The Reality of REAL ID
Don't believe them.
Well. The REAL ID is here in earnest. Can’t fly without it. (Unless you want to cart your passport around with you…) Be prepared for a whole mountain more of “can’t do’s” to pile up around our feet like a stinking pile of manure, one that all of us will have to wade through just to live our lives.
“Compliance” is the name of the noose they’re tightening around our necks, one inexorable cinch at a time.
Lessee… Wasn’t there something that smashed down on us a few years ago that included discussion about the destructive nature of “compliance”?
Hmm…
Societal memory is short and, well, stupid.
The reality of REAL ID = loss of privacy and an increase in government power and control.
There are no “good intentions” here. If that were the case, “they” would maximize freedom and our rights and leave us to figure this out on our own.
That ain’t happenin’.
The State tells us that forcing citizens to obtain and use the REAL ID is “for our own good.”
Pull the other one…
“For your security/safety” is one of the oldest and lamest excuses and dodges for ratcheting up government that there is. (Followed closely by “For the children”…)
As Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
Please. Don’t “help” us. You’re helping us to death.
As per the usual game plan, cramming this statist BS down our collective throat is nothing more than our masters posing as wolves in sheep’s clothing. And lamb chops are on the menu…
This has been building for decades.
Few listen to the Cassandras. They rarely do.
So. Here we are.
Some of us have been warning about the implications of this abomination for a looonnnggg time. Hasn’t made a fiddly fart’s worth of difference.
I would say that the “public” deserves what it gets.
Unfortunately, the obedience of these citizens is dragging me into that endless whirlpool, as well…
“Discouraging” is an understatement of the situation.
But for the record and for what it’s worth, I’ve collected some excerpts of my writing and musing on this issue over the decades.
I will say this, however:
Virtually everything I warned about has come true in one form or another or stares hungrily at us from not too far into the future.
One of my earliest pieces was published in 2001, “Your Papers, Please”:
Years ago, in the online London Times, Jill Sherman reported the concern British authorities had for the doubts of their subjects in accepting a compulsory national ID card: “The card could also function as a driving licence, credit card and store card to make it more useful and therefore more acceptable to consumers.” No need to be bothered by a handful of cards cluttering up your wallet. Reduce them all down to one convenient card that “...should be made as user-friendly as possible.”
Yes. No muss, no fuss as you go about shedding any last bits of your privacy.
As Wired writer Julia Scheeres told us, such cards will “increase police power,” “facilitate information-sharing among government agencies,” and “streamline government interactions with the public.” To politicians or law enforcement agents, these facts are selling points—not valid objections—for the introduction of national ID cards. The years since have verified the truth of those predictions.
Let us not, however, ignore the opinions of certain powerful private citizens who are enthusiastic about this unique opportunity. Oracle bigwig, Larry Ellison—simultaneously one of the richest people in the world and one of the most ignorant about basic free enterprise principles; his tech company helped sic the Clinton “Justice” Department on Microsoft, after all—Ellison is a long-time cheerleader for mandated ID cards. He thinks matching government databases with passenger IDs at airports to increase our security is a wonderful idea.
“We need a national ID card with our photograph and thumbprint embedded in the ID card,” he told us, as reported by SiliconValley.com and other sources. Indeed, he’s so enthralled with selling American citizens down the river that he assures us that, “We’re quite willing to provide the software for this absolutely free.”
Gosh. Such a thoughtful, generous guy he is.
An embryonic national ID card has long been gestating in the form of the Social Security/driver’s license combo mentioned above. Many states already have formatted their driver’s licenses to comply with the “National Standard for Driver License/Identification Card.” Uniformity is the name of the game when it comes to tracking citizens. When your ID is linked with a national database, you could be scanned and checked regardless of what jurisdiction you happen to be in at the time. Since random traffic stops are already common, the odds of being swept up in such an illegal search increases the more you drive.
Of course, this standardization of ID would be extended to non-drivers, as well. Indeed, I corresponded with a woman who has no driver’s license but who thinks this development would be peachy; that it would “simplify” her life.
Hmm. Slavery simplified. Amazing.
Magnetic stripes are currently the primary means of encoding your personal information. Those black bars can be counterfeited, however, so the momentum is flowing towards computer chips. An additional “virtue” of “smart cards” is the sharp increase in potential data storage available to our eternal watchers.
Whatever the mechanism for encoding your life, the options for what to include are numerous. First are the “normal” facts most of us already must surrender to drive and survive: your name, signature, weight, height, eye and hair color, sex, date of birth, and photograph.
