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Sunday, March 11, 2007
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"We are, after all, for the first time in the history of a liberty-loving nation, creating a national identification card ... with all the ramifications of that. ... Real ID was stuffed into the supplemental appropriations bill for Hurricane Katrina and the troops in Iraq, so of course, we had to vote for the bill, but we had no chance to amend it -- no debate, no hearing, and no consideration of other alternatives, And now we impose on the states an $11 billion unfunded mandate. ... I would say we wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't stop and think about what we've done." Sen. Lamar Alexander's recent comments about the Real ID Act echo the widespread bipartisan resistance to this new law. In 2005, Congress passed the Real ID Act, a law that proposed a sea change in how states issue driver's licenses. In essence, the law would federalize all state departments of motor vehicles and turn our driver's licenses into national identity cards. The burdens of compliance are onerous and guarantee longer lines, higher fees and huge bureaucratic and financial nightmares for state government.However, the real nightmare of Real ID is the law's assault on our privacy rights. The law mandates a central, interlinked database containing a wealth of personal information, including name, address, date of birth, biometric information and an assigned identification number. Over time, the database will inevitably become the repository for more and more of citizens' personal data and will be used for an ever-wider set of purposes, moving us closer to a surveillance society.
1:28:25 PM 
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A new Homeland Security program aims to analyze existing, legally
collected computer data, not gather new personal information on U.S.
citizens, Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday in defending the
program from congressional critics. The project, still in pilot
stage, will help investigators understand evidence gathered through
subpoenas but won't troll computers for new, private information,
Chertoff said in an interview with The Associated Press. 'It's
an experiment to see how you can better analyze data that you already
have, that you've already legally collected, to see if you can
understand it, sort it and make use of it more readily than simply
doing it manually,' Chertoff said. Called ADVISE _ for Analysis,
Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement _ the
program can be used to find 'relationships or patterns' from
information including financial and telephone records, he said.
1:18:50 PM
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DNA testing is in the news a lot these days,
and not solely because of the saga of Anna Nicole Smith, whose burial
was delayed amid a legal tussle over the paternity of her 5-month-old
daughter, Daniellyn.
The growing success in obtaining
convictions by genetic matching (since the O.J. Simpson trial anyway)
has made it the preferred identification technology for law
enforcement, as well as by other federal agencies. The U.S. military
requires every serviceman to give blood for future DNA analysis,
presumably for body identification.
States are among the most
aggressive users of DNA testing. The New Jersey Supreme Court recently
upheld a Garden State law requiring DNA testing of all felons, with the
results maintained in a state database and submitted to the FBI.
Other
states that have initiated extensive DNA collection policies include
Virginia and Arizona -- the latter tests, collects, and stores the
results not only from convicted felons but also from most people who
are simply arrested for a felony. Florida is now considering collecting
DNA from everyone convicted of a felony, as well as from those found
guilty of certain misdemeanors.
Municipalities are climbing
onto the DNA testing bandwagon, too. A blood bank in Seattle has begun
collecting and analyzing DNA from donated blood without obtaining
explicit permission, although donors may opt out. The program is funded
by the U.S. military. To protect the privacy of donors, the Puget Sound
blood bank labels the samples with codes instead of printed names. For
the record, that's not a very secure strategy.
Race Traces
A
little-noticed provision in the recently passed Violence Against Women
Act may soon trigger the largest sweep of DNA information in this
country. The Justice Dept. plans to collect DNA from anyone arrested or
detained by federal agents. This will, by definition, include all
illegal immigrants.
The increasingly widespread use of DNA
testing opens a Pandora's Box of privacy issues. Technicians can
extrapolate information about a person from the sample of their brother
or son. In Houston last year, a man's conviction of rape was partially
based on DNA evidence collected from his twin brother.
And
the process isn't without its bizarre anomalies. For example, people
who have received bone-marrow transplants can in certain cases match
the DNA of a donor.
1:15:40 PM
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Anybody who objects to their personal details going on the new "Big
Brother" ID cards database will be banned from having a passport.
James Hall, the official in charge of the supposedly-voluntary
scheme, said the Government would allow people to opt out - but in
return they must "forgo the ability" to have a travel document.
With one in every eight people saying they will refuse to
sign-up, up to five million adults could effectively be refused
permission to leave the country.
Campaigners reacted to Mr Hall's remarks with fury, saying they
were yet more evidence of the lurch towards "Big Brother" Britain.
Phil Booth, of the NO2ID group, said: "The idea that ID cards scheme is voluntary, and people can opt-out, is a joke.
"There are all sorts of reasons why people need to travel, not just for holidays. There is work, visiting relatives.
"What are these people supposed to do? It stretches the
definition of voluntary beyond breaking point. They will go to any
length to get personal information for this huge database. Who knows
what will happen to it then?"
12:56:16 PM
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© Copyright 2007 Paul Hardwick.
Last update: 3/18/07; 5:11:56 PM.
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