http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/shtml/NEWS/P2S2.shtml

AMERICA AT WAR: FINAL COUNTDOWN: ID CARDS ON THE WAY

IDENTITY cards will be introduced for the first time in Britain in the fight against terrorism.

The move has been approved by Tony Blair as part of a wide-ranging review of anti-terror laws.

Most of Britain's partners in the European Union require nationals to carry identity cards which must be produced on demand by police.

But Mr Blair and Home Secretary David Blunkett are expected to opt instead for a voluntary scheme. However, it will be virtually impossible for anyone to live a normal life without one - possession of a valid card will be necessary for boarding an aircraft, buying petrol, opening a bank account, starting a job or claiming benefits.

New laws are to be rushed through Parliament as soon as the summer recess ends next month. Mr Blair and Mr Blunkett are expected to reject the compulsory "on demand" card because of connotations with Nazi Germany, where lack of proper identity cards could result in instant arrest.

Whitehall officials and MPs have also warned that relations between the police and ethnic minorities could deteriorate under a "stop-and-show" scheme.

But the new ID cards will also be aimed at deterring illegal immigration by making it difficult for anybody without a proper card to carry out basic transactions. Other measures being considered include a Europe-wide common arrest warrant to cut out bureaucratic red tape.

Home Office officials are also negotiating a new scheme with EU countries for speeding up extradition procedures so that suspects can be brought to justice quicker.

Tougher Europewide laws on money-laundering are also being drawn up to prevent terrorists hiding funds in secret bank accounts.

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http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/n...ellsn092301.htm

Posted at 11:14 p.m. PDT Saturday, Sept. 22, 2001

Oracle Boss Urges National ID Cards, Offers Free Software

Idea Driven By Security Concerns

BY PAUL ROGERS AND ELISE ACKERMAN

Mercury News

Broaching a controversial subject that has gained visibility since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison is calling for the United States to create a national identification card system -- and offering to donate the software to make it possible.

Under Ellison's proposal, millions of Americans would be fingerprinted and the information would be placed on a database used by airport security officials to verify identities of travelers at airplane gates.

"We need a national ID card with our photograph and thumbprint digitized and embedded in the ID card," Ellison said in an interview Friday night on the evening news of KPIX-TV in San Francisco.

"We need a database behind that, so when you're walking into an airport and you say that you are Larry Ellison, you take that card and put it in a reader and you put your thumb down and that system confirms that this is Larry Ellison," he said.

`Absolutely free'

Ellison's company, Oracle, based in Redwood Shores, is the world's leading maker of database software. Ellison, worth $15 billion, is among the world's richest people.

"We're quite willing to provide the software for this absolutely free," he said.

Calls for national ID cards traditionally have been met with fierce resistance from civil liberties groups, who say the cards would intrude on the privacy of Americans and allow the government to track people's movements.

But Ellison said in the electronic age, little privacy is left anyway.

"Well, this privacy you're concerned about is largely an illusion," he said. "All you have to give up is your illusions, not any of your privacy. Right now, you can go onto the Internet and get a credit report about your neighbor and find out where your neighbor works, how much they earn and if they had a late mortgage payment and tons of other information."

Attempts by the Mercury News to reach Ellison for further comment Saturday were unsuccessful. Many questions about the proposal remain unanswered, such as whether foreign nationals would be required to have a card to enter the country. The hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks are not believed to have been U.S. citizens.

In the TV interview with anchorman Hank Plante, Ellison said shoppers have to disclose more information at malls to buy a watch than they do to get on an airplane.

"Let me ask you. There are two different airlines. Airline A says before you board that airplane you prove you are who you say you are. Airline B, no problem. Anyone who wants the price of a ticket, they can go on that airline. Which airplane do you get on?"

Oracle has a longstanding relationship with the federal government. Indeed, the CIA was Ellison's first customer, and the company's name stems from a CIA-funded project launched in the mid-1970s that sought better ways of storing and retrieving digital data.

Civil libertarians said caution is needed.

"It strikes me as a form of overreaction to the events that we have experienced," said Robert Post, a constitutional law professor at the University of California-Berkeley. "If we allow a terrorist attack to destroy forms of freedom that we have enjoyed, we will have given the victory to them. This kind of recommendation does just that."

Post said while such a system may catch some criminals, it could be hacked or faked or evaded by capable terrorists. Nor is it clear that such a system would have foiled the Sept. 11 attacks, he said.

Strong support

But polls last week show many Americans support a national ID card.