Coming soon to an ID card near you: Fingerprints, thumbprints, and the face and retinal scans of millions of citizens. Since it’s up to the authorities to decide what they believe to be “important” to track, we aren’t done yet.
Your criminal history, your credit report, your gun and ammunition purchases, your employment history, welfare payments you’ve received, your birth certificate (standardized, of course), your marital status and sexual preferences, your health record (thanks to de facto national health care given us via the current traitors-in-office), including sexually transmitted diseases you’ve contracted, drug use, genetic testing and DNA code, your religion, and any potential “terrorist” organizations you might belong to such as Gun Owners of America; all can be encoded.
As Stephan Moore of the Cato Institute said, the State is infinitely creative in uncovering new uses for their dictatorial toys. You can rest assured that “...new and at times urgent alternative purposes for the registry will doubtless arise. Those who favor big government will find many uses for a centralized computer database every time a new ‘national crisis’ emerges: to help fight the war on drugs, to control the spread of disease, to combat terrorism, and so forth.” In total disregard of the Tenth Amendment, state records will be federalized to an unprecedented degree.
With such power at their hands, the State will be able to check movements of “suspects” and compare ID databases with watch lists of whoever is out of favor at that time. Even today, fliers erroneously placed on a “Do Not Fly” list have little recourse to correct their records. As the ACLU 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.”
The use of national ID cards has not stopped car bombings in Spain, France, and Italy. According to the ACLU’s Barry Steinhardt, “If we had had national ID cards…, it would not have thwarted the terrorists. They were in the country lawfully and had identification documents on them.” (At least most of them.)
According to Robert Post, law professor, University of CA-Berkeley, the proposed new ID cards “could be hacked or faked or evaded by capable terrorists.”
Oops.
Indeed, such national ID cards might worsen the situation. They would hardly deter suicide attackers and could give the rest of us “a false sense of security when vigilance is required.” (Philip Johnston) (See: 9-11.)
Trevor Hemmings of the British Statewatch organization says that, “I think it’s just one of a series of anti-civil libertarian measures they [the British government] want to put in place and they have been waiting years to do it.” Seditious libel, no doubt.
Despite the perversions we can already imagine occurring should a compulsory national ID card be implemented, “...abuses of the proposed i.d. card that we cannot now envision would almost certainly occur when expediency takes precedence over safeguards of privacy rights and civil liberties. In fact, privacy rights have already been eroded.” (Moore)
The fact that neither the Congress nor the president have constitutional authority to do what is proposed or to justify what is already in place has not slowed this stampede towards “gentle” totalitarianism. Nor can we rely on the Supreme Court to save us. Supreme Court Chief “Justice” William Rehnquist believes that, “It is neither desirable nor is it remotely likely that civil liberty will occupy as favored a position in wartime as it does in peacetime.” (emphasis added)
The price of this battle is eternal vigilance. If citizens succumb to their fears, to their emotions, and fail to heed the lessons of history we will soon be saddled with de jure national ID cards that “violate the most basic of American liberties: the right to be left alone.” (ACLU) National ID cards are an “infringement of the citizen’s right to remain anonymous if he chooses.” (Johnston)
If we are to continue our progress towards greater civilization and not revert to the black realms of servitude, we must resist the Siren call of “safety” and “security” and refuse to bend our necks to our would-be masters.
Freedom entails risk, yes, but the alternatives carry far greater risks.
Have the courage to set men free from men. Seek liberty. Seek life. Seek your soul.
And my “Identify Yourself” in 2004:
What if Hiibel—rather than merely refusing to provide an ID card—what if he had simply told the officer that he did not possess or carry any State-sanctioned method of identification? Would he—should he—have still been subject to arrest and conviction?
In the case of someone suspected of a specific crime, any State demand for the detainee to establish his identity is irrelevant for deciding whether he should or should not be arrested (or, ultimately, for convicting him of said crime). Yes, a victim might say specifically that “Joe Schmo” committed crime X and give the police Joe’s description. If the police see someone matching that description and stop him, they might well ask—in the interest of expediency—for identification as a means of ruling out the person in hand. If he refuses to do so, he should not be subject to arrest for that reason alone. If the police have enough evidence to reasonably believe he is guilty of a crime, they can arrest him until further investigation leads them elsewhere. But insufficient evidence that one has committed a real crime should never lead to one’s arrest.
