The House is busy performing some very Un-American Activities this week. I have just heard HR 1147 was introduced a few days ago and is being rammed through with minimal notice to the public.
So… what, you may ask, is HR 1147? It is the shiny new version of Real ID, risen once again from the depths of hell like a B Movie demon. It would, according to Campaign For Liberty:
• Allow federal bureaucrats to include biometric identification information on the card, potentially even including fingerprints, retinal scans, or scans of veins on the back of hands, which could easily be used as a tracking device.
• Be required for all U.S. workers regardless of place of birth, making it illegal for anyone to hold a job in the United States who doesn’t obtain an ID card.
• Require all employers to purchase an “ID scanner” to verify the ID cards with the federal government. Every time any citizen applies for a job, the government would know – and you can bet its only a matter of time until “ID scans” will be required to make even routine purchases, as well.
It is the One Card To Bind Them All In Darkness. It is the card to tie the masses of legally and illegally collected government data about you together for real time access by bureaucrats and the overarmed enforcers. There is no Liberty in a Surveillance State. There is only temporary forbearance for so long as your activities are ‘within parameters’.
Call your Congressman if you are a US Citizen. Tell them that no American would vote for this measure.
I will go further and call on anyone who supports Real ID to turn in their US Citizenship because they do not deserve it or understand what it means. You do not belong to the same nation as I do and you should leave.
You might try North Korea.
Dale, I’ve only quickly scanned the bill, but I don’t think it’s quite as bad as you make out. (In other words, it’s not from the lowest depths of hell, perhaps just the second or third circle.) It has to do with documenting the legal ability to be employed in the US, and requiring employers to verify such status.* And what it does is require either: (a) a passport or one of various other government-issued forms, most of which pertain only to aliens, or (b) both a Social Security card and some form of government ID like a driver’s license. It’s only in group (a) that the biometric ID card idea appears, and it is only if the Department of Homeland Security decides to start issuing them. I don’t know why you’d want one, although I suspect that it might become common for resident aliens, but in any event no US citizen would need one if he has a driver’s license (most of us do) and a Social Security card (required to work anyway).
If you could point out the specific section(s) which are causing you such apoplexy I’d be much obliged, because I couldn’t find them.
* Let’s not get into the whole “open borders” think here, OK? Can we please just stipulate for the limited purpose of discussing this particular bill that if borders are to be maintained they should mean something, and most people (not just in the US) believe that a government has a reasonable authority to control who is to be permitted into its country. And anyway, it’s already the law here that one must show legal status to become employed, so this bill is really just more of the same.
Laird, that ID check system sounds very like the UK system. In the UK, every employer is obliged to check the documents of new staff or risk a penalty for employing a foreigner illegally, with strict liability unless you check documents, and it is a crime to knowingly employ an illegal. Of course, a British citizen does not have to provide papers, but if the employer simply trusts and is found to have employed an undocumented alien, e.g. a person born overseas but who has lived undetected in the UK since 3 months and is apparently native. there is a fine.
If the employer only asks, say, Poles for their papers, then that might be unlawful direct discrimination in employment, with the risk of an award in compensation to the affronted Poles singled out by being asked ‘Vere are your papers?’ as it were.
Dale, they’re just trying to catch up with people like Walt White, the Meth King of the Mid-west! They’ve got a War on Drugs to win, you know! Somehow, all this extra surveillance will stop drug dealers in their tracks! (Or maybe this is the War on Poverty, or Terror.) Who’s side are you on in this War, buddy?
What Laird didn’t note was that there is already a system in the US that does *exactly* the same thing–form i-9–that is paper based. This makes it an electronic system.
The cynic in me thinks this is intended to funnel more American Taxpayer Dollars to beltway bandits.
“You do not belong to the same nation as I do and you should leave.”
Allow me to politely offer the same invitation.
You might try Ireland.
Laird: “….but in any event no US citizen would need one if he has a driver’s license (most of us do) and a Social Security card (required to work anyway).”
State issued Non-driver ID (same as drivers licence, with a big red slash) which is “biometric” by virtue of a photograph, and “bar code” which calls up the photograph/data on file.
The DL number is more of a “check sum” of the licence data than an assigned ID.
In MY State, one may currently”opt out” of one’s SSN# on their DL/NDID, but Federal Transportation Tax money Denial MAY negate that. SEE: National Speed Limit/National DWI “standards”)
Social Security card is ONLY required to get paid/auto-deduct taxes, and is probably one of the most falsified “documents” in the US (by illegal aliens, and other “persons of interest”).
But hey, Social Security numbers will NOT be used as State/National identification!
At least, that’s what the scheme said originally, before “Higher Education Institutions” decided to ignore that little trinket.
Bill O:
“The cynic in me thinks this is intended to funnel more American Taxpayer Dollars to beltway bandits.”
My State Motor Vehical Inspection (annual) required stations to buy Automotive Data Port Readers,(about US$ 30 “after market” sources) and the peripheral printers,ONLY from the state. ALSO required an additional dedicated “wire” Phone line(also taxed)to be installed,
direct to State (and Federal?)DMV. The “gub’mint contract” printers became notorious for crapping out, replaceable ONLY by (ok, EVERYBODY…) State gub’mint contract printers.
The Annual “inspection fee” went from about US$15 to $45-50, to cover “start up costs”, for the labor/record keeping/cost “saving” system. I’m not sure what the State/private Inspection station cut is, but of COURSE any “bump” in inspecters income is “business tax” as well.
ODDLY, the fee remains “stuck” at $45-50, years later, as do annual cries of poverty for higher taxes, ALLEGEDLY to address neglected roads/bridges “infrastructure”.
CaptDMO, a photograph is not what is meant by “biometric” information; in fact, the bill under discussion here specifically says the document which Homeland Security may decide to issue must contain “a photograph of the individual and biometric identification data” (my emphasis). Clearly the two are entirely separate.
If your state issues drivers licenses which contain biometric information that was its decision to make (indeed, it was what the original Real ID Act required), but lots of states refused to do so which is why that law quietly died. (My state’s governor at the time sent a very pointed letter to the Secretary of Homeland Security explaining precisely why we were declining to participate. I still have a copy of it.) So if your state went along it’s your problem; get better leaders. But in any event it has nothing to do with H.1147. This bill does not follow the Real ID tactic of requiring that state driver’s licenses contain biometric information; all that is required is that it contain “a photograph and information such as name, date of birth, gender, height, eye color, and address.”
“CaptDMO, a photograph is not what is meant by “biometric” information;”
To be sure. I’ve seen the movie Gattaca.
I have “a friend” in facial recognition technology (nuts and bolts, coding, NOT “administration/consultation)who would disagree of course.
My fault in reductio absurdum, and failure to /sarc.
Personally, I consider date of birth, gender, height, eye color, as well as race,(simple) blood type, skin color, and vocal characteristics, ALL effective “biometric” identifiers when three or more are “matched” together.
There was generally NO mistaking exactly whose mother was screaming “DINNER” if we were out a bit too late playing baseball, hide and seek, buck buck, etc.
But a “simple” hand held Star Trek Medical transponder would make all of that moot, wouldn’t it.