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 artin
Anderson, former aide to President Reagan, writes of a Cabinet meeting
at which Attorney General William French Smith proposed a national
ID card to curb illegal immigration. No ID, no job. Anderson caustically
suggested an alternative that would be cheaper, lighter weight,
impossible to lose, immune to counterfeiting or theft, even waterproof:
Just "tattoo an ID number on the inside of everybody's arm."
Naturally, Reagan understood the allusion, and the idea was never
again taken seriously — until now.
In the wake
of the calamitous events of September 11, Rep. Nancy L. Johnson
(R., Conn.) suggested a national ID using fingerprints or retinal
scans. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) reportedly supports the
idea. And in the hallowed halls of Harvard, self-described civil
libertarian Alan Dershowitz proposed a "voluntary" card,
with a chip that matches the holder's fingerprints. Dershowitz understands
the incompatibility of national IDs and civil liberties, so he is
promoting his card as "optional."
Optional indeed.
Imagine Osama bin Laden's henchmen waiting to sign up for their
IDs. That's about as likely as criminals volunteering to register
their guns. Moreover, terrorists who are capable of destroying the
World Trade Center are surely capable of obtaining forged IDs (even
the high-tech variety), bribing officials who issue or check the
cards, creating false identities that survive scrutiny, or using
persons with legitimate cards to do their dirty work. Make no mistake:
The predictable failure of a voluntary system will lead to compulsory
IDs. Remember the elective tax check-off to finance political campaigns?
Like clockwork, that fiasco spawned unrelenting calls for mandatory
public funding.
Dershowitz
disagrees. "It's a tradeoff between privacy and convenience,"
he says. Look at drivers who avoid long delays at tollbooths by
acceding to electronic billing, triggered by a device on their dashboard.
Well, yes, but terrorists, who plan their odious crimes years in
advance, aren't likely to mind a few minutes of waiting in line
to dodge electronic tracing. Furthermore, the dashboard device affords
a real choice: Give up a little privacy, and save a lot of time.
That's not what proponents of a national ID have up their sleeves.
Their choice is: Give up some privacy by showing your card, or give
up yet more privacy by subjecting yourself to surveillance, search,
detention, or worse. If too few people go for the ID, the government
will simply raise the ante — making its searches progressively
more insufferable until the ID is less repellent by contrast.
True, we use
identification cards every day — for, say, driving and check-cashing.
But the primary purpose of a driver's license is to affirm that
the holder is qualified to operate an automobile. And when you show
an ID to cash a check, you're doing it to prove you are the payee.
By comparison, neither specific skills nor a particular identity
are required to engage in the majority of day-to-day transactions.
Even our Social Security cards may be used only to track payroll
taxes; federal law forbids their use for purposes of identification.
We must not be compelled to "show our papers" every time
we want to buy goods or services.
For security
purposes, photo IDs are already required at airports. If the national
ID were limited to name, address, photo — even fingerprints
— and its use were confined to airports, few would object.
After all, passports must now be exhibited for all international
travel, despite the obvious implications for ethnic profiling. But
the ID scheme is far more insidious.
First, the
card will be effective only if scores of activities require its
display. Terrorists are not stupid. They will select forums like
theaters and sporting events, which are not as easily protected.
Consequently, the number of ID-restricted activities will increase,
and the card will become more burdensome and invasive. Constraining
its use means limiting its effectiveness. Expanding its use means
violating more privacy rights. And you can rest assured that the
ID will remain with us long after the need for extraordinary security
has receded.
Second, to
target terrorists, a national ID must be linked to a central database
of personal characteristics and private records and transactions.
That data will be maintained by the federal government — unlike
the information on car drivers, which is kept by 50 separate states.
The pressure to include ethnicity as a factor will be irresistible,
thereby exacerbating the profiling problem. No doubt, government
officials will make the case that the ID and its linked database
should not be limited to foiling terrorists. How about the drug
war? Immigration? Gun registration? The potential for abuse is boundless.
Keep in mind, it's been only four years since Congress rejected
legislation to add photos, fingerprints, and retina scans to our
Social Security cards; and only seven years since Hillary Clinton
urged a national health card containing our lifetime medical records.
The keepers
of the data will promise confidentiality, of course. But tell that
to the Japanese-Americans who were interned after U.S. census data
were compromised during the 1940s. Tell it to taxpayers whose personal
records were illegally snooped by IRS agents in the mid-1990s. But
none of that seems to concern Dershowitz, who asserts that no right
to anonymity is "hinted at in the Constitution." Of course,
that turns the Constitution on its head. The Ninth Amendment tells
us we have an untold number of rights that are not enumerated in
the Constitution. The question is not whether we have a right to
anonymity, but whether government has the power to take it away.
When it comes
to political writings, for example, the Supreme Court said in 1995
that "Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority....
It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of
the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals
from retaliation." An extension of that doctrine to cover oral
speech will be tested this coming term, when the Court decides whether
door-to-door canvassers for Jehovah's Witnesses can be required
to display a permit with their name on it.
To be sure,
the right to anonymity is not absolute. But before stampeding toward
a national ID, we should listen to Justice William O. Douglas, who
cautioned a half-century ago: "To be let alone is indeed the
beginning of all freedom."
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