People sometimes say they're not concerned about national ID cards - and the use of "biometric" tags such as retinal scans and so on - because, after all, we've been using fingerprints for years and "biometrics" are just the next logical step.
Except for one key point, that's true.
The difference is that while fingerprints have, indeed, been routinely used for decades - they've only been used routinely to track criminals. Or at least, people who have been formally arrested and charged with a crime.
I've yet to be fingerprinted. Probably you've never been fingerprinted, either. In fact, the majority of Americans have likely never been "inked." And for good reason. The government has no business with you until you've given reason to suspect otherwise. Or at least, that's the way things used to be.
Soon, we may all be required to submit not merely to being fingerprinted - but perhaps also forced (if we want a driver's license, that is) to allow our retinas to be scanned, possibly our DNA itself catalogued.
In about two years, the federal Real ID Act will begin to impose its will on state governments - and the state governments, on us via our driver's licenses. The new, enhanced licenses will become de facto national ID cards - and in addition to the biometric info about ourselves that will be sampled and collected, the IDs themselves will be able to track our every movement via miniaturized Radio Frequency ID (RFID) transmitters built into them. This is not science fiction - or paranoia. The technology exists; the "biometric" tags are already in use - and the Real ID Act is very real indeed.
Ostensibly, the Act is all about "protecting" us (isn't it always so?) but in fact it's about allowing ourselves to be treated like common criminals - duly registered, catalogued and easy to be kept track of. That people don't get this - and react with outrage - is itself anoutrage. Or ought to be.
And we'll be kept track of by more than merely the government. Private corporations are eager to compile extensive dossiers on each and every one of us. Where we go and when, what we buy and how - in order to better "target" us as consumers. If that sounds innocuous, keep in mind that unlike the government - which must still at least pretend to abide by a few threadbare legalisms regarding what information it may collect and how such information may be shared and used, private corporations labor under no such restrictions. Indeed, the government may (and has, in fact) used private corporations to brazenly (and with impunity) skirt the law; the private company collects the info - and turns it over to the government. (Recent disclosures about ISPs providing details about customers' surfing habits and e-mails being one case in point; another being the wholesale giving over of phone records - and so on.)
A secondary effect of the Real ID Act is that once we have these IDs forced upon us, we will be compelled to produce them in order to transact business, open a bank account, enter public buildings, travel on commercial carriers - ad infinitum. It will literally be a new America - one in which, "your papers, please!" is no longer a phrase spoken by Brownshirts of a long-gone era but a reality of everyday life in what's left of these United States.
And I think we will accept it.
9/11 opened a window into the soul of America, all right. And it is the soul of a cringing beaten dog with its tail tucked between its legs - ready to submit to its master's voice. The test case was the TSA and the oddly-named Department of Homeland Security, which sounds like something right out of 1939 Germany, only translated into English. Abteilung des Sicherheit des Vaterland.
We accepted - in the name of "security" and the "war on terror" - being physically felt up by TSA goons, allowing routine rifling of our personal possessions, at random - without any pretext or probable cause whatever. What else will we accept?
Apparently, anything.
And everything.
END
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Originally Posted by grouch
