Please go to attached link and see how we are now all going to have our moves tracked.  I urge all of you to utilize the send a fax or e-mail part of this link to oppose such BIG BROTHER watchdogging.  As we move through our day and sleep in our beds at night there are forces at work slowly stealing away our basic rights and civil liberties.  The organization through this link watchdogs these types of activities and will send you updates by signing up for their e-list mailing.  I urge all to be more awsre of what our government bodies are into.

-- Modified on 2/13/2002 10:53:01 AM

If we get these "national" ID cards, does that mean that each card would be exactly the same?

If each card is the same wont that make it easier for the forgers to make fake ID's?

--I think that one of the reasons it's difficult to make fake ID's is that you have to know what the ID in each state looks like. An ID in California does not look like an ID in New York. If I want to make a fake New York ID I have to actually know what one looks like (and have the equipment, printing presses, computers, whatever - to forge it). So, if all the cards are uniform whats to stop some forger from duplicating the ID's... Holograms and all? Are they going to put some kind of chip or tracking device in them? MILLIONS of them? Doesnt the government have better things to spend money on than tracking its own people? I think it's just a scare tactic...they cant get "star wars" to work...How the h*** are they going to track MILLIONS of us? The Nevada DMV cant even keep up with the vehicle registrations, etc...how the h*** do they think they can keep up with MILLIONS of people?--  

Birth Certificates for each state are hard to duplicate because they are all different...special paper and watermarks etc.

Social Security Cards are easy to duplicate...they are all exactly the same (same color, same size, same wording on cheap cardboard)...you could probably duplicate them with a good color photocopier.

I dont think ANYTHING can stop a forger from making fake ID's, especially with the technology available to the average person down at the local Best Buy. And if making this "national" ID is NOT to stop forgeries...then what IS it for? I thought this was the land of the free and the home of the brave? What are they going to do next, throw up roadblocks and make us show our "papers"? I thought this was a democracy not communism.

hmmm...

The issuance of National Identificaion Cards is one of those ideas that keeps getting suggested for "good" reasons, but has the potential for incredible unintended consequences.

I went to Korea many times during the 1980's when their governenment (still pre-democracy, military type) used the ID's like the Nazis, recalling images or Humphrey Bogart and the "letters of transit" in Casablanca. Yes, it's the hallmark of totalitarian regimes because it gives the ultimate control of the populace.  But just like installing a burglar alarm catches the owner a thousand times more often than it catches an intruder, the ID would have far greater success at eroding personal freedoms than it would in catching the bad guys.  As you said, they already know how to forge American Express cards and Passports.  It's the innocent law-abiding citizens that get herded around like sheep that continue to give up freedoms in the hopes of curbing illegal activity.  

Yes, this is still a democracy, and we can't let the fear of terrorists undermine that.  The technology exists to do a lot of things, but fortunately, our Constitution also exists to prevent them.