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 ashington
Post columnist Richard
Cohen today becomes the latest opinion leader to support a national
ID card: "What this country needs is . . . a national identification
card with a photo but also a fingerprint and some other piece of
unique information, such as an iris or retinal scan. That way, you
can prove you are who you say you are."
At least he's
sensitive to something that should concern every conservative: The
fact that a national ID system would be used for more than preventing
terrorism. It would become a powerful tool facilitating the growth
of government. Writes Cohen: "The ID card could be used to
compile all sorts of information so that when a cop stops you for
speeding (you're innocent, of course) he'll know you're behind on
your mortgage payments and just came back from a trip to the Middle
East."
It gets worse.
A new Cato
Institute paper by Boise State University economics professor
Charlotte Twight is required reading. In "Watching You: Systematic
Surveillance of Ordinary Americans," Twight describes federal
efforts to build databases that would allow a growing government
to veto any hiring decision made by private employers, make it easier
to impose a national health-care system, and snoop into personal
finances. "Centralized power is centralized information; centralized
information is centralized power," she concludes.
How long before
the government wants to collect information on every person's DNA?
That may sound frighteningly implausible — except that the
government of Iceland is already doing it.
When people
promote national IDs, "there is always an asserted benefit
to be obtained, a plausible cover story," writes Twight. But
they're really chipping away at freedom. As Albert Jay Nock once
wrote, "whatever power you give the State to do things for
you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you."
So far, advocates
of a national ID card have spent more time trying to allay such
fears than they have explaining the concrete benefits that a card
would give law enforcement. Nobody has yet made the case that ID
cards would have prevented the attacks or made it easier to hunt
down the perpetrators; nobody has considered the worth of the scheme
in light of the possible vulnerability of the accompanying database
to terrorist hackers. But the burden of proof should surely lie
with those who think an ID would be helpful. It might make sense
to accept the risks of a national ID card in return for a marginal
improvement in security: It would depend on the prospective trade-off.
It makes no sense to accept the risks in return for nothing more
than the emotional satisfaction of having done something.
Worth Reading
Cato's Robert
A. Levy on ID cards, for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
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