(Even beyond this, IDs do not necessarily prove anything. Fake ID’s are hardly a rarity.)
While showing an ID might make things easier, more convenient for someone who finds himself involved with the police, citizens have a right to privacy and no obligation to indicate who they are. In and of itself, not having or producing an ID card violates no one’s rights. Anyone who believes otherwise must prove how such inaction constitutes a direct or indirect initiation of force and against whom.
In a free society, there can be no valid legal requirement:
to possess a State-approved means of identification (or any ID, for that matter),
to carry such an ID on one’s person, or
to produce such an ID to a State agent upon demand.
If the police have sufficient evidence to suspect X is a criminal, then they might hold him until they can establish that he is or is not, in fact, the person they seek. But one’s name, description, address, or anything else that a card might contain should be completely irrelevant as to whether one is arrested for or subsequently convicted of a crime. Either the police have enough facts to detain or arrest a suspect or they do not.
But how does the mere possession (or not) of an ID make any substantive difference regarding the question of one’s guilt? It does not.
As the dissenting Nevada Supreme Court justices wrote:
What the majority fails to recognize is that it is the observable conduct, not the identity, of a person, upon which an officer must legally rely.
The rest of the court should have listened.
You do not have to prove—to anyone—who you are.
And “Attacking Freedom” written on 9-11-2001 and published six days later:
Given the excessive limitations on our freedom imposed by the Feds after merely suspected terrorist attacks on passenger jets and after the Oklahoma City bombing, today’s onslaughts may lead to further clamping down on the citizens of this country. How those restrictions will be imposed, I cannot say. Explicit internal ID cards. More citizen tracking via cameras and phone monitoring. Travel restrictions. Who knows? In any event, past history strongly suggests that we will not come out of this nightmare with more freedom than we had going into it.
“Race for Freedom,” 9-19-01:
That fount of intelligence, Sonny Bono’s wife, Mary, who rode into Congress on the coattails of her dead husband, is babbling on in favor of a national ID card, fingerprinting, and whatever else Big Brother desires to “keep us safe.” Dick Gephardt is hard on her heels suggesting we may need to “rethink” opposition to citizen “smart” cards holding biometric information and even travel records, à la, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
“Kettles and Pots,” 2002, sarcasm:
I have confidence, though, that the president does care for me. He constantly reminds me how compassionate he is, after all. For instance, he assures me that we won’t have anything like a national ID card. I bet there are just evil aides keeping him in ignorance about the plans to turn driver’s licenses into a national ID card. When will his advisers warn him about that new “Trusted Traveler” card we’ll soon have with our biometric data encoded on it? I just know he would put a quick stop to such shenanigans if he knew about them.
“Money For Nothing, Death for Free,” 2002:
In the present atmosphere of “don’t bring up such issues now,” I suppose I should hang my head in shame for questioning the wisdom of increased State power.
Perhaps I should. But I won’t.
When we had cases of anthrax striking people in various states; when we have troops venturing into the primitive realms of Asia and now the Philippines; when men in uniform patrol our airports and guard our highways; when we hear daily reports and analyses dissecting possibilities for expanded war and the specter of chemical/biological/nuclear terrorism; when such horrors, real or imagined, sprinkle down upon us, it would be easy to hold my tongue, to “overlook” government abuses, to wiggle into the darkness safe from prying governmental eyes.
National ID cards? Racial profiling? Homeland Defense Agency? Roving wiretaps? Carnivore links to ISPs? Illegal searches and seizures? Secret courts and secret evidence? Indefinite detentions? Loss of free speech? Torture of prisoners?
Mute the criticism. Hunker down. Don’t draw attention. Be patriotic.
Shut up.
“Police State, American Style,” 2002:
We don’t have stormtroopers roaming the streets. Yet.
But we have had National Guard troops cruising our airports. And former President Bush called for the elimination of the Posse Comitatus Act (see my essay, “Calling Out the Posse”) so military personnel may be used for civilian law enforcement. Already we have had troops “guarding” our borders against illegal immigrants, troops who murdered an American teenager yet never faced prosecution. And the militarization of the police continues apace.
We don’t have internal passports. Yet.