In a survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, seven of 10 Americans favored a requirement that citizens carry a national identity card at all times to show to a police officer upon request. The proposal had particularly strong support from women. There was less support for government monitoring of telephone calls, e-mails and credit card purchases.

The FBI already has an electronic fingerprint system for criminals.

In July 1999, the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System became operational. That system keeps an electronic database of 41 million fingerprints, with prints from all 10 fingers of people who have been convicted of crimes.

Faster response

The system has reduced the FBI's criminal fingerprint processing time from 45 days to less than two hours.

Paul Bresson, an FBI spokesman in Washington, said Saturday that he is unaware of the details of Ellison's proposal and declined comment.

Howard Gantman, a spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said that she would be interested in discussing the idea with Ellison.

"She does feel that we do need to make some important advances in terms of increasing our security," Gantman said. "A lot of people have brought up ideas about how to create more security and she's interested in exploring them. She'd like to find out more."

One group certain to fight the proposal is the American Civil Liberties Union.

A statement about ID cards posted on the ACLU's national Web site says: "A national ID card would essentially serve as an internal passport. It would create an easy new tool for government surveillance and could be used to target critics of the government, as has happened periodically throughout our nation's history."


Mercury News researcher Leigh Poitinger contributed to this report.

Contact Paul Rogers at progers@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5045. Contact Elise Ackerman at eackerman@sjmercury.com or (408) 271-3774.

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http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1...vo14no17_id.htm

Vol. 14, No. 17 August 17, 1998

A National ID

by William Norman Grigg

Proposals for national identification cards have always struck a raw nerve with Americans. Defenders of privacy and civil liberties are quick to invoke dystopian images of the dangers inherent in any system of national registration of citizens. They properly point out that any such system would be blatantly unconstitutional. Yet our nation is now dangerously close to just such a reality, with all of the implicit incentives for the further concentration and abuse of government power.

Congress in Action

In 1994, Congress enacted the Uruguay Rounds Agreements Act (H.R. 5110), to facilitate the implementation of provisions of the GATT treaty. Title VII, Subtitle E, Section 742, entitled "Taxpayer Identification Numbers Required at Birth," requires that dependent children be provided with an "identifying number" in order to be claimed as tax exemptions. In compliance with GATT, then, all children in the U.S. would be required to have an ID number (e.g. a Social Security number) at birth.

In the meantime, a move was afoot to develop more efficient resources for identifying, tracking, and locating deadbeat dads. H.R. 785, the "Child Responsibility Act of 1995," for example, provided for the establishment of a national database for locating and tracking deadbeat fathers. The bill also sought to restrict professional, occupational, and business licenses of parents in arrears on child support payments, and to restrict the driver’s licenses and vehicle registration of noncustodial parents who do not appear in child support proceedings.

H.R. 1214 contained similar provisions, with the additional directive that states require Social Security numbers for the issue and renewal of marriage licenses, as well as commercial, professional, and occupational licenses, permits, and certificates. These two bills were eventually incorporated into H.R. 4, which Congress passed in December 1995. After a presidential veto, a nearly identical version of the bill (H.R. 3453, the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act) was passed early in 1996 and signed into law by the President.

Thus had Congress, in a few short years, begun a new and aggressive campaign to convert the Social Security number into a national ID, in the name of compliance with GATT and tracking deadbeat parents.

However, another politically attractive issue was providing an even more tempting excuse for a national ID system: illegal immigration. The cover for this latest, and most comprehensive, attempt at a national ID was the "Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996" (H.R. 2202). Hidden in the bill’s language were requirements that state driver’s licenses and identification cards be brought into conformity with certain federal standards, including the use of federal Social Security numbers.

In other words, in the name of fighting illegal immigration, the GOP-controlled Congress has foisted on the states the blatantly unconstitutional requirement to convert driver’s licenses and ID cards into de facto national IDs. Thus, Social Security numbers will be required for all citizens who need to obtain driver’s licenses or to interact in any way with the federal government.

On June 17th, the Transportation Department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a directive to implement the driver’s license-ID provisions passed by Congress. Among other things, this directive contemplates requiring all states to submit certificates of compliance to the Department of Transportation by September 30, 2000. The directive also "urges states … to adopt as many [security] features as possible, because the more features a state includes on its driver’s licenses and identification documents, the more difficult it would be for individuals to counterfeit or otherwise misuse these documents."

Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) elaborated on this heavy-handed state of affairs:

Under the current state of the law, the citizens of states which have driver’s licenses that do not conform to the federal standards by October 1, 2000, will find themselves essentially stripped of their ability to participate in life as we know it. On that date, Americans will not be able to get a job, open a bank account, apply for Social Security or Medicare, exercise their Second Amendment rights, or even take an airplane flight, unless they can produce a state-issued ID that conforms to the federal specifications.

Further, under the terms of the 1996 Kennedy-Kassebaum health-care law, Americans may be forced to present this federally approved driver’s license before consulting a physician for medical treatment!... The establishment of a "national" driver’s license and birth certificate makes a mockery of the Tenth Amendment and the principles of federalism. While no state is "forced" to accept the federal standards, it is unlikely they will refuse to comply when such action would mean none of their residents could get a job, receive Social Security, leave the state by plane, or have access to medical care.

Even more chilling are suggestions that these new national ID cards will include security features such as biometric identification devices — like fingerprints and retina-scan data. Already, tamper-resistant ID cards containing biometric information are being developed for Americans who live in remote areas near our northern and southern borders. Such "border crossing cards" will contain machine-readable biometric data that will be scanned by machines at border crossings. Transferral of this technology to national IDs would be a simple step.

Regarding federalism implications, the NHTSA directive notes: "This proposed action has been analyzed in accordance with the principles and criteria contained in Executive Order 12612, and it has been determined that this proposed action would not have sufficient federalism implications to warrant the preparation of a Federalism Assessment." This statement is mere eyewash, since the "Federalism Assessment" required by the Reagan-era affirmation of federalism in Executive Order 12612 was explicitly revoked by President Clinton’s Executive Order 13083 of May 14, 1998.

Attempted Barriers

Fortunately, Congressman Bob Barr (R-GA) recently introduced legislation (H.R. 4197) to "repeal section 656 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996," thereby eliminating the legislative basis for the NHTSA directive. Known as the "Citizen’s Privacy Protection Act of 1998," Barr’s bill would also, "notwithstanding any other provision of law," prohibit federal agencies from construing federal law as authorizing a national ID card.

However, even if Barr’s bill is enacted, other avenues of attack remain open for the proponents of a national ID and corresponding database. For instance, the July 20th New York Times reported in a front-page story that "the Clinton Administration is quietly laying plans to assign every American a ‘unique health identifier,’ a computer code that could be used to create a national database that would track every citizen’s medical history from cradle to grave." This electronic code, the Times continued, "was mandated by a 1996 [health insurance] law and would be the first comprehensive national identification system since the Social Security number was introduced in 1935."

Of course, there was widespread opposition to a national medical ID card when the Clinton Administration attempted to introduce it as part of its failed national health care plan in 1993. Which perhaps explains why the Administration is now "taking a slow approach" according to Cambell Gardett, a spokesman for Health and Human Services, the department charged with implementing the new health identifier system.

A national ID has always been a cornerstone of totalitarianism. Unfortunately, advocates usually have an appealing rationale for their implementation. Who, after all, does not feel a need to protect children and spouses from irresponsible fathers? Who could oppose vigorous measures against illegal immigration? And, in the final analysis, why should more sophisticated, uniform standards for ID cards be much of an issue at all? After all (goes the rationale), this is America, not Nazi Germany.

But no matter how noble or politically attractive the cause, no federal law or regulation is justifiable on moral or other grounds if it is unconstitutional in the first place. Nor is an appeal to well-meaning but short-sighted leadership an adequate excuse. After all, as Friedrich A. von Hayek once observed, the problem with well-meaning rulers is that "they mean well, but they mean to rule."

The more we allow government to grow, the more we increase the likelihood that, sooner or later, "benign" big government will be supplanted by totalitarian rule. Little-remembered, for example, is the fact that unified Germany began to experiment with socialism and welfarism under Bismarck in the 1870s. Who then could have opposed state care for the needy, pensions, and the like, much less envisioned Nazi totalitarianism 60 years in the future? Yet Germany ultimately reaped a bitter harvest when conditions were ripe.

Americans ignore at their peril such matters as the promulgation of national IDs. For the day may come when markets will fail, confidence will falter, enemies will be arrayed against our nation, and technological innovation will be smothered under the stifling weight of big government. Then, if we allow potentially calamitous freedom-compromising legislation such as national IDs to pass unchallenged, we will find ourselves and our all-encompassing federal behemoth to be ripe for exploitation by totalitarian demagogues. Stopping the national ID card now will be a significant measure in preventing such an evil day.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. [Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml]