I don’t own a cell phone.
Actually, a LOT of Arabs have received flight training in the US. I believe most of the Saudi air force and commercial airlines pilots have received training here. A LOT of people come to the US for flight training even today, even with greater hassles because it’s a hell of a lot cheaper here than anywhere else (And it’s NOT cheap!)
What was also reported to the FBI, and ignored, is that some of those Arabs where expressing interest in learning to fly airlines but not learning to land them which bizarre. It’s like scuba divers interested in going down but not coming back up. That tidbit - which did not require high tech anything to obtain - was ignored but the FBI for the most part. 1 suspicious guy was put in jail, on a visa violation if I recall, but the others walked free.
It’s not just data collection - it’s how the data is used (or not used) that becomes mighty important.
And that’s a damn shame, because I’m a pilot right now and I don’t have to be in contact with ATC 24/7 - oh, over population centers and near sensitive areas, yes, of course, but not in the middle of nowhere.
And flying cars will NOT become feasible with just 24/7 ATC - you need people who aren’t idiots to make that work.
And that is a complete, utter, tragic, goddamn shame. When and why did we surrender any freedom? And for what?
Why?
Because it isn’t as ubiquitous as cars yet.
Or AIs that do the driving.
It has more to do with managing a population of a certain size than it has to do with any sort of fascist agenda. There are just too many people in the world. Property ownership and freedom are incompatible, unfortunately our system was built on the notion that they were integral to one another. However, when a person owns property they get to dictate how it’s used. 50 years ago people went out shooting in the wide open plains that is now a mall of some sort, a story that’s true in every state in this country. They are not free to do so now that it’s a mall. Every square inch of this country is owned by someone. You’re not even free to do what you want with your own property because of liability laws. We strictly control the access to chemicals so that people cannot make drugs or build bombs with impunity, but also so that we can ensure that dangerous chemicals are being handled responsibly, because some assholes dumped toxic chemicals into the ground water that people had to drink, who then got sick, got cancer and died. The reason we gave up our freedom is because people are solipsistic, when the land is ‘common’ they tragically only consider its value in terms of what they can use it for. It’s no great mystery, we weren’t duped by some overbearing government. We are bound by our own desire to bind and control others. We give up rights to do things in order that others must give them up as well. Now we live in a fabulously ordered civil society, where we work to make sure everyone can read and write so they can get one of the many maintenance jobs our society requires, so that we can continue to increase basic services that human beings require to maintain life function.
We gave up our freedom when we began growing crops.
There is a certain mentality that wants to keep an eye on other people - usually insisting they only have the best welfare of those people in mind. When this mindset is combined with the power of the government it can be carried out to extremes. The government has proposed programs to require everyone to carry around ID at all times and to monitor where you drive, what you buy in the store, what you watch on TV, what books you borrow from the library, what internet sites you visit. They say it’s to protect you but their real goal is just to keep an eye on you.
Don’t give in to them. Your life belongs to you not to the government. What you do is no business of theirs. When they say “if you’re innocent, you have nothing to worry about” remind them that if you’re innocent, they’ve got no reason to watch you. Don’t give your government the power to treat you like a suspect.
You write your congressmen and tell them that you are opposed to any mandatory identification programs - and that you’ll be basing your vote on it. If they hear this from enough people they’ll vote against it.
Yes, let’s stop people from doing ANYTHING on their own - we’re much, much too stupid to take care of ourselves. Let’s simply put everyone under house arrest so the government knows where they are at all times and what they are doing. If they wish to go somewhere they may apply in triplicate and the government robot will arrive to wrap them in bubblewrap and oh-so-carefully transport them to where they can view the wonders of the world at a “safe” distance.
Yes, let’s manage people as we do cattle. And we’ll all have lives as meaning, interesting, and valued as those of steers being fattened for slaughter.
You gave 3 points. I’d agree that there’s a possibility that the first 2 are correct, but only with the qualification “at some point in the future”. At the moment, neither is true: implementation would cost a great deal and it will create more red tape (to which anyone who has tried to reconcile different data sets can attest). At the same time, your point 3 isn’t clear to me at all…while I grant that a national ID may improve “security” in some (minor) cases, it may also open up entire new avenues of “attack” (in quotes because I use it in the sense of exploiting weaknesses in the system, not terrorism or somesuch).
In actuality, the civil liberty aspect really isn’t where the strongest backlash is – it’s the financial implementation costs. Furthermore, I’d say that the most overlooked aspect is it’s uselessness (government waste or, as I like to call it, security theater), which should be where the 2nd strongest backlash is. To throw a bone to mswas – yes, standards would increase efficiency of data transfer. But, as I repeatedly point out, that’s not what’s on the table.