But we do have a de facto national identification number, our Social Security number, and plans for “uniform” drivers licenses that will eventually morph into full-blown national ID (NID) cards with biometric data. Without this “no, it’s not a”-national ID number, you cannot live a normal existence. Indeed, try telling a cop who demands it that you have no ID with you... And President Bush eventually dropped his pretense of opposing such NID cards and endorsed them as a means of “fighting” terrorism. And let us not forget the “Constitution-free” zones extending miles into this country along our borders inside of which border agents claim the right to do virtually anything they want to you without any observance of your Constitutionally-recognized rights. And let us not forget our government-controlled airports in which TSA creeps can grope anyone and arrest you for daring to object to violations of your First, Fourth, and other amendment-protected (?) rights.
We don’t have secret police. Yet.
But we do have secret “intelligence” agencies whose activities are hidden from public scrutiny...or accountability. We have secret courts and laws we are not permitted to see. We have charges leveled against us we cannot even tell others about. President Bush called for a national network of civilian spies—his TIPS or Terrorism Information and Prevention System—a “corps” whose members would not worry about such petty inconveniences as probable cause or search warrants as they poked and prodded into the private lives of their neighbors. (And, of course, we believed GWB when he told us such an informant network would report only on “publicly” observable activities.) Obama and his NSA underlings continued this fine tradition.
We don’t have a Gestapo. Yet.
But we do have a Department of Homeland Security. This behemoth now has cabinet-level status with enforcement capabilities as it absorbs the offices and powers of its federal rivals.
We don’t have concentration camps for “undesirables.” Yet.
But we do have a camp in Cuba (savor the irony...) holding unknown “combatants” in an undeclared war without benefit of legal representation or other Constitutional protections. (And, no, Constitutional protections are not just for American citizens; those guarantees are against the State, to protect natural rights inherent in any individual.) The last two presidents have sanctioned the holding without due process of American citizens, gutting habeas corpus, while applauding military tribunals beholden to no civilian oversight. Plans are in place to construct camps around the country for unspecified future prisoners.
The first PATRIOT Act passed in such haste by Congress and signed by Bush laid the legal groundwork for these and many more abuses...a situation similar to that in Germany when Hitler—legally—came to power. Such threats to our rights will merely grow in number and intensity as time passes and this inane “war” draws out over the coming years. Many “temporary” provisions are already permanent.
“Your Friendly, Neighborhood Bankerman,” 2002.
Indeed, many banks ask for an ID to perform even “...simple transactions, such as making deposits and withdrawals.” (And don’t try to pass off your YMCA card as a valid ID. Must have a State-approved ID with your Social Security Number firmly set for all to see. Yeah, yeah. I know. My SS card says “For Social Security and Tax Purposes—Not For Identification” on it, too. So what? You really didn’t think the modern police state was going to worry about legal or constitutional niceties, did you?)
The “precautionary principle” reins supreme. Anyone who has visited an airport or other State-run enterprise has experienced this idiocy firsthand: forget probable cause or even common sense. We are all potential criminals or terrorists in the jaundiced eye of Big Daddy. Guilty until proven innocent. This is America today, buddy. If you don’t like it, leave. If you don’t shut up, I have the power to kill you!!!!!
Just because you’re eighty years old and have been going to the same branch of the same bank for the last fifty years and know all the tellers by their first names, don’t get the warped notion that you are exempt from proving who you are before you can gain access to your own money. Don’t you dare ask, “How is forcing me to give you my ID or my thumb print going to stop terrorists or money laundering?”
Screw you, buster. You’re just the customer.
Sandy Spring National Bank of Maryland president and chief executive, Hunter R. Hollar, said, “It presents a challenge to us. We want to be that friendly, hometown bank, but we also have an obligation now to ask our customers for their identification.”
Oh, yes. See the crocodile tears trickling down Mr. Hollar’s cheeks. He is so sorry he must treat you like a criminal. But he has an “obligation” (created by whom? for what good reason? enforced how?) to “ask” for ID. (Any guesses as to whether you’ll get your own money—and avoid arrest—if you refuse this friendly “request”?)
Even though the WTC terrorists supposedly had (fake) SSNs and followed the rules by adhering to deposit and withdrawal limits, somehow, someway if banks now “verify” who you are, keep records of how they know that, and check your ID against the State’s list of known or suspected bad-boys, we’ll all be so much safer and freer than ever before.
Mind you, this game of immoral peekaboo is not limited to banks, either. “The rules target banks, trust companies, credit unions, savings associations, securities brokers and dealers, mutual funds and futures merchants and brokers.” No stone left unturned, eh?
Treasury lawyer, David Aufhauser, assured all you nervous nellies out there that, “The goal is to ensure financial institutions absolutely believe the person they are doing business with is the person they represent themselves to be.” (Ignore the PC-inspired bad grammar there but don’t ignore the unconscious arrogance dripping from his words.)
