Would a National ID Make Us Safer or Just Less Free?
The 9/11 Commission report gave new impetus to a national ID proposal that has languished in Congress for years. House and Senate versions of intelligence reform legislation would establish a national ID system by creating federal standards for state drivers’ licenses and IDs. But the 9/11 Commission did not analyze or describe how a national ID would actually work to protect the American homeland from terrorists. And that crucial question remains: would a national ID system make us safer, or just less free?
In Brazil we have national ids for several years and I don’t think they are a threat to freedom. Even under the dictatorship people could get fake ids and hide from the government.
Under our constitution nobody is obligated to have a id but without one you can’t get a job, a bank account or drive, the same situation with your social security numbers and driver licenses.
“Would a National ID Make Us Safer or Just Less Free?”
There was a time when such a question would only have been asked rhetorically. How sad.
Bin Laden would be happiest if America just disappeared. But alas, it already has.
I don’t know if it would make you feel safer John, but it would certainly make you feel less free. I leave in a coutry (Portugal) where national ID is used from before I was born and for a long time I thought that was the same for every country. Now I know that in Europe at least one country doesn’t require that and that is in the UK where civil liberties and individual dignity has still much more weight than in the rest of Europe; I know they have for long discussed there the possibility of using it but have managed not to.
For me the ID card is just another stupid document that I have to carry around to prove to the state that I am me 🙂 and that I’m registered in some big national database. I also think that it doesn’t add much to the overall security of a state because, as Fábio also said, it can be easily faked or even worse: you can be robbed of it and have worry that the person who did it is using it for its own purposes 🙂 that to can happen.
In the end it serves to transfer from the state and the justice departemnt, or whatever, to you the burden of proof for your own citizenship.