I'm with you...I don't see the big deal. Huge benefits with relatively low costs.

Still, if a person is simply unable to accept that most people in the government are honorable, this can be scary (although it seems kind of tin foil hat-ish, to me)

The advantages are obvious, are the disadvantageous? This, like how to fix what Liberals have suddenly taken to calling "Soc" Security System is one very thorny and complicated mess. And because Government survailance is already rampant, I fear that the will to resist government intrusion into our lives is fast disappearing.

I don't see the problem, either. I already have a form of national ID - my passport. If the government wants to know all about our lives, there are already hundreds of ways to go about it. If there are benefits to a national ID card, then go with it. Doesn't really affect my privacy, IMO.

Make it voluntary and institute two lines wherever an identity verification is required. Make sure the line for national id holders is always shorter. Kind of like the SpeedPass.

I don't know.

I think a lot of the opposition involves an idealized memory of the way things use to be. The ability to just pick up and head West, and no one will ever care who you are, and the police don't have the right to question you and the government doesn't have the right to ask "for your papers."

I think both the Right and the Left fear government tyranny, for different reasons of course. And it's so much easier for folks to listen to their visceral disgust for "The Man" knowing where they are when they fail to contemplate that, if not The Man, than certainly The Misses (a.k.a., my Visa card) knows where I am.

If we were starting from scratch, I'd be against a card, but we're not starting from scratch, are we? Complaining about a national I.D. card when our privacy is already so circumscribed is like Greenpeace complaining about the paint job on an oil tanker.

Hopefully, someone smarter than I can post some arguments against the card-- I'd like to consider them.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Complaining about a national I.D. card when our privacy is already so circumscribed is like Greenpeace complaining about the paint job on an oil tanker.

Good Analogy...

I like the idea of a National ID Five-Pound Sack of Flour. You have to either carry it around with you or find a babysitter for it, and if it ever breaks, you are immediately deported, unless you can prove to a jury that the sack broke due to circumstances beyond your control. This, I think, would make it much more difficult for terrorists to plan their attacks.

i'm having a hard time coming up with a privacy argument against the card. people think that they have a lot of privacy that they actually don't. for instance, give your name, i can pull up your real property records, your dmv records, your criminal records, your voter registration records, etc etc. These are PUBLIC records, freely searchable on some subscription services such as Westlaw and Lexis. Have a loan for your house? Did you refinance? I can pull those records up. Just me, regular joe schmo, and I don't need your permission. They are public records.

Add to that credit reports track you, your driver's license track you, your credit card use tracks you, etc. Before you get too worked up about "big brother," you should know that the police have access to all of this information, usually without but definitely with a warrant.

Make a transaction at your bank involving more than $10,000? The bank is legally obligated to file whats called a CTR so that Uncle Sam knows about it. Make too many transactions like that and you might look suspicious, causing a Fed to come knocking at your door. Also, you have to right to privacy in your banking transactions, you know. The bank, as a party to the transaction, can tell whomever whatever it wants about the transaction, and you can't do a darn thing about it. (of course, you might have a suit against them if they breached some sort of confidiality agreement.)

my point is, the "privacy" that you think you have is largely illusory.

that said, i do have a problem with a society in which a national ID card is mandatory, or one in which every person is expected to "register" and carry papers. but isnt that unavoidable today? look at social security numbers - they're used for everything these days. no, you're not required to have one, legally, but you cant have a job without one. you cant get a credit card. you can't do much of anything without a SSN these days.

how is a national ID card any different? as long as there are no penalties for not having one, or for not carrying one, i can't see any plausible privacy arguments.

Patterico had a post a few months back about how a branch of the DOT is developing chips that keep records of everything you do while you drive (sorry, no time to find it right now). Similar technology is already being implemented here in CA.

The responsible agency focus-grouped CA citizens, who decided that if the government wanted to find out stuff about you, they'd do it one way or another, so what's the big deal?

Patterico called them morons, and I agree. Just because we've lost some rights--and given the current circumstances we needed to circumscribe a few of them--doesn't mean we need to roll over for the others.

I don't want a national ID card. I will refuse to carry one.

