Thanks to Privacy Maven for this one.
Libertarians (and a lot of other people who don't know they have libertarian leanings) have always been worried about a National ID Card.
Quoth Robert Heinlein (as Lazarus Long):
Unfortunately, we ain't got space travel yet.
And the Feds have just realized (a) that they can get a national ID done in essence through mandating Federal standards for driver's licenses, and (b) that they have a much better coercive tool than withholding highway funds for requiring the states to participate: if your state doesn't play ball, you won't be able to get on an airplane with that state's driver's license.
So take a couple of minutes and listen to Homeland Security Czar Michael Jerk-off explain the 1984 version of protecting your privacy by eliminating it:
Sounds so reasonable, doesn't it? Those nasty terrorists won't be able to sneak around any more, and we can identify all kinds of illegal brown people for deportation. And when you've got your Real ID, you'll know that you are really you, so nobody will be able to con you any more.
Note also that this is represented as a "Service" to you from the Government.
I'll skip all the highbrow commentary, just for tonight, and concentrate on the paleo-libertarian deep inside me, howling with primal anarchist fury.
Our society--any society--needs grey markets and black markets, needs people who hover on the edge of visibility, needs avenues through which people can move with minimal government notice. And needs all these things badly enough to put up with the slightly increased risks to security (which have never actually been quantified) or the significantly increased risk that the next Guatemalan landscaper who side-swipes you with his 1951 Ford pickup won't have a driver's license on him.
Why?
Because a free society rests on the inability of the government to clamp down, not the government's promise never to use the means at its disposal against law-abiding citizens, that's why.
In the past, during the Civil Wars or the World Wars, we have been asked as citizens to accept temporary and situational limits on our civil rights. Even then it often proved difficult to turn the clock back once those wars ended.
With the advent of the Cold War, followed by the War on Terror, we have been sold the necessity of turning over our civil rights in generational terms. During the Cold War we needed to find and suppress the traitors in our midst, the Communist sympathizers, and the KGB agents rifling through the trash cans behind the Sears Roebuck for atomic secrets. Now, in the War on Terror, we are told that we need to find the jihadists in our midst, the radical Islamic sympathizers, and all those Latinos stealing jobs from the many high school graduates who wanted to grow up to clean hotels.
And it's never going to end. The emergency will never be over.
But I do have one consolation: like always, the government will do this so badly that there will still be holes in the system
Libertarians (and a lot of other people who don't know they have libertarian leanings) have always been worried about a National ID Card.
Quoth Robert Heinlein (as Lazarus Long):
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
Unfortunately, we ain't got space travel yet.
And the Feds have just realized (a) that they can get a national ID done in essence through mandating Federal standards for driver's licenses, and (b) that they have a much better coercive tool than withholding highway funds for requiring the states to participate: if your state doesn't play ball, you won't be able to get on an airplane with that state's driver's license.
So take a couple of minutes and listen to Homeland Security Czar Michael Jerk-off explain the 1984 version of protecting your privacy by eliminating it:
Sounds so reasonable, doesn't it? Those nasty terrorists won't be able to sneak around any more, and we can identify all kinds of illegal brown people for deportation. And when you've got your Real ID, you'll know that you are really you, so nobody will be able to con you any more.
Note also that this is represented as a "Service" to you from the Government.
I'll skip all the highbrow commentary, just for tonight, and concentrate on the paleo-libertarian deep inside me, howling with primal anarchist fury.
Our society--any society--needs grey markets and black markets, needs people who hover on the edge of visibility, needs avenues through which people can move with minimal government notice. And needs all these things badly enough to put up with the slightly increased risks to security (which have never actually been quantified) or the significantly increased risk that the next Guatemalan landscaper who side-swipes you with his 1951 Ford pickup won't have a driver's license on him.
Why?
Because a free society rests on the inability of the government to clamp down, not the government's promise never to use the means at its disposal against law-abiding citizens, that's why.
In the past, during the Civil Wars or the World Wars, we have been asked as citizens to accept temporary and situational limits on our civil rights. Even then it often proved difficult to turn the clock back once those wars ended.
With the advent of the Cold War, followed by the War on Terror, we have been sold the necessity of turning over our civil rights in generational terms. During the Cold War we needed to find and suppress the traitors in our midst, the Communist sympathizers, and the KGB agents rifling through the trash cans behind the Sears Roebuck for atomic secrets. Now, in the War on Terror, we are told that we need to find the jihadists in our midst, the radical Islamic sympathizers, and all those Latinos stealing jobs from the many high school graduates who wanted to grow up to clean hotels.
And it's never going to end. The emergency will never be over.
But I do have one consolation: like always, the government will do this so badly that there will still be holes in the system
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