Re: Nat'l ID # ?

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Carl Ellison writes:

> It strikes me as anachronistic to worry about national ID numbers for
> privacy reasons.  With data processing of the 1950's, someone would have
> needed a single index number in order to gather all records about me into
> one place.  With today's excess computing power, there's no problem doing a
> kind of fuzzy fill algorithm -- find all my various numbers, record links
> between them and therefore equate them

My main concern with a "national ID card" is that it will be mandatory
to carry, mandatory to use in various financial transactions (where
showing ID is not presently required), and required for interactions
with various government agencies.

This would be far worse than the current mishmosh of various state
driver's licenses (most of which currently lack mag stripes, barcodes,
etc.) and other slips of paper. While I agree that the numbers from
such cards are correlatable--and are, by the credit card companies,
the credit rating triopoly, etc.--this correlation would be
dramatically easier if a machine-readable card was required for
interactions now handled without such cards.

The government has explicitly stated that a goal of EES is to drive
out competing forms of encryption by market methods (I think the
market method for Clipper will fail, but that's another discussion).
The same could be said for a national ID card.

It would be so "painless" for other card-issuing agencies (DMV, VISA,
MCI, etc.) to simply "piggyback" on the government's smart card.
Voila! One card, total traceability of all transactions. And
movements. And hotels stayed in. And ammunition bought. And so on.

David Chaum correctly focussed on this chilling issue in his 1985
paper, "Transactions Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete" (the paper
has had various titles, as he refined the ideas...).

Chaum's work on selectively-disclosing credentials deserves more
attention than it's getting. That nobody in the "card business" is
working on this stuff pretty much tells us we ain't gonna have it as
an option.

Bear in mind that under the current system, I don't have to carry
identification (a raging civil liberties debate, but the conclusions I
draw are that cops may ask for ID, but rarely will anyone spend time
in jail for not carrying ID...and since I don't speak broken English
and look Mexican, I'm not likely to be bussed into Tijuana and
dumped).

I also don't have to carry credit cards.

The only "required" card I have is my driver's license (and my
passport, should I wish to leave and reenter....and at the Mexican
border I've never even needed that).

I don't want this to change. I don't want a mandated ID card, then
usable by default by all the other card-issuers, or tied to car
registration, tax filing, visits to emergency rooms, jury duty, etc.

That's why a national ID card is, in my opinion, much worse than the
current mishmosh of cards and permission slips.

--Tim May


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
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