I agree 100%. A national ID card doesn't allow the government to do anything they can't already do, although it might simplify the process. What it does provide is a positive means of eliminating identity fraud in all it's forms, be it welfare fraud, election fraud, immigration fraud, you name it. Whether someone wants to argue for or against the alleged "right to privacy" that the courts have created or upheld, depending on your perspective, there is not inherent right to use your right to privacy to defraud another party or the government. Though many people like to hide behind the one, while doing the other.

The technology is readily available, and with redundant means for verifying identity, a national ID SmartCard would make identity theft and counterfeit identification nearly impossible. This is something that is LONG overdue.

The one thing I would grant is that a separate bureau would have to be created to alleviate the inevitable problems, such as people's IDs indicating they were dead when they are in fact very much alive and such. Small price to pay, though, for the potential to eliminate so many forms of fraud.

Two followups to others...

Dave and james - you seem to confuse the need or ability of authorities to stop you or ask for your "papers" with the kind of "papers" you might currently be carrying. You both likely have a SS Card, and driver's license. You might also have a passport. In none of those cases are you necessarily required to have one, nor are you required to carry it (unless you are driving, in the case of your driver's license or traveling across the border in the case of your passport). Just because you have one, doesn't mean anyone can just ask you for it out of the blue, either. Why would a national SmartCard ID be any different ?

Certainly I can think of instances when you should have one, just like a driver's license in the case of driving, or a passport in the case of crossing the border. If you want to just wander the country aimlessly, you need not ever produce your ID. If you want to vote, collect welfare, social security, etc., well then you need your ID. It's no more an inconvenience than your driver's license, so the argument against it is moot in my opinion. Unless a right were guaranteed, such as voting, for instance, you don't have a legal leg to stand on in opposing it. And in the case of voting, you could still provide provisional ballots for those people that want to skip the ID card.

See-Dubya - You seem to subscribe pretty heavily to the "right to privacy". I can see both sides of the argument that such a "right" is an invention of the courts. Either way, a national ID card, as others have pointed out, does nothing to reduce your privacy that hasn't already been done, and is available to the government in tracking you or making a case against you, whatever crime you might commit. I don't disagree with anyone that is wary of government tyranny, trust me. Thing is, whatever they could do with a national ID, they can already do. Your right to privacy is flimsy at best as it is and not made any more or less flimsy by a national ID card.

Here's the patterico post I mentioned above--the federal version of this is in another post.

Anyway, in relevant part, Patterico:
_______
I love the way the story ends:

"While some people are concerned about civil liberties, most people are not," Deakin said. "One of the things we found from focus groups and surveys is that most people said if the government wanted to track you, they have other ways to do it."

One of the things I found from reading this story is that most people who participate in focus groups and surveys are apparently idiots. Duh, the government might have some other incredibly cumbersome and prohibitively expensive way to track me -- so I'll just allow it to stick a tracking device on every frigging person's car, duh. "
___

The point is kinda the same with the national ID card. By the logic that there's no real privacy anyway, why not just have them go ahead and stick the subcutaneous tracking chip in your arm? Harder to lose, you know, and it can send out pulses when We want to find you. Right to bodily integrity? Pshh. I don't see that in the Constitution. Some liberal activist judge slapped that in there.

Why wouldn't you want Us to find you? You know We'll just find you anyway.

PS if there's no real privacy anyway, I think we should all drop these silly aliases, and use our full names.

Privacy? Pffft. There ain't no such thing. As InstaPunk observed: "If you want to protect any of your private financial information from the IRS, I suggest you file it in a woman's uterus."

Not my ex-wifes uterus, there hasn't been privacy there since her puberty!

PS if there's no real privacy anyway, I think we should all drop these silly aliases, and use our full names.

Good idea, my real name is Dave and I work for the Pentagon in Arlington, Virgina and I live at 222 Come & Get Me Street just outside of Arlington. I carry a Colt Commander locked and cocked at all times and a .357 Smith Airweight backup.

Oh, and I have a cat named Garfield.

The problem is my real name is "See-Dubya" and I have to use this alias cause someone already stole my identity.....

Ha ha, real funny 72WIVES. Or, should I say, "Andrew Sullivan."

As for me, you should know: I hate cats.

http://garfieldridge.blogspot.com/2004/10/company-to-develop-hypo-allergenic.html