REALITYCHEX

Bill and Newt’s Excellent Idea

December 12, 2011   ·   4 Comments

Source: NYTX

By Marie Burns:

“The best enforcement tool is a national identity card….”

Today in his column titled “The Good Newt,” former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller endorses Newt Gingrich’s plan to create “a national identity card, including some biometric evidence, such as a fingerprint” as a means to limit illegal immigration. But, really, is that the only way government agencies would use a national identity card?

The American Civil Liberties Union doesn’t think so. The idea of a national identity card first became popular, not as a means to control immigration. But as a way to counter terrorism in the wake of 9/11. Not only would a national ID card be ineffective as a counterterrorism tool, the ACLU concluded, there are many privacy objections to such a system:

Once put in place, it is exceedingly unlikely that such a system would be restricted to its original purpose. Social Security numbers, for example, were originally intended to be used only to administer the retirement program. But that limit has been routinely ignored and steadily abandoned over the past 50 years. A national ID system would threaten the privacy that Americans have always enjoyed and gradually increase the control that government and business wields over everyday citizens.

A national ID would require a governmental database of every person in the U.S. containing continually updated identifying information. It would likely contain many errors, any one of which could render someone unemployable and possibly much worse until they get their ‘file’ straightened out. And once that database was created, its use would almost certainly expand. Law enforcement and other government agencies would soon ask to link into it, while employers, landlords, credit agencies, mortgage brokers, direct mailers, landlords, private investigators, civil litigants, and a long list of other parties would begin seeking access, further eroding the privacy that Americans have always expected in their personal lives.

The end result could be a nation where citizens’ movements inside their own country are monitored and recorded through these ‘internal passports.’

Those are some of the downsides for American citizens who look like Mr. Keller or Mr. Gingrich. For other Americans, the ACLU says “a national identity card would foster new forms of discrimination and harassment of anyone perceived as looking or sounding ‘foreign.’” The ACLU cites a 1990 General Accounting Office study that found that 20 percent of employers discriminated against “foreign-looking” Americans, particularly Asians and Hispanics, in their efforts to comply with 1985 Employer Sanctions provision of the Immigration Reform and Control Act. The ACLU concluded that

A national ID card would have the same effect on a massive scale, as Latinos, Asians, Caribbeans and other minorities became subject to ceaseless status and identity checks from police, banks, merchants and others. Failure to carry a national I.D. card would likely come to be viewed as a reason for search, detention or arrest of minorities. The stigma and humiliation of constantly having to prove that they are Americans or legal immigrants would weigh heavily on such groups.

The ACLU made those observations in 2003. Nonetheless, the Congress forged ahead. (Here I admit to skipping over a significant part of the story. But I’ll get back to it.) In March 2010, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsay Graham (R-NC) proposed a national identification card — “what they’re calling “high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security cards” — that would be required for all employees in the United States.” Schumer and Graham’s proposed the card as a means to control illegal immigration – as do Keller and Gingrich. Sen. Graham, in a fit of pique – dropped his support of immigration reform, but Senate Democratic leaders doubled down. In April 2010 they introduced the “BELIEVE System,” an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment. As Alexander Bolton of The Hill reported, “The national ID program … would require all workers across the nation to carry a card with a digital encryption key that would have to match work authorization databases.”

Christopher Calabrese, the ACLU legislative counsel objected:

Creating a biometric national ID will not only be astronomically expensive, it will usher government into the very center of our lives. Every worker in America will need a government permission slip in order to work. And all of this will come with a new federal bureaucracy — one that combines the worst elements of the DMV and the TSA. America’s broken immigration system needs real, workable reform, but it cannot come at the expense of privacy and individual freedoms.

Calabrese added “’… every worker in America would have to be fingerprinted.’ … … The Social Security Administration has estimated that 3.6 million Americans would have to visit SSA field offices to correct mistakes in records or else risk losing their jobs.”

Let’s look at that expense Calabrese mentions, a cost which apparently does not trouble GOP presidential candidate Gingrich. (Isn’t it funny how Republicans are fiscal conservatives when it comes to providing benefits to Americans but fiscal hawks when it comes to limiting our freedom and personal security?) Estimates for the cost of implementing the cards are all over the board: from $4 billion to $30 billion, and another $3-6 billion a year to operate the system. And that’s before Congress gets its finger in the pie. As Eric Lipton of the New York Times reported in May 2006,

The Department of Homeland Security has invested tens of millions of dollars and countless hours of labor over the last four years on a seemingly simple task: creating a tamperproof identification card for airport, rail and maritime workers. Yet nearly two years past a planned deadline, production of the card, known as the Transportation Worker Identification Credential, has yet to begin.

The transportation workers’ ID program was a relatively small project, but much of the cost, and most of the delays can be attributed to the “Prince of Pork,” Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), then-chairman of the House subcommittee that controls the Homeland Security budget.” Rogers now chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee. Lipton laid out the many ways production of the ID card was designed to benefit Rogers, “his home district and profits for companies that are donors to his political causes.” Rogers’ son got a job, too, with one of the companies involved in test production. Of course none of these porkbarrel delays and cost overruns could ever happen with a project thousands of times the size.
“I think a national identity card would find wide acceptance.”

