[9605] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: AGAINST ID CARDS
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Declan McCullagh)
Sat Oct 6 18:46:36 2001
Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2001 18:48:35 -0400
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: Carl Ellison <cme@acm.org>
Cc: "Arnold G. Reinhold" <reinhold@world.std.com>, dcsb@ai.mit.edu,
cryptography@wasabisystems.com
Message-ID: <20011006184835.A27165@cluebot.com>
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In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.20011006122007.01cc3938@localhost>; from cme@acm.org on Sat, Oct 06, 2001 at 12:20:07PM -0700
On Sat, Oct 06, 2001 at 12:20:07PM -0700, Carl Ellison wrote:
> we already have a national ID card: a passport.
Carl,
We may be speaking at cross-purposes. What I would call a national ID
card is an identification device that created by the federal
government that all citizens and permanent residents are issued.
The U.S., of course, has no such device. Many millions of Americans
have not traveled abroad and do not have passports.
The privacy-anonymity threat a national ID card poses is that once you
have such a card in place, a near-irresistable incentive arises for
governments to make carrying them mandatory. That could mean police
stopping you at any time, demanding to see your ID, and scanning it in
to learn information-about-you-they-wish-to-know. Extend this
prediction as appropriate to ID-card-scanners -- coupled with
biometric readers and checks against databases -- at banks, airports,
grocery stores, etc.
-Declan
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