Care to expand on that? It’s a far from obvious point. Assuming a given law is not unjust, why should there be any barriers to its enforcement, other than those provided by the rule of law itself (e.g., need for search warrants, right to counsel, etc.)? What valid civic purpose is served by any situational inefficiency?
And I’ll raise you two officials’ misjudgements! 
It doesn’t matter that it was a case of mistaken identity. The fact remains the system did not work. Human error caused an apparent innocent person to be denied entrance. In the process, more than 300 people were inconvenienced and untold others (those waiting for said passengers at the airport), airport personnel, FAA staff, etc., were also part of the mistaken identity.
And that is the point. A very well-known singer, although not easily recognizable was affected. Sen. Kennedy, a very, very well-known politician in this country also was mistakenly added to the list. Of course, you could say they were anomalies and the problems recitified. In the case of Stevens not until he was deported. In the case of Kennedy it took weeks to get off the list (although I haven’t read a confirming story that he was taken off the list). So how would an average person fare? Ideally, for the system to work, everyone would need to be treated exactly the same way. Fame and noteriety should play no part. Yet we all know it does.
Britney Spears could lose her ID tomorrow. Her fame would help her immensely to prevent those lost IDs for being used, just as her fame would get her new ID rather quickly. However, for any of her screaming fans to lose their IDs, how long would it take to get them restored and what hoops would they all have to jumpt through in the process? Anyone bent on stealing an identity would do well to steal the ID of an average American than anyone with a higher public profile.
But keep in mind the American psyche is to distrust government. What may or may not work in Germany may not be relevant in America because the countries, the peoples, the cultures are very different.
Read what I wrote. Not paying income taxes is breaking the law, yes? So I don’t think that is my (or anyone else’s) right.
And if I want to do any of these things, then I’m on record to that degree. Again, read what I wrote. Does “it might (make) it impossible to do certain things” ring a bell? (Sorry about the typo there).
But I can hold property and file tax returns in one name, and use another name publicly and be perfectly legal. This make harder (not impossible) to track me. I can pay all debts in cash, and use my legal identity sparingly, again all perfectly legal. A national ID card makes this more difficult.
Why should I want to do any of these things? It doesn’t matter. If you want to take away my right to do them, you need to justify it, not me.
Did you read my post at all? Look carefully at these sentences (I’ve added some bolding for the hard-of-concept-grasping among us):
it’s exactly zero of anyone else’s business until I break some law.
I shouldn’t have to justify my actions where they don’t break laws
Again, at the present time, it is at least partially within my control how much to make my life and person public. There are many areas where there are no choices, but there are still some choices to be made. I strongly oppose taking away any of those remaining choices without very strong reasons. I haven’t seen any I thought were strong in regards to a national ID card.
Why? We do lots of things just for the sake of simpler and more efficient government. Every car on the roads has a title registered with the state and a license tag issued by (in Florida) the county tax collector, and both the VIN and the tag number are in a public database accessible by all law enforcement officers, even those of other states. In fact, you can’t properly transfer legal title to your vehicle unless the transaction is formally registered with your state’s DMV or its equivalent (and sales tax and a title transfer fee paid). Is all that necessary? Probably not. We could have an automotive transportation system without it. But it sure makes things simpler, for purposes of insurance, investigating accidents, litigating traffic cases, identifying stolen vehicles, identifying repeat offenders of traffic laws, and so on.
I haven’t seen mention of this among the Americans on the board, and it surprises me a little: the I-9 form you have to fill out every single damn time you are hired. Why do I have to prove my citizenship and eligibility to work to the same bureacracy every effing time I am hired? Wasn’t once enough? I mean, I get a statement from the national Social Security Administration once a year listing my SS “worth” and what I’ve contributed to it from every job I’ve held. Why couldn’t I get an I-9 card, with biometric information so that no one else could use it (and this assumes someone’s ability to compare the card biometric data with the meat sack standing before them)? This owuld be an acceptabpe form of U.S. national ID that I could use anytime I have to identify myself to the federal government. I already had a unique ID with the FCC used to refer to my amateur radio license. Why not one for the entire federal system?
Vlad/Igor
I’ve worked at a lot of jobs and I’ve never seen an “I-9” – do you mean a W-4 form?
And so because many things are done badly, we should do all things badly?
Yes, there are many things done by government bodies at various levels to make things easier. Many of these should be done away with, or at least looked at. But each of those would require it’s own separate debate. This debate is about national ID cards.
But to address your off the topic question, could vehicle registration be simplified? Probably. But at least there are some identifiable returns, and at least it is only a once a year thing, and at least it isn’t data that clerk at the 7-11 sees every time I buy a beer.
I can register my car, pay the property tax, transfer the vehicle to someone else, and yet not one of the people at my place of work or places of amusement need to know about it. I can even legally use a different name in many of my public dealings, so that a casual search under that name doesn’t connect to my car, or my home, or my last vacation trip, or much of anything else at all.
A national ID card has the potential to change that. I don’t like that without a very, very good reason.
