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'Your Papers, Please': by Steven Yates
One of the aftereffects of 9-11 has been the return-with-a-vengeance of efforts to give every U.S. citizen a de facto national ID card. The latest effort is H.R. 4633, introduced into Congress last May by Jim Moran and Tom Davis, both of Virginia. The Moran-Davis bill, currently in committee, is euphemistically named the Driver’s License Modernization Act of 2002. The fact that Moran is a Democrat while Davis is a Republican illustrates how Democrats and Republicans stage partisan squabbles before television cameras for public consumption but cooperate closely on the kinds of measures that are slowly demolishing liberty in this country. H.R. 4633 would "amend title 23, United States Code, to establish standards for State programs for the issuance of drivers’ licenses and identification cards, and for other purposes" (italics mine). The stated reason for this bill stems, of course, from the 9-11 attacks, especially the fact that at least eight of the 19 hijackers had fake state-issued drivers’ licenses; this "illuminated many flaws in the Nation’s domestic security, especially in its identification system." H.R. 4633 thus calls openly for the use of "new technology … that can accommodate other government and private applications [that] will provide the best return on the investment in the new cards." This new technology includes biometric identification. According to the bill, "Not later than 5 years after the date of enactment of this section, each State shall have in effect a driver’s license and identification card program under which the State meets the following requirements." This includes embedded programmable computer chips, creating what have become known as smart cards. "A State shall embed a computer chip in each new or renewed driver’s license or identification card issued by the state" which shall contain "in electronic form, all text data written on the license or card; … encoded biometric data matching the holder of the license or card; … [and] encryption and security software or hardware (or both) that prevents access to data stored on the chip without the express consent of the individual to whom the data applies, other than access by a Federal, State, or local agency (including a court or law enforcement agency) in carrying out its functions, or by a private entity acting on behalf of a Federal, State, or local agency in carrying out its functions;…" Let’s pause there. The first thing to note is that this bill federalizes the drivers license, which under the Tenth Amendment has been a province of states since Rhode Island passed the first drivers license law in 1908. H.R. 4633 speaks openly of biometric ID, whereas previous efforts had spoken only of "unique identifiers." It doesn’t tell us what kind of biometric information will be used. Fingerprints have long been popular among bureaucrats. Retinal scans have also been suggested. The final lengthy provision above looks as if it is intended to protect the ID-card bearer’s privacy. Read it closely, though. Its encryption measures protect our privacy unless someone in a "Federal, State, or local agency (including a court or law enforcement agency) in carrying out its functions" wants it. Moreover, these measures do not protect an individual from private access if the "private entity [is] acting on behalf of a Federal, State, or local agency in carrying out its functions," these again being left unspecified. In short, this bill does not protect your privacy at all. These exceptions-clauses can be fleshed out any way the bureaucrats want, and all an employer (for example) would have to do is cook up a reason why access to an employee’s encoded information "carries out the functions" of a government agency. Drag your feet, and you lose your job. The bill establishes two other requirements, that the ID card "accept data or software written to the license or card by non-governmental devices if the data transfer is authorized by the holder of the license or card; …" and – here is another real kicker – the card must "conform to any other standards issued by the Secretary." Conform to any other standards issued by the Secretary? What the dickens does that mean? Again, in practice it could mean anything a bureaucrat wants it to mean. H.R. 4633 also mandates linking up databases, a lot of which already exist and are hooked up with law enforcement divisions so that routine traffic stops can be turned into criminal checks. "A State shall participate in a program to link State motor vehicle databases in order to provide electronic access by a State to information contained in the motor vehicle databases of all other States." The result, of course, would be a single large federal database, whether called that or not, as the most convenient way for bureaucrats based in a given state to access a person’s information in any other state. H.R. 4633, it is true, repudiates the idea of a "central database." The 1964 Civil Rights Act repudiated preferential treatment of minorities. In other words, tell me another one. H.R. 4633 authorizes $300 million in federal grant money (i.e., taxpayer dollars) to the states to enable them to implement this machinery – $100 million for the ID itself and $200 for the database technology – placing the states under the thumb of the federal government so far as issuing drivers’ licenses goes. All one need to remember is that that same principle: every federal dollar comes with strings attached. Three hundred million dollars could attach a lot of strings! In cases of threatened noncompliance by states, all the feds would have to do is the same thing they did with the so-called Motor-Voter law back in the early 1990s: threaten to withhold federal highway money. The long and the short of it is, the Driver’s License Modernization Act of 2002 would bring us closer than ever before to establishing a comprehensive national ID system. The present excuse is that extreme measures are necessary to "protect us against terrorism." Yeah, right! Those whose memories go back that far know that this is not the first time someone in the federal government has tried to give us all de facto national ID cards. Such efforts existed as stealth measures – what Claire Wolfe called land-mine legislation – little-noticed provisions buried in large, omnibus bills like the Welfare Reform Act, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act and the Kennedy-Kassenbaum Health Care Reform Acts, all in 1996. The provisions were to go into effect in October of 2000. The feds didn’t think anyone would notice until it was too late, since no one had noticed the stealth measures that gave us civil forfeiture – those nasty provisions that allow the feds to take your car without compensation if they find, say, a certain amount of marijuana or some other illegal substance in it. The feds didn’t count on the Internet. When the 1996 stealth measures were revealed through email campaigns ("send this to everyone you know on the Internet"), we were fed lines about "identity theft," or about the need to catch deadbeat dads. Or the favorite, given the times: "it’s for the children." In those days, national ID was fought through grass roots Internet campaigns, along with efforts to collect personal data administered through banks, e.g., the infamous Know-Your-Customer program. But measures that created huge federal databases of new employees got through, and programs akin to Know-Your-Customer are very much alive and kicking. It