Michael Chertoff Just Wants To Get To Know You Better

By Sean Corbett in News on Dec 15, 2006 3:00PM

By mid 2008 all US citizens are scheduled to be carrying documents that identify our names, addresses, birthdays, gender, photograph, and some kind of biometric marker to any federally sponsored agency that requests the information. Real ID act which gave The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the authority over the contents of a national ID card was tacked onto a tsunami relief bill back in 2005. It passed in the US House (368-58) and Senate (100-0)

In preparation, one of the Department of Homeland Securities top priorities in 2007 is to get details ironed out and to change public opinion on the subject of a nation wide, machine readable, identification card. From the DHS secretary Michael Chertoff:

“The upcoming federally approved IDs are intended to be a secure, tamperproof means of protecting Americans' identities while keeping out terrorists and other wrongdoers”

Problems with that statement: It’s impossible to have a totally secure system (and who wants every person who sees their driver’s license to keep all of their stats in a database?) and terrorists will blow themselves up whether or not they have an ID card on them when they do it. What’s a wrongdoer these days anyway? Are kids (and grandmothers) who pirate music wrongdoers? How about unruly protestors? Is it possible to live in a society where the government knows your whereabouts and daily activities without deteriorating into a totalitarian state? Those are some serious questions, and the word on the street is that our Senators and Representatives were sleeping when they last had the chance to raise them.

The state of New Hampshire has been vocal in opposition to the act. In response, the fed is bribing the New Hampshire state legislature with a $3 million grant for their state to test out the new ID system. Smart people would like you to be informed about this issue.