– I’m not sure how I feel about this.
– In a perfect world where the laws were fair and the government was truly a representative democracy of the people, by the people and for the people, this might not be a bad idea. I’m thinking here of the idea that if one has nothing to hide, why should one care.
…and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln – The Gettysburg Address
– But, other than for idiots and ungrounded idealists, most of us know that’s not the world we live in and things are often made for one stated purpose – and then used for quite another.
– I just finished reading most of a biography about Benito Mussolini by Bosworth. It was a huge tomb; four inches thick. In it, you could see all the things said along the way by the main players as Italy lurched towards Fascism. And what the main players were saying they believed in was inevitably a function of what they thought gave them the best advantage within the current situation. And what they told the people was always what would make the people support them. Mussolini himself began as a rabid Socialist and anti-Church activist and ended persecuting Socialists and being quite cozy with the Vatican. He began as a man of the people and ended up deeply allied with the conservative forces with money in Italy.
– So, in a world where we don’t trust our leaders, we need (just as the U.S.’s founding fathers thought) to possess the means to oppose central authority if it becomes unrepresentative and oppressive. In the U.S., the very bedrock of how the government was originally constituted involved the idea that all citizens should be able to retain weapons in their own homes as a check on possibility of authority gone wrong.
– But when all weapons need to be registered with central authorities and when all people have to carry centralized identity cards, one can feel the chipping away at this ability of the people to provide a check on their government. And it seems it is the governemt that is doing the chipping.
– Does anyone recall a popular movement among the American people in support of National Identity Cards? Mmmm? Nope, I don’t either.
– But, read on good reader and see what you think. Comments welcome.
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By VOA News
11 January 2008
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has released a revised plan for phasing in a national identification card program that was set to begin this year.
The department has extended deadlines and made other changes to address the concerns of states about the cost and timeframe for compliance.
Passed by the U.S. Congress in 2005, the Real ID Act establishes national standards for driver’s licenses and other state-issued identification cards. The aim is to make it harder for terrorists, illegal immigrants and others to obtain or counterfeit identity documents.
At a news conference Friday in Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the phased-in program gives states greater flexibility in implementing it.
Under the new timetable, people under the age of 50 must be issued Real ID – compliant identification cards by the end of 2014. For people over 50, enrollment may be extended to the end of 2017.
The new ID cards will be needed for boarding a plane or entering a federal building.
The original program was rejected by 17 states in part because it was expensive. But the cost of the new plan has been reduced by more than 70 percent – from $14.6 billion to $3.9 billion. Chertoff estimates it will cost states about eight dollars to make a Real ID license.
Lawmakers called for stricter identification requirements after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The Department of Homeland Security points out that the hijackers in those attacks obtained 30 drivers licenses and used 364 aliases.
But critics argue the ID program could put at risk the privacy of citizens, saying it creates a database of personal information that could be hacked into or otherwise compromised.
To the original… ➡
– research thx to LisaG.
