This may be one of those questions that if I have to explain it to you, you won’t understand the answer. Please understand that I don’t mean that to sound condescending or superior at all, it is just that I think that a person that is not bothered by this level of intrusiveness by the State is coming from a radically different value system than I am.
I’m a permanent resident of the US, and my understanding that I got when I received my green card about 3 years ago was that legally I was required to carry it at all times. However, I’ve never been required to show it (except once, to my employer, to show I was still legal to work – I previously had a temporary employment visa).
…or a different country even. We have similar civil rights here in Canada but our country was founded under different circumstances and there isn’t really the same kind of underlying suspicion of authority.
I completely understand what you’re saying, but it wouldn’t bother me one iota to show ID to police, guards, whomever if asked. I suspect from a statistical perspective the answer to this question would be significantly different between the US and Canada.
So then you wouldn’t have a problem with them banging on your door at 2:00 am to have a look around your house? Maybe stopping your car at a roadblock and searching it? After all, you’re on a federal highway.
How can this NOT bother a good American citizen??
To be fair, Leaffan is from Canada and (as (s)he mentioned above) is operating on a different set of assumtions about the folks in charge.
Because I’m Canadian?
What would they want to see in my house at 2:00 A.M? I have nothing at all to hide. I’d lose some sleep and be a little put out perhaps. As for stopping cars at roadblocks, we have that already; it’s called RIDE programs (Reduce Impared Driving Everywhere.) The official RIDE season just started!
Canadian or American…it doesn’t matter what they’d want to see. You’re missing the point.
There is an expectation of privacy that is shrinking daily in the U.S. We are being told that handing over our rights is for the good of the nation; so they can catch the bad guys. But what they’re doing is ineffective in catching bad guys.
I’m not missing any points. If you’re not doing anything illegal: who cares. If you are doing something illegal then I guess you have every right to be worried because obstensibly you are one of the bad guys and the scheme worked.
So how far do you want to take this? What about a global database with the DNA profile of everyone? Any time a crime is committed, we check the database. Would that bother you?
I’m not doing anything illegal and I CARE. I have the right to privacy. Would you give your neighbor the right to snoop into your personal life? Well, unless they have a specific reason, the police should have no more access to your private space and information than any other joe blow on the street. Man…you would have felt right at home in Nazi Germany.
In the referenced case, the ID request was only instituted after 9/11. Before then, no guard got on the bus and checked peoples ID’s. In the security hysteria after 9/11, an ID check was instituted, although no reason for the check can be articulated by officials.
The lady charged actually got by with telling the guard that she had forgotten her ID at home, several times. Eventually a guard (apparently) recognized that she was forgetting her ID a lot, and told her that she had better have her ID in the future or be prepared to get off the bus.
So, what good is the ID check? The ID’s aren’t checked against any list – although I suppose if it read “Osama bin Laden”, there might be some concern expressed. In fact, if you didn’t have an ID, you were allowed to pass. It was only the refusal to comply with the ID request that triggered a response.
“Here’s my ID” – No response, the ID could say anything.
“I don’t have my ID” – Reminder to have it next time, at best.
“You can’t see my ID” – Thrown off the bus. Arrested if you refuse to leave the bus.
It’s just stupid security. A hassle for everyone involved, and worthless as a real security measure. The Denver Federal Center is the second largest concentration of federal agencies in the country, and may well require extra security. This procedure doesn’t provide extra security.
Dangerous, and frightening words, IMHO.
So, assuming you’re not doing anything illegal, you’d have no problems with the police stopping you on the street and searching your person? How about your car? How about a quick check of your house? I mean, if you’re not doing anything illegal, who cares, right?
That would be acceptable to you? Where do you draw the line?
Here’s the difference: the options you suggest are illegal for the government. What happened in the case above is legal for the government.
You seem to see this as a case of our existing liberties being stripped away. I don’t. I am perfactly content with our rights as they exist today. This is why I believe it’s relevant to ask whether the complained-of behavior is legal.
If the cops bang on my door at 2:00 AM, without a warrant or probable cause, I can refuse them entry. This is the law. I’m happy about that.