The UK government currently has plan for a national ID card and it’s a total con. First we’re told it’s to fight terrorism, but they can’t come up with any reasons why it should. You think terrorists can’t get forged identities? Do terrorists even worry about being identified? It didn’t stop 9/11 or the railway bombs in Spain.
Umm, ok, says Blunket (government minister in charge of this farce), it’ll stop illegal immigrants. Another hot-button topic we can pin this on, thinks he. Except illegal immigrants already gain entry to the country and employment without any documents. Amazingly, as illegal immigrants, they just don’t bother with the usual legal documents. Why should an ID card make things any different? Answer is, of course, it wouldn’t.
So the government has hummed and hawed, thrown in lots of diversions from the fact, and they still haven’t come up with one single convincing argument for ID cards. But, and here’s the kicker, they’re going ahead and doing it anyway. Because they can. So off they go with an unconvincing trial run consisting of a self-selecting sample of the population. :rolleyes: Guess what conclusion that’s going to reach. Lots of misguided people with no foresight and “only those with something to hide have anything to fear.”
The real reason for the scheme is not for the card, it’s for the database that a card system would create. A lovely big database of everyone’s details, all in one place. Very handy for government and law enforcement. You think it’s not going to get misused? You can bet it will. Maybe not immediately, but casual practice will evolve and legislation will follow.
Meanwhile; civil rights lawers think that it’s a nonsense. It’s ripe and open for abuse. People will end up having to possess the cards at all times, unless they want to opt out of society completely. Want to open a bank account, where’s your card? Want to book airplane seat, where’s your card? Want to send this parcel guaranteed delivery, where’s your card? Want to drive through this police road-side safety check without getting held up, where’s your card? Want to collect your pension, where’s your card? Want life insurance, health cover, hospital treatment, unemployment benefit, where’s your card?
Are you sure you want to hand over the key to your entire identity to every company that decides it might be in their interests to have a look? Say goodbye to having a private life. You can argue that these databases already exist. Our lives are already tracked and scruitinized. But the difference is that these are many, fragmented and optional. An ID Card and database will provide the means for government and business to pull them all together, and you’ll have no say in it.
And criminal’s sit back and rub their hands in glee. No card is forgery proof. No card is theft proof. So here’s all you need for the complete identity theft in one easy, handy package. Once a criminal has your card, or a copy of it, not only can they pretend to be you, as far as the society is concerned they are you. The bottom line is that no longer do you have rights as a citizen; it’s your card that has them. Should you ever be parted or cloned then you are either no-one, or a criminal. Nothing to fear, indeed.
IT experts have already declared the scheme as another great public sector IT disaster in the making. No-one’s sure how it’s going to work, it’ll be a massive task bigger than any before it. No-one’s sure how much it will cost. No-one’s specified what it’s supposed to do or achieve, so no-one can specify the deliverable and no-one can evaluate its success. Naturally the IT companies are queuing up. This is one big, fat, enormous contract where no matter what when it hits the fan, they are already protected from all blame! You could write the post-mortum already.
So national ID cards and databases are pointless, counter-productive, an infringement of privacy and rights, will cost a packet, unlikely to be implemented smoothly or successfully and will be misused if and when they are. If this is the situation in the UK then I think you can multiply that by 10 for the US.
You’re kidding here, aren’t you? You really can’t see a reason? I don’t mean to speak for Steve MB, but I’ll give you a reason.
Most would argue that it is a just law that I can’t abuse my children by beating them within an inch of their lives.
But what if there were no barrier at all to enforcing this law? We would all be at the complete mercy of any policeman, social worker, disgruntled neighbor, meter reader, or even stranger on the street who would simply point and say “I saw that person beat his children.” We would wind up in court defending ourselves from baseless charges on anyone’s whim.
Now, we can already end up in court defending ourselves from baseless charges, but there are at least some hoops the government has to jump through. At least a cursory inspection of the facts needs to be done. There are papers to be filed, Is to dot, Ts to cross, judges to bother, and possible consequences for getting it wrong.
If none of these “situational inefficencies” existed, how much more would our courts be jammed, our liberty threatened, and our lives be complicated?
Making it slightly harder to do anything, including enforcing a law, means it is slightly less likely to be abused, just because it’s more trouble for someone to do so.
We’re confusing our terms here. The barriers you are describing are those which are “provided by the rule of law itself.” Police can’t arrest you without good cause, can’t get a search warrant without showing good cause, etc. A “situational inefficiency” would be one that lets you get away with beating your kids because, for instance, the state agency responsible for monitoring that kind of case misplaced your file, or somebody was asleep at the switch, or you moved and the agency never was notified. Things like that have happened several times here in Florida in recent years – because of “situational inefficiencies” at the Department of Children and Families (formerly Health and Rehabilitative Services), children have been left in abusive environments even after the agency was notified – sometimes with fatal results.
It is also a “situational inefficiency” that allows some persons to enter the U.S. on a tourist visa and stay here for years illegally, working, without the INS ever becoming aware of it.