The civil liberties aspect does, IMHO, generate the most visceral reaction – it either bothers you immensely or you see it as no big deal. It’s also the easiest to dismiss as tin-foil hattery (which it may very well be), as actual scenarios are either seemingly innocuous (e.g., the FBI tracking church members attending an anti-war meeting) or will never see the light of day (e.g., library reading lists – a la Se7en – that would be inadmissable in court and thus never make it into the public record). But then, the same exact thing was said about the PATRIOT Act…until actual abuses were discovered. And let’s face it: any power granted to the government will be abused gvien a long enough time frame.
It just seems to me that if you consider privacy a (constitutionally protected) civil liberty, the RealID Act is a prima facie encroachment. (By extension, I’d point out the effect on anonymity, which has direct repercussions on freedom of association and assembly, and possibly others.) If you don’t value privacy (or if you simply don’t care), then it’s not.
[QUOTE=mswas]
You can already be tracked using the technology you have voluntarily adopted.
Echoing Terrifel, I do not have a cell phone. I will not voluntarily carry one. In fact, there are many things that I avoid (airlines, paying for certain things with recorded transactions, etc.), at least partially because I don’t want that information recorded. And yes, there are indeed others that I voluntarily agree to – a Safeway card, for instance.
Voluntarily. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Yow. It is exactly statements like that, made so carelessly and thoughtlessly, that make my tin-foil hat feel really comfortable. My hat is off to you, sir, but only momentarily. (While the rays are pointed elsewhere. :D)
Echoing Terrifel, I do not have a cell phone. I will not voluntarily carry one. In fact, there are many things that I avoid (airlines, paying for certain things with recorded transactions, etc.), at least partially because I don’t want that information recorded. And yes, there are indeed others that I voluntarily agree to – a Safeway card, for instance.
Voluntarily. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Yow. It is exactly statements like that, made so carelessly and thoughtlessly, that make my tin-foil hat feel really comfortable. My hat is off to you, sir, but only momentarily. (While the rays are pointed elsewhere. :D)
I really don’t get it. Anyone except a die hard survivalist or a criminal doesn’t want to be tracked in the US. I opted in for a passport decades ago. Your SS# already is a national ID, it just doesn’t have a photo and driving information on it.
Here is recent Washington Post article about identity theft:
I wonder if a national ID would alleviate this problem or exacerbate it?
To mswas and anyone else telling me what I already know and already posted: I am well aware that cellphones now have GPS and triangulation can pinpoint the location. That’s exactly my point, and I already said that such technology exists. If I know it exists, and I posted that I know it exists, why are you telling me again it exists?
Some of these technologies are mature, some are less than. Most are not highly co-ordinated, and my assertion is that a national ID will make co-ordination more easy and more likely. If you have no concern that your movements and actions can be tracked in realtime and in detail, you have no concern about national IDs.
But if you don’t like people looking over your shoulder, you do have a concern.
Just for kicks, let’s make a list of data that could be currently associated with a single person, using existing technology, even tho it may not be well organized at present. I want to include devices that aren’t mandatory or in wide use but could be, like a GPS system attached to your car. Let’s also assume that things that are voluntary, like supermarket discount cards, are subscribed to by this mythical person.
I also want to include stuff that isn’t currently being tracked, like TV shows you watch, but wouldn’t require much to implement (For advanced TV cable systems that have video on demand, the cable company knows exactly what you are watching and could store this info if they don’t already).
The list off the top of my head:[ul][]Your buying habits for almost everything: groceries, purchases at all stores including liquor, porn and “subversive” material[]Your library reading[]Where you go (bars, restaurants, businesses, houses, vacations)[]Financial transactions (thru bank accounts, credit cards, debit cards, investment purchases/sales, interest paid or earned)[]Income, salary, employment, including jobs applied for[]Expenses[]School courses taken, grades[]Legal actions of all kinds including arrests, tickets, convictions and actions persued against others (suits)[]Property owned, rented, purchased or sold[]TV shows watched[]Videos rented or bought[]All medical records (personal and family)[]Telephone calls made & received, including faxes[]Internet sites visited and how long, downloads and uploads[]Passwords and account names & numbers[]Complete credit data[]All email sent & received[]All snailmail sent & received (although this would require records or scanning of your mailbox contents, so it’s pretty out there right now)[/ul]What am I leaving out?
You should have seen these people back during the westward expansion of the U.S., using tumbleweeds to dust-away their footprints everywhere they went. 
I don’t get it, either. Is that a question or a statement?
