Make Me Mad

[prog]

Explain to me how the National ID card is so depressingly worse than the established use of SSIDs/drivers licenses/state IDs throughout current American society.

Seriously, I'm asking.

Comments

[pseudomanitou.livejournal.com]

The only real theory I've heard is how, within the language of the bill, federal agents can detain people indefinitely if they cannot prove their identity, and that with a massive federal system controlling the ability to prove identification - they could simply wipe political dissidents identities clean and put them into a political bag. But that just sounds too much like an overblown conspiracy theory.

There is also a concern that security companies that are currently mismanaging our information are going to find it much easier to sell thousands of personal information accounts to scam artists by accident if the system becomes more centralized.

In my mind - we already have several examples of how massive federal databases fail spectacularly, and leave many citizens struggling to simply go on living a normal life. Take the 'no-fly list' for instance - I know it's not the same thing, but if federal agents are dumb enough to arrest a five-year-old girl simply because she has a similar name to a terrorist half a world away, there is cause for some doubt. I also seem to remember something about a crime database that has the information feds could have used to stop 9/11, but it's so slow and dilapidated, you couldn't even run a search on it using more then one word at a time.

So, my answer is - I have no faith in the currently mismanaged and financially strapped federal government to do an acceptable job of creating this database without screwing a ton of regular citizens and putting them through a hell of paperwork and legal wrangling. They just haven't been doing that great of a job recently...