Now, again, I ask you: What is the civic value in any “situational inefficiency” that hinders the enforcement of certain laws?
Maybe you think this system will be “misused,” but why do you think it’s a “con”? This “database” is not a hidden agenda, it’s an essential part of the proposal. What do you think the government is at the present intending to do with that information, that they’re not owning up to at the moment?
Perhaps so. I was responding to your request for expansion on the idea “a certain amount of difficulty in enforcing laws serves as a useful check on the power of government." You seem to have defined “a certain amount of difficulty” to mean only those things that are outside of “the rule of law”, whereas I mean difficulty to be difficulty.
That is, anything that keeps someone from doing something with no difficulty at all.
And I answer again:
“Making it slightly harder to do anything, including enforcing a law, means it is slightly less likely to be abused, just because it’s more trouble for someone to do so.”
If there are more forms to fill out, more places to get approval from, more people involved in any action, then there is less likelihood that a given person will take it upon themselves to use their position of power to abuse that action. Just because it may be more trouble than it’s worth.
This is the check on the power of the government. Government should have to jump through hoops to arrest, prosecute, fine and or imprison its citizens. If it’s harder to do, they’re less likely to do it on a whim.
I’m sorry, I just can’t see that. I mean, is government worth doing right or isn’t it? The rule of law, due process, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, all those “hoops” and obstacles and difficulties that are intentionally built into the system should be preserved. And only those. Those that exist because of no planning, or bad planning, or the general disorderliness of human social life, should be corrected, if possible, and if they can be corrected without causing worse problems. There might be valid objections to a national ID card system, but a generalized fear that it will make the government too effective or too efficient is not one of them.
So the law is perfect the way it is? There is no concern that any government official will abuse their power? And there is no possibility that an increase in difficulty in exercising that power might make someone think twice?
I guess the people who saw the need for more difficulty in the form of Miranda warnings during arrest were wrong, because at that time that warning was not “intentionally built into the system” and so we should not have done it.
Increasing the effectiveness or efficiency of government does increase it power.
If the situation is that a government official now has to go to three or four different databases to get information on a citizen, and may or may not find information because of inefficiencies in the system, then in that situation the government’s power is limited.
Remove those inefficiencies, and you increase government’s power in that situation.
Just because this increase in power comes from newly available technologies that “solve a problem” doesn’t make the increase any less real, or negate the need for inspection and review before the implementation.
And any increase in the power of government should be examined with a very critical eye. If there is no good reason to do it, it shouldn’t be done.
That all comes under the “rule of law” part. The rights covered in the Miranda warning were always part of the Constitution; the SC simply decided – and I agree entirely – that it was not right to interrogate suspect without so advising them first.
True. You have yet to state any good reason why that is a good thing.
So you agree that sometimes decreasing the efficiency of some sections of government is a good thing. Now we’re making some progress.
Not so, I did state why. Here, I’ll state it again. Watch carefully.
“Making it slightly harder to do anything, including enforcing a law, means it is slightly less likely to be abused, just because it’s more trouble for someone to do so.”
Giving government more power is always a risk. Giving away any power to anyone is a risk at some level. The question is how much risk for how much gain?
My contention is that rights, and especially privacy rights, should not be given up without extremely good reason. Increasing the government’s ability to keep tabs on us give the government more power to screw us with if some official somewhere takes it into their head to do so.
You haven’t stated any good reason why we should give up any more rights in this area than we already have. Where are the overriding benefits? What are the problems solved? And why should we give up any privacy at all, no matter how small the inconvenience, just for the sake of efficiency?
The very fact that they are presenting these spurious reasons for an ID card makes it obvious that they are hiding something. The database isn’t hidden, but it’s certainly well into the background. The proposal is being punted as a just an innocent shiny card with a pretty photo that you’ll be able to give to the nice lady at the post-office when she asks for ID. Who could possibly have a problem with that except for terrorists and criminals, huh?
When a government tries to sell you something where it’s obviously not going to perform the job they say it will, you’d be wise to start looking elsewhere for the motivations.
At present they want what all governments want; to make their job easier in monitoring the citizens of their country. Nothing seriously troubling about that, but history makes it clear that this is where rights start to get eroded, and once this box is opened it’s twice as hard to close it.
If you want a further analysis of the proposed UK ID cards have a look here and, exhaustively, here. I challenge anyone to read these and not conclude that either the UK government is stupid, or deliberately being misleading about the nature of these ID cards.
The basic relationship between society and government in the Anglo-American tradition is that the regulations of law are relatively small islands within a relatively large sea of individual liberty. Making the laws too easy to enforce tips the balance by allowing the islands to multiply and grow to excess, even if none of the individual islands has clearly grown far out of bounds.
Comparing how often advocates of the plan raise this point to how often opponents do so, I would say that it most certainly is hidden to the best of the advocates’ ability.
The basic fallacy of this argument is that the explicit limitations on government were written for an environment in which the various practical limitations on government information and action were an unavoidable reality. If the latter are reduced, the former need to be increased by a corresponding amount – something that none of the advocates of a National ID seem at all willing to do.