Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle is proposing National Identity Cards.
'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.’
Apparently, a recent poll shows fairly strong (70%) support in the U.S. for some kind of ID card. Apparently women, especially support the idea.
Ellison basically poo-poos concerns about privacy issues with the card…saying that the net has already eliminated much of that privacy.
Is now the time for a National ID Card of some form?
I think it’s a good idea, although larval. I think it’s best not to rush into such a thing, but exploratory reasearch (scientific and political) into the matter is warranted, to see if it is practical and if so the best way to implement it.
(Then again, maybe this sort of thing has been looked deeply into before and is ready for implementation. It strikes me as something which requires some fleshing out though.)
The terrorists in this case were either legal citizens of the U.S. that had been here for years or foreigners traveling with legitimate passports. In either of those cases a national id card would have proved absolutely useless.
Let’s make however the assumption that we do have someone travelling under a fake name. Then we are guaranteed to catch them right? It would be a good thing to have a picture on a passport or a drivers license wouldn’t it? Oh wait, they both have pictures on them, yet they are both forged on a daily basis. Even though they are registered in similar databases. The problem with photographs is that 6 months or more later people look quite different than when the picture was originally taken. Generally if you look remotely like the picture they’ll allow you to pass.
I guess the thumb print would be the one saving grace that would prevent fraud right? Of course that means you have to establish a system that can do real time checks on thumb prints every place that would require the national id card. This is a cost prohibitive solution at best.
One thing I can tell you from working in the computer industry and especially in the computer security industry is that every system is defeatable. I guarantee 100% that there is no system that we can put in place that will ever be undefeatable. There are too many weak points in any security system.
What a system like this would prevent is the very uneducated thugs from using a fake id (ie someone who doesn’t recognize they don’t even remotely match the picture). However that is something that our current systems actually do a decent job at. What a system like this would not prevent is a well funded terrorist or spy from doing exactly what they did on 9/11/2001.
I’m almost positive that with my experience and my background I could defeat a system like this relatively easily. If I could do it, there are thousands of others in the world who could too.
Un uh. As ruadh asked “And this would stop terrorism how?”
In the long term a national identification card would devolve into yet another (and ultimately more potent than anything yet)device by which the government might keep track of the honest citizens, while the less-honest spend the time and money necessary to circumvent the system.
Don’t make the mistake of allowing the recent attacks to send us scurrying into our hidey-holes. Be proud of the freedom purchased by the blood of patriots past, cherish it, and above all don’t allow it to be violated or lessened through outrageous programs borne of fear. No national ID cards. No ammendments abridging the rights guaranteed us is the constitution, especially the Bill of Rights. Pay attention to all of the programs that’ll creep out of congress over the next few months and years. Many will proport to be “for the national good”, but are they? Make your voice heard - e mail your representatives and let them know how you feel. Vote. Exercise your rights and freedoms. Don’t allow them to be slowly taken away.
Here is another fine example of corporate america posturing for special favours and consideration from our federal government. All of that (no doubt special tax consideration, favourable laws and loopholes for the future, etc., etc.) including the loss of some freedoms we now enjoy will be at our expense. Each of every one of us.
It’s another one of those partnerships we cannot afford. I am one woman who thinks this is a stupid knee-jerk reaction to what happened Sept. 11th.
The error made is not a lack of ID, but of an unwillingness to cause any political upset with other countries in tracking down and bringing to justice known terrorists.
Just perhaps, those who died Sept. 11 would be alive today if our government had followed through earlier.
I like this idea but it needs to be carried further. In order to keep America safe, it will be necessary to implant these chips in each citien’s hands so it can’t be tampered with, and also it should have trackign devices so we know where terrorists are going. There should also be cameras in everyone’s homes to make sure they’re safe.
There’s no need to worry about privacy issues because the government’s already spying on everyone anyway.
I’m pretty sure that there is specific legislation that prevents the SS card and number from being a “National Identity” number, but I cannot find a cite, so I may be mistaken.
