave.  Privacy activists have been absent from their
deliberations for years.  Neither their bosses the Governors, nor
their own legislatures, know what they are up to.  (The Feds are in it
up to their armpits, of course, but only as "advisors".)

        John Gilmore

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