April 01, 2005

ID Cards and Freedom

Mark Havener over at The Conservative Zone links to an article from yesterday's New York Post:

...the ID-enthusiasts remain convinced that requiring folks to show a document that can be altered or counterfeited will save the nation. To that end, they tinker endlessly with the document's format and the laws surrounding it, as though terrorists will be foiled by demands for ID.

The fanatics' latest attempt along this line is the "REAL ID Act" now before the Senate. It supposedly closes the loopholes the 9/11 terrorists exploited. But loopholes are the law's prairie-dog tunnels: Close one, and three more open.

Some ID proponents imply that because other countries have national ID cards, we should, too. Other countries also have higher gas prices and contaminated water, but we don't want to import those. Nor should we import national ID: Governments use these to track not foreign terrorists, but their own citizens. Knowing who you are and where you can be found chills dissent. And that's to be feared as much as terrorism.

This all goes along with what I've been saying about RFID, police cameras, and (of course) this idea of a national ID.

Mark brings the point home when he states, "if you can be tracked wherever you go, are you truly free?"

I couldn't have said it any better myself.

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