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Good Cop, Bad Cop and the National ID by John Bottoms The prisoner is locked away in a tiny room at the local precinct station. Bright lights bear down on him relentlessly. He feels powerless under the intense pressure, and he knows there's no way out. The cops have been leaning on him for hours, trying to extract a confession. Now, with no rest and little food, he's disoriented and not sure what really happened at the crime scene. The door opens and a well-dressed man walks in. This one looks more like a lawyer than a cop. He tells the prisoner that if he confesses to a lesser charge, it will go easier for him, that he can get some sleep, and he'll feel better in the morning. Still unsure, but tired to the bone, the prisoner signs the paper. He may never know that his confession virtually ensures that he'll never again be free. Yes, it's the good cop, bad cop routine, and it's being used on us all. The crime occurred on 9/11 of course. The prisoner is America. The good cop is the Bush administration, and the unlikely choice for bad cop is Oracle's Larry Ellison, because the "lesser charge" to which America is about to confess is a plan to convert your driver's license into a National ID. As early as September 27 of last year Ellison floated the idea of a new National ID card. The White House immediately took the high road, telling the press, "We are not even considering the idea." But by October 8, Ellison said that Oracle would donate the database software to run the system. The usual crowd could be relied upon to speak out loudly against it, including the ACLU, Rep. Ron Paul, the Cato Institute, and some earnest mainstream political commentators. But on January 14, in a story that reads more like it was planted by the government rather than legitimate news, Ross Kerber of the Boston Globe reports that, "Officials from all 50 states have agreed to cooperate on upgrading driver's license security features, giving momentum to efforts to turn the licenses into de facto national identity cards." Kerber continues, "The Bush administration's homeland-security director, Tom Ridge, in the past has dismissed the need for national identity cards. Last week, representatives from his office, the FBI, and the Justice Department, said officials weren't available to discuss AAMVA's (American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators) ambitions [to use driver's licenses]." Yes, we can now breath a sign of relief, for while those evil Oracle tycoons were plotting behind the scenes to force a national ID system down our throats, the white knight Bushies have been protecting us against terrorists and fighting for our privacy rights. Out of the blue walk the motor vehicle administrators with a middle-of-the-road solution that can "create a consensus": a de facto national ID disguised as your trusty driver's license. Just sign on the dotted line. The prisoner can now relax. But that's not the end of the story. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain because back in 1996, Cyndee Parker of the Coalition to Repeal the Fingerprints Law wrote, "Buried at approximately page 650 of the new national Defense Bill . . . the American public was given a national ID card. With no fanfare, no publicity and no scrutiny, the bill easily avoided the watchful eyes of even its most aggressive opponents." Ms. Parker goes on to describe a pilot program to develop a system to read data off your driver's license and forward it to federal offices to verify your status. So this plan has been in the works for at least six years. "In politics . . . if it happened, it was planned that way," is the famous FDR quote. I expect he was just bragging, but in this case one has to wonder. Given that the Bush inner circle has access to the best PR and advertising talent available, would it have been at all difficult to stage this National ID scenario? In fact, is it more likely that it was orchestrated or that everything just happened to fall into place so that Americans would actually feel good about giving up a lot more of their freedom? Imagine the howls of protest if they had just announced that your state driver's license was about to become your internal passport. But whether or not it was a planned propaganda campaign, a federal ID card is a really bad idea. "The government already collects data on you through your SSN, so why fear a National ID?" we hear from some naive Americans. But wherever you're required to present your new ID card, you'll be asking the state's permission to go about your business, and permission granted today may be rescinded tomorrow. When the new "smart" ID cards are in place, you'll need The Man's sayso to board a plane, rent a car, use the library, get a phone, buy a gun, do your banking, enter the US, leave the US, buy a house, get a loan, see the doctor, buy medicine, or enroll your child in school. Americans can now breathe a sigh of relief that they live in the land of the free as they swipe their driver's license through the reader, place their finger in the slot provided for fingerprint scanning, and pray that their federal masters still consider them safe. January 16, 2002 John Bottoms carries his ID card in Phoenix, Arizona. |