Ah! So you have no right to anonymity anymore for any reason when it comes to how you store and use your own money. Gotcha. Why, ol’ W. C. Fields—who sprinkled his money in dozens of banks under false names—would find himself staring out between bars if he tried to pull such evil acts today. After all, it’s the financial institutions that must be satisfied—not you, the customer—as you come to them, hat in hand, and humbly and meekly beg them to allow you to hand over your own money to them so they can keep an eagle eye on all you do financially and thus keep you honest and prevent you from straying into a life of crime and degradation, you f***ing traitor, you!
But as I said, this is business-as-usual for many of these tools of the State. Just ask Shirley Norton of Bank of America: “We won’t have trouble complying with the new rules because we already do.”
There you have it, my friends. The status quo. No new chains. No loss of freedom.
It’s already gone.
“Eager for War,” 2003, sarcasm:
We have not and will not lose any of our freedoms or rights in our fight against Iraq and terrorism. The PATRIOT Act and Total Information Awareness and TIPS and TTIC and airport searches and national ID cards and cameras and face-recognition and random bodily searches and all the rest enhance our freedom and our rights while making us much, much safer. Trust us.
“Wanting Freedom,” 2003.
Consider: before the War for Southern Independence, many slaves wore no literal shackles, had no iron chains locked to their wrists and ankles. Some slaves traveled into town on their own (but with their ID papers, of course, close to hand…) Many of these slaves ran small businesses. They were allowed by their masters to keep some percentage of the money they earned. Most were not routinely beaten. Many were reasonably well-fed. They married and had children. They laughed and sang. They celebrated holidays.
And they were still slaves.
“‘We’ Speaks,” 2003, sarcasm:
“We” have contained “these killers” to one teensy-eensy-weensy “area of the country.” In the north, the Iraqis will soon have “self-government.” As soon as “we” decide they are ready. Still, the attacks have killed those “who stand for freedom and order,” i.e., Americans and Brits. You know. The folks who are bringing you national ID cards. Confiscatory inflation. Altruism on a massive scale. Omnipresent surveillance and tracking. No-knock raids. Indefinite detention without trial or legal representation. Self-defense bans. Registration lists. Detention camps. Militarization of police forces. You know. The folks who stand for freedom. Or at least order.
“Objectivist Warmongers,” 2008:
Long before our national politicians stupidly and unconstitutionally invaded Iraq, I wrote arguing against such nonsense. Launching this undeclared war violated the basic principles of self-defense, the proper purpose of government, the Constitution, and any rational cost-benefit analysis. Like most tyrants, supporters of the war sought to inflate the dangers of terrorists so Americans would cower in their basements and meekly accept the most egregious violations of their rights and freedom.
After witnessing years of this conflict, we have seen ample evidence to indicate how “ill-advised” (i.e., irrational and crazy) this venture was and continues to be. Untold billions of dollars stolen from Americans to pay for our military interventionism and to rebuild a country whose infrastructure we destroyed; thousands of Americans killed and maimed, their lives ruined—not to “keep us safe,” not “for freedom”….but for nothing; tens-of-thousands, perhaps hundreds-of-thousands of Iraqi noncombatants killed by American forces; Iraqis reduced to primitive conditions, unable to enjoy the basic amenities of life; creating a recruiting ground and rallying point for new terrorists; establishing an open-ended commitment to spill American blood and waste American money stolen from taxpayers for years, decades, maybe even a century (according to one presidential-hopeful); the kidnapping, torturing, and murdering of prisoners as governmental policy; a rapid erosion of what few rags of freedom we still enjoyed: ending habeas corpus, increasing surveillance and searches sans warrants, abandoning posse comitatus, instituting national ID cards, mandating biometric data and passports for travel, engaging in unconstitutional wiretapping, accepting indefinite detention without charges, denying representation by a lawyer and trial by jury, admitting hidden and hearsay “evidence,” eroding our economy and our monetary system through massive inflation and deficit spending, erecting border fences, promoting a false belief in the possibility of “nation-building,” seizing control over our ability to fly, limiting the First Amendment-guaranteed right to protest against our government, excusing lies about WMDs and other “threats,” linking the War on “Drugs” with the War on “Terrorism,” and on and on and on and on…
Except for the first two pieces I mentioned, these articles and essays are available in my book collection, “Terrorism, 9/11, and Freedom,” a book that presents these writings in chronological order.
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