If the cops stop me at a roadblock without reasonable, articulable suspicion, and try to search my car, the law protects me from that. I’m happy about that, too.
In this case, the law permits the government to ask people entering a federal facility for ID. While I agree it’s a foolish exercise, I also see that it’s legal. It was legal before 9/11. It was legal in 1990, in 1980, and in 1970, and in 1960, and so forth. The law has not changed to make this once-impermissible act legal. It’s always been legal.
So I’m not upset about it.
Point me at a law that’s CHANGED, and you may get my support. But this is no change at all.
I’ll tell you what the problem is. It’s a stupid law that’s now being enforced for the wrong reasons. When the collective authoritarian mentality goes wiggy like this, other infringements are sure to follow. And they’ll get away with it for a while. And in the meantime, the idea of personal liberty begins to erode. THAT’S what the problem is.
Leaffan, I am old enough to remember some of the effects of WWII and of the fear of the spread of Communism. In old movies about both the Facists and the Communists, the bad officials would always confront the helpless citizen and say, “Your papers, please.” Those three words spelled doom. The point was made over and over again that those people disappeared. The point was also made that as Americans, we didn’t have to carry papers.
The movies may have been formulaic, but the point about the freedom of not having to produce identification was valid. Anything that smacks of a move in that direction makes some of us understandably uneasy. Unless I am doing something wrong, it ain’t nobody’s business who I am. This is a free country.
There are laws about the right to privacy in our country that we are quite proud of. Some people want to play around with those rights and have been taking some of them away bit by bit. We have seen through historical example what can happen in a nation where freedoms are taken away bit by bit and we want to make sure that doesn’t happen here.
Gee, I wonder where Fernandez got his ideas! Welcome to the Dope!
Geez Louise, that was really hitting bricker below the belt. What kind of holidays do you think he’s going to have now, huh? 
Bricker, I have to admit that I am a bit confused by something here. Specifically, is The Law and The Good interchangable to you? In other words, is the fact that something is legal all the justification that you need to support it?
Understand that I do see how you are pointing out (more than once) that this is a foolish idea and probably a bad one, the part that is somewhat odd to me is that the tone of your posts seems to be saying that if something is legal, you see no reason to get upset about it.
Assuming that is true, can you tell me how it is that you got there. I really don’t get it.
Thanks for the eloquent delivery, Zoe. That’s what I meant!
To reinforce your last paragraph, isn’t this what we’re trying to sell to the Iraqis? As a people, we harp, ad nauseum, on these very freedoms, yet so many Americans fail (or refuse) to understand that sitting back and taking these little erosions, following our government’s misguided attempts to “protect” us, is the polar opposite of what they’re glurging us to death about! I wish some people would put down their flags for a second and think about what the quiet chipping away of our free mentality is doing to the very substance of the document that changed the world when our nation was born.
Ditto. There have been lots of “legal” things in our past that were wrong. We changed them because people like the Bus Lady™ or the Original Bus Lady (Rosa Parks) or the Swimming Pool Kid or the Water Fountain Guy or the Diner Patron simply said “Fuck That.” It’s wrong…it doesn’t reflect the ideals we embrace in a free society.
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
Because I’d like to have the right to go places without carrying my ID with me. Needing to carry a driver’s license while driving makes sense - a driver’s license proof that I’m allowed to drive, and many people are not. But I’d like to be able to run to the store for some cereal even if I can’t find my ID right then… or go visit the park at the end of the street without bringing my wallet… or take out the trash even if someone stole my purse yesterday. Unless there are a lot of people without Walking Down The Street licenses, Sitting In The Park licenses, Taking Out The Trash licenses, or Just Generally Existing licenses who need to be stopped from doing those things through police action, it’s just needlessly restrictive.
I’d like losing ID to remain at the “irritating inconvenience” level, where one can still do everything but drive and leave the country while waiting for the replacement. If it’s possible to be stopped anywhere outside the house and fined for being without ID, the idea of losing that ID goes from irritating to terrifying. And I just don’t need that extra stress in my life. 