As I said, I left out an important part of the story. It seems we already have a national identity card. Sort of. It was created by the REAL ID Act of 2005. According to Bill Keller, “Gingrich braves the wrath of libertarians and privacy campaigners to endorse [the national ID card]. In today’s living-online, GPS-tracked world, I think a national identity card would find wide acceptance.” Let’s see how that’s working out.

The main purpose of the REAL ID law was to establish federal standards for state drivers licenses and ID cards, so that the cards could be readily used by the federal government for “official purposes” to be defined by the Secretary of Homeland Security. States could also easily scan each other’s cards. The law was to have been finally implemented in 2008. It’s still in the courts. From the Wiki entry:

Opponents of the Real ID Act include libertarian groups, in particular the Cato Institute; immigrant advocacy groups; human and civil rights organizations, including ACLU; Christian advocacy groups such as the ACLJ; privacy advocacy groups, including 511 campaign; state-level citizen’s groups such as North Carolinians Against Real ID and Floridians Against REAL ID; good government and government accountability groups; labor groups such as AFL-CIO; People for the American Way; consumer and patient protection groups; some gun rights groups; many state lawmakers, state legislatures and governors; The Constitution Party and others. Real ID is opposed by such groups as Gun Owners of America, by the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal as well as the Obama administration…. Founded by evangelical Christian Pat Robertson, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) participated in a joint press conference with the ACLU in 2008, highlighting the broad diversity of the coalition opposing Title II of the REAL ID Act. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence has also voiced concern about REAL ID.

The States of Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Idado, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Washington have passed legislation opposing Real ID. Similar resolutions are pending in Alaska, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, Washington, D.C., West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. States objected largely because they would bear the costs associated with compliance, and some objected because they believed the law violated the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution by imposing federal law in an area that traditionally has been reserved for the states. But these were not the only objections. Many state legislatures objected on the grounds of violation of privacy rights. Again, from the Wiki entry:

Many Maine lawmakers believe the law does more harm than good, that it would be a bureaucratic nightmare to enforce, is threatening to individual privacy, makes citizens increasingly vulnerable to ID theft, and would cost Maine taxpayers at least $185 million in five years…. The Resolution vote in the Maine House was 137-4 and in the Maine Senate unanimous, 34-0.

On February 16, 2007, Utah unanimously passed a resolution that opposes the REAL ID Act.[49] The resolution states that REAL ID is ‘in opposition to the Jeffersonian principles of individual liberty, free markets, and limited government.’ It further states that ‘the use of identification-based security cannot be justified as part of a “layered” security system if the costs of the identification “layer” – in dollars, lost privacy, and lost liberty – are greater than the security identification provides.’

Really, somebody should tell Bill Keller about Wikipedia. He would seem so much less ridiculous if he had even a vague idea of what he was talking about.

Still, a good idea is worth fighting for. So let’s ask an expert about Bill and Newt’s excellent idea. Dr. Bruce Schneier, an internationally-recognized computer security technologist, addressed the issue back in 2004 when the talk was of implementing a national ID card for security purposes:

The potential privacy encroachments of an ID card system are far from minor. And the interruptions and delays caused by incessant ID checks could easily proliferate into a persistent traffic jam in office lobbies and airports and hospital waiting rooms and shopping malls. But my primary objection isn’t the totalitarian potential of national IDs, nor the likelihood that they’ll create a whole immense new class of social and economic dislocations. Nor is it the opportunities they will create for colossal boondoggles by government contractors. My objection to the national ID card … is much simpler:

It won’t work. It won’t make us more secure…. In fact…., once it is put in place, a national ID card program will actually make us less secure…. Security must be evaluated not based on how it works, but on how it fails….

The first problem is the card itself. No matter how unforgeable we make it, it will be forged. And even worse, people will get legitimate cards in fraudulent names. …Currently about 20 percent of all identity documents are lost per year. An entirely separate security system would have to be developed for people who lost their card, a system that itself is capable of abuse. Additionally, any ID system involves people … people who regularly make mistakes. …

But the main problem with any ID system is that it requires the existence of a database. In this case it would have to be an immense database of private and sensitive information on every American…. The security risks are enormous. Such a database would be a kludge of existing databases; databases that are incompatible, full of erroneous data, and unreliable. As computer scientists, we do not know how to keep a database of this magnitude secure, whether from outside hackers or the thousands of insiders authorized to access it.

And when the inevitable worms, viruses, or random failures happen and the database goes down, what then? Is America supposed to shut down until it’s restored?

In yesterday’s New York Times, cartoonist Brian McFadden drew an “ad” urging the reader to “Order Your Own Pet Newt! Think Tank Included!” McFadden strews the floor of Newt’s think tank terrarium with “a limitless supply of policies Newt has shredded….” Newt’s plan to create a national identity card is yet another policy that should be shredded and added to the piles of litter on the think tank floor. But Newt Gingrich is a guy who never lets the facts get in the way of his latest wacky idea. Bill Keller never lets the facts get in the way – because he never has the facts.

Marie Burns blogs at RealityChex.com and until recently was a popular commenter on New York Times op-ed columns.

By marieburns

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