Bad Oracle
ID cards pick up steam.

By John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru
October 19, 2001 1:00 p.m.

ord that Oracle chairman and CEO Larry Ellison met with Attorney General John Ashcroft on Tuesday raises the prospect that the Bush administration is contemplating the adoption of a national ID card. "We are in the process of putting a proposal together and analyzing what it would take to get something running in a matter of a small number of months, like three months, 90 days," Ellison told the San Jose Mercury News. Three weeks ago, Ellison said his company, a leader in databases, would donate the software to the federal government.

In late September, a low-level White House spokesman denied ID cards were on the table. Yet the idea appears to be gaining momentum: Recent endorsers include Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), retired General Norman Schwartzkopf, Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, and Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy. Ashcroft himself refused to comment this week on the Ellison's proposal or their meeting.

On October 8, Ellison made his case for ID cards. He essentially brushed aside the privacy question — Americans already have lost it, he seemed to say, so why fight something that will aid in the fight against terrorism? The whole piece may be read at opinionjournal.com.

We already have argued against ID cards. The case against them is compelling, and it is one that should especially resonate among conservatives opposed to the unchecked growth of government.

In the meantime, it would help if Ashcroft or some equally high-ranking member of the Bush administration — perhaps even the president himself — were to make a strong statement against national ID cards and national systems of identification. Their current silence is troubling.

On the Site
NR's John Derbyshire argues against a national ID card in our latest issue: "In this, as in so many other things, Ronald Reagan set the example. He did not waver in his support for Second Amendment rights even when he himself was shot by a lunatic, regarding such an occurrence as part of the price for living in a free society. In the same spirit, when the subject of a national ID card, as an aid to controlling illegal immigration, was raised during a cabinet meeting, Reagan dismissed it with the sardonic remark: 'Maybe we should just brand all babies.' In the present climate, one hesitates to tell that story, for fear the idea might be taken up in all seriousness and appear a few days later as a New York Times editorial."

A preview of his piece and much else from our November 5 issue may be read here.