is clear, too, that the Executive Branch is looking at ways to set national standards for drivers licenses; this was disclosed by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge the day after the unveiling of H.R. 4633. Supposedly, President Bush himself opposes national ID, but is going along with the efforts to standardize drivers’ licenses. The so-called Patriot Act, which Bush signed last year after 9-11, paves the way for federal, state and local databases to be linked. That bill authorized $150 million more for the "expansion of the Regional Information Sharing System" that would "facilitate federal-state-local law enforcement response related to terrorist acts." The driver’s license seems to be the favored inroad for those who want to amass personal information on law-abiding U.S. citizens. After all, it is hard for an adult to function in modern society without one. Should H.R. 4633 become law, there will be just two ways to "opt out." One is to give up your driver’s license and not drive. The other is to give up your driver’s license and drive illegally – with all the risks this involves. I imagine there will be people driving illegally to get around this – after all, blatant power grabs do not exactly encourage respect for the rule of law. Because not everyone does have a driver’s license, the feds may eventually go beyond it and just require every citizen to carry a smart card that could function as a drivers license or not, depending on how the chip was programmed. "Show us your papers, please. No papers? You better come with us." We’d better stop thinking it can’t happen here. Finally, arrangements in which cards have been replaced by bio-implants are no longer limited to science fiction stories. A high-tech company called Applied Digital Solutions already has an implantable identification chip, usable in medical emergencies or by those with serious conditions. The company’s VeriChip™ consists of a small radio frequency device about the size of the point of a ballpoint pen with a unique verification number that could be implanted in a convenient place in the human body. It could be programmed to contain all the personal data any bureaucrat could want. A scanning device would activate the chip and recognize the number, enabling the person operating the scanner to retrieve the information and compare it with the information in the central database. Why an actual implant? Because smart cards can be lost, and the owner’s life placed on hold for days while the card is replaced. Serious advocates of national ID have no doubt considered such eventualities; it would be naïve to think otherwise. Implants, unlike something you carry in your wallet, would become a part of you for the rest of your life. We might call it the Borging of America. An exaggeration? It should be clear that H.R. 4633, coupled with this technology, could lead to the hugest quantum leap ever in the federal government’s capacity to control people. If the feds really wanted to play hardball with dissent, all they would have to do is "freeze" the dissident’s assets by reprogramming the information in the database so scanners would not recognize him. The person would become officially invisible, unable to drive or work legally, have a bank account, buy anything on credit, or even see a doctor. Do we want to trust anyone with that kind of power? It is a testimony to how much this country has changed since 9-11 that no one has visibly challenged H.R. 4633 as unconstitutional and incompatible with the principles of a free society. The 1990s gave us the obviously corrupt Clinton Regime and a significant opposition to federal power grabs. Now it’s Bush the Younger, beloved of neocons who see him as one of their own and believe he can do no wrong. No serious, organized opposition now appears to exist (and I would happy as a clam to be proven wrong about that). The warmongers and their allies in the media are now happy to paint anyone critical of expansionist government as "abetting the terrorists." Such phrases are indeed following the kind of trajectory that the word racist followed as verbal clubs to intimidate people into submission. Consider, too: the media coverage of 9-11 replayed the horrific events of that day over and over until the images of the planes striking the World Trade Center towers were permanently implanted into the average television watcher’s brain. All of a sudden, big government was back in style. We needed it to protect us from terrorists. We were at war! Big government began issuing unspecific warnings of imminent threats of terrorist attacks that never materialized, as it expanded faster and further than under Clinton. To my knowledge, no huge al Qaeda or Iraqi-based terrorist cells have been disrupted. Moreover, Osama bin Laden has not been captured—and isn’t even much talked about anymore – but Al Gore has been patted down by airport security. Repeated warnings, though, have many Americans scared of their shadows nevertheless. A frightened population is obviously easier to manipulate and control. The real irony here is that there isn’t the slightest evidence that H.R. 4633 will protect against terrorism. Given our porous borders, actual would-be terrorists would have their own networks and resources, and could get around our government’s verification technologies without too much difficulty. I would suggest a number of different and more basic remedies. Such as allowing pilots to bear arms, which Bush the Younger’s regime has opposed (it would make people less dependent on government). Such as changing our disastrous immigration laws and making it harder for foreigners to get into this country and stay here. Such as recalling troops from the overseas extensions of the U.S. Empire and deploying them against our border with Mexico, if necessary, since it is well known that Arabs who might mean to harm Americans are entering the country with illegals from Mexico. Allow neocons, other globalists and cultural Marxists to scream isolationist all they want. Needless to say, Bush the Younger’s regime is not pursuing anything like this, because (1) Bush is basically a globalist from a family of globalists, in an Administration chock full of globalists; and (2) this would be taking the fight against terrorism seriously without also dismantling the liberties of native-born U.S. citizens, a necessary condition for eventually ending U.S. sovereignty and subordinating this country to a global government. Just recently I ran across this remark attributed to Sen. Gary Hart, made at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting three days after 9-11. "There is a chance for the President of the United States to use this disaster to carry out what his father – a phrase his father used I think only once, and it hasn’t been used since – and that is a new world order." Clearly, the slow encirclement of law-abiding U.S. citizens with national ID technology would advance such a cause while doing little if anything to safeguard us against terrorism. Unfortunately, given the compliant mood of the country, if H.R. 4633 becomes law, when it comes time for the federalized state drivers license agencies to implement it, coercion might not be necessary. The sheeple may very will stand in line to get their biometrically-encoded national ID cards, having been persuaded that with this legislation firmly in place "we are now protected by our government from terrorists." October 12, 2002
Copyright © 2002 LewRockwell.com
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