AFFIRMATIVE-CONSUMER/INTERNET-OTHER AFFIRMATIVES� 388

NATIONAL IDENTITY CARDS

NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION CARRIES NO RISK OF LEADING US DOWN A ROAD TO FASCISM

Alan Ehrenhalt, Governing Magazine, May, 1999;Pg. 7 TITLE: THE MISGUIDED ZEAL OF THE PRIVACY LOBBY // acs-VT2001

Pick up any ordinary newspaper these days, and there's a good chance that somewhere within its pages you will find a warning that an identification system is merely the opening move in Big Brother's bid for absolute power. "Don't we remember the Nazi experience in Europe?" the editor of Privacy Journal asked in the New York Times a couple of years ago. "Don't we realize the dangers of allowing government to establish identity and legitimacy?"

Just last campaign season, a Nevada gubernatorial candidate offered up identity cards as a sign that America was "rushing headlong into becoming a socialist totalitarian society." Privacy zealots left and right are fond of repeating the warning of former California Senator Alan Cranston: ID cards are "a primary tool of totalitarian governments."

Well, yes, they are. So are whips, but they are not a cause of torture. So is tear gas. That doesn't make tear gas an emblem of totalitarianism. A little common sense would be useful here. If America starts to go down the road to Fascism, it won't be because people are carrying identification in their wallet. As Etzioni says, "Cards do not transform democratic societies into totalitarian ones."

LOSSES FROM FALSE IDENTITIES COULD BE ESILY SOLVED WITH NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION

Alan Ehrenhalt, Governing Magazine, May, 1999;Pg. 7 TITLE: THE MISGUIDED ZEAL OF THE PRIVACY LOBBY // acs-VT2001

There's no way such figures can be exact. Quite likely some of them have been inflated a little bit in the process of reporting. But if they are even roughly accurate, they make it quite clear that identity crime is a genuine problem in this country.

And it's a problem that could be solved relatively easily, by creating a card or other universal identifier proving that the person in search of a job or transferring money is in fact who he or she claims to be. We already use Social Security cards and numbers as a de facto identifier for many public purposes. It's just that they're easy to cheat on. How dangerous could it be to create a new version that liars would have to respect?

WE ALREADY SUFFER THE COSTS OF NATIONAL ID CARDS WITHOUT ANY OF THE BENEFITS

RANDOLPH COURT; technology policy analyst, Progressive Policy Institute, The New Democrat, February, 1999 / March, 1999; Pg. 30 TITLE: PUBLIC INTEREST IN PRIVATE MATTERS; The Search for Balance Between Privacy and the Common Good in the Cyber Age // acs-VT2001

Opponents of such a system naturally foresee a dark Orwellian world, where federal authorities could easily cross-reference their databases with private sector databases of credit card companies and others to create detailed dossiers on everyone. Etzioni counters: "[W]e Americans [already] have a system in which citizens suffer the drawbacks of ID cards (as many point out, we have precious little privacy left when it comes to marketers, employers, private investigators, insurance companies, and health care providers -- and potential totalitarian governments if such a threat really exists) but enjoy none of the communal benefits of a public-service universal identification system."

THE BENEFITS OF A NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM WOULD BE HUGE

Alan Ehrenhalt, Governing Magazine, May, 1999;Pg. 7 TITLE: THE MISGUIDED ZEAL OF THE PRIVACY LOBBY // acs-VT2001

But of all the issues Etzioni takes up, none illustrates his point better than the controversy surrounding creation of a uniform identification process for American citizens.

The costs of not having such a system are hard to dispute. As Etzioni recounts, there are more than 30,000 fugitives from the federal criminal justice system running free on false identification. Each year, several thousand convicted sex offenders seek work in the child-care business alone. The use of fake identities by crooked taxpayers costs honest ones an amount estimated to be as much as $5 billion a year. Another $5 billion is thought to be owed by deadbeat parents fleeing their child-support responsibilities. At the end of 1997, the Secret Service reported that it had arrested nearly 10,000 people during the year for various financial crimes involving false or stolen identities, and placed the cost of that fraud to banks and legitimate credit-holders at $745 million.