I think there should be an Amendment to the Constitution specifically prohibiting a national I.D. card! If a national i.d. card isn’t the “Mark of the Beast”, then at very least it’s the last digit in “1984”! I’ll accept a national i.d. card kicking and screaming!
And how would these ladies feel about having to produce i.d. and a background check when they go for an abortion?
I hate to have to get nasty, but let’s face it. Many women questioned in these polls are illogical creatures overly driven by spur of the moment emotions.
Add the fact that well more than half of all women think it’s their right to rip their own baby out of their womb and let it die. Just the type of person I want making decisions about my safety.
I’ll gamble with my safety and maintain my civil rights. All of them!
I believe that would be the privacy act of 1974, which prohibits government agencies at all levels from using employees SSN’s for the purposes of identification (amongst other things). However, it doesn’t actually stop various agencies from using your SSN for purposes of identification, a-la the military, drivers licenses in various states, etc.
I’m not sure about the specific law, but I’m pretty sure private industry can not require you to disclose your social security number for any reason (except your employer, who must provide it to the IRS).
My point was, a lot of these chicken littles are very quick to surrender other peoples civil liberties. How do they react when others go after their “rights”. They don’t like it! Keep your scardy cat hands off my freedom!
The only way this idea is going to fly is if it gets massive public support. That is, make them super smart ATM cards. If they carried medical info, you could go through hospital admissions with the swipe of a card instead of filling out 5 pages in triplicate. In short, include whatever “e-tools” would greatly improve day to day life for the common citizen. Once the majority of people are sold on the idea, the only ones left will be the conspiracy theorists & slippery slope-sayers.
As already mentioned, securing this data would be a huge critical requirement and some kind of verification besides just the card would be needed, like a retina scan or a complex PIN such as FW5QG41A3. The path the data stream takes to get to whatever server is responsible for validating it would have to be different from the path that the initial swipe takes, to reduce the posibility that somebody would intercept both pieces of data and put them together (kind of like the way a credit card & PIN number are currently mailed to the same address but in different envelopes & on different days).
I would also want to eliminate the magnetic strip/swipe mechanism in favor of a proximity detection style card. These are somewhat thicker (mine is about twice the thickness of a regular credit card, but has no raised numbers) cards that have built-in electronics. You hold the card near a sensor and somehow data is read from the card and your identity is verified. I’m really not sure how these work (magic rays from outer space is what I suspect), but I imagine that they would be seriously difficult to counterfeit.
There are additional technical details to work out, like redundancy (I would require at least 100 validation servers placed strategically through out the US, connected via a redundant mesh network, and additionally 2/3 of the servers would have to “vote” in the affirmative that the data is valid, in the event that 1 or 2 individual servers had been hack into some how). But before we get to the technical hurdles, the personal objections are bigger hurdles by far.
Get grass roots support (or at least interest) by saying that such a card will be a huge time saver, straighten your teeth and improve your sex life, and then talk about ways to actually make it work.
Now that I’ve skimmed that site, I do see that I share some of those concerns, but I’m getting ready to leave work so I’ll have a more in depth look at it this evening.
Wait, the CEO of oracle, the largest maker of databases in the world, thinks the US government ought to spend billions on database software? Really? Seriously? Because I can’t imagine that he’d want to advocate something that could potentially so enrich his company.
I don’t think it will help in the long run. Humans have a great knack for beating or getting around “problems” if they want to break the law. These cards might slowdown wrongdoing, but then what about other modes of travel? You are aware that if we successfully secure our air, trains, boats etc. that these terrorists will just think of more areas to hit us in to hurt us; but the ID cards are a start.
Read: “Behold A Pale Horse”, by William Cooper
This book scared the bejeezus out of a lot of
college students. This book deals with this very
thing and is explained vividly and goes beyond
the realm of terrorism, and talking away Citizens’
Civil Liberties, why and how.