Driving patterns. There was recently a thread about a proposal to have roadside scanners that would read and record license plate numbers (or other ID) of cars as they drove by.
That’s just another way of accumulating some of the same data that a mandatory GPS in a car would be. And it’s more passive, so more likely to be implemented.
You could include surveillance cameras in the list, along with face recognition software. Many places people go are covered without them being aware of it, and the coverage is becoming greater in some downtown and high-traffic areas. Enough cameras could produce a nearly continuous video record of one person’s activity.
I think he’s saying that he doesn’t get why anyone except a die hard survivalist or a criminal want to avoid be tracked in the US. At least that is how I read it.
I’ve thought about it and can’t come up with anything much better than conspiracy-theory based reasons (e.g. They’ll be able to shoot at me with orbital laser beams if they can find me by tracking my cell phone).
It seems to me that some organization of points is in order. Musicat’s OP asked: US National ID to be required - good idea or bad? But that’s a little ambiguous.
For the most part, I’ve been looking at the RealID Act and arguing against it. But that’s simply one instance of a law establishing a national ID, not the general concept (which I can’t/don’t dismiss out of hand). And it’s difficult to argue justification for and ramifications of IDs (i.e., their purpose and potential hazards) without distinguishing between the two. With that in mind, I see three branches of debate:
[ol]
[li]Is a national ID a good or bad idea?[/li][li]Is the RealID Act a good or bad idea?[/li][li]What problems is a national ID meant to solve (and does it)?[/li][/ol]
As I said, I’m not sure about (1). I think my answer to (2) is clear – RealID is bad, no matter how you look at it. For (3), back in post #9, I listed three “benefits” given for RealID (terrorism, immigration, and data efficiency). I don’t see any of the three actually being solved by RealID, while I think the costs (financial and otherwise) should’ve made the entire thing still-born (at least, as proposed).
The interesting thing to me is (3), which forms the basis for answering (1). And again, the following is just a stab at hashing out my thinking on this, so bear with me. So, what “problems” would a national ID solve? (Note that “problems” may depend on viewpoint: inefficient data transfer may be a problem from a taxpayer POV, but a positive from a government employee’s POV; OTOH, not knowing people’s location/behavior patterns may be a problem from the FBI’s POV, but a positive from the person’s POV.)
It’s at this point that I’d bring in the distinction between identification and verification. For the most part, to go about their daily lives, people need to be able to verify that others are who they say they are (e.g., via a PIN, signature, photo, key, password, etc.); actual identification is usually unnecessary. Identification, OTOH, is much more intrusive – it’s the act of picking an arbitrary person out of some context and correctly associating him/her with information (that is often otherwise not accessible). In my mind, verification is a single transaction, initiated by the person (i.e., this is me, these are my credentials…OK, you are granted permission); identification is associated with a history.
Unfortunately, verification requires identification at its root – there must be some (trusted) authority that is able to confirm that the offered credentials are valid. Those two words – “trusted” and “authority” – exist in tension (to me), and go to the root questions (some of which overlap):
[ol]
[li]Who do I trust with information about me?[/li][li]Why should I trust them?[/li][li]What information am I comfortable giving them?[/li][li]Are they really trustworthy?[/li][li]What can/will they do with that information?[/li][li]What are the costs involved (and are they worth it)?[/li][li]What benefit(s) do the involved parties gain?[/li][li]What injury might the involved parties suffer (if there is a glitch in the system)?[/li][/ol]
Perhaps an apology is in order for using this thread as an undirected thought-to-word mechanism. But it’s such an expansive topic that I find it necessary…and I hope that at least one other person gets something out of my rambling. I think I’ll answer some of the above questions in another post, but later…
You treat it like it’s a matter of ideology. It’s simply the evolution of the way we use technology. Human beings are treated as data by the government. Ultimately it will lead to a more equitable government to have a government that thinks of you as a data object, rather than through the lens of the traditional prejudice of our bureaucrats.
I have worked steers through corrals before, and every time I go through a turnstile on the subway I feel like a steer. My point has been that we are already in the world you fear. If we are already there, we might as well improve the way the data that’s collected is used.
Digital Stimulus I see it as a necessary improvement. The short term cost is irrelevant, we simply need a more nimble government that has a better view it’s citizenry. Data management is the most difficult aspect of managing any institution.
As it is, Information Theory is being developed to such an extent that one can be identified through a sequence of habits, such as purchasing behavior. www.acxiom.com already collects the data that people fear being collected. It makes millions selling it to governments, corporations and political campaigns.
As I’ve been stressing time and again, this isn’t an ideological argument, but merely an innovation that brings the government up to modern standards of data management.