TodayWill ID technology make us safer?
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Standardizing driver's licenses from each state into a system that passes for an National ID program seems like a daunting and controversial task, especially in the United States where the whole concept appears to be a denial of a states' rights to do their own thing.
But centralization vs. decentralization of government is always on the debate agenda and the outcome usually depends on who's in charge at the top and what's going on at a particular moment.
So much for rules of order.
The outcome of all of this though ultimately will be that we're all going to be on Candid Scanner... rather sooner than later.
Americans soon will have chips in their driver licenses that could — if anyone wants to bother — bare their very souls to some FBI agent in Kokomo or nosy airport security agent.
And that makes me think of all the people I know out there who are proud to say, "I'm a very private person" as they try to let you know your questions beyond the weather and the time of day and are off limits. For them, drivers' license chips have got to be the final straw of the privacy invasion.
But they should be thinking bigger; it's a small world, after all.
Since the 9/11 tragedy, homeland security also has turned to passports with the slant on international as well national ID'ing to keep out or catch a terrorist, an alleged undesirable or a mother-in-law who fits the stereotype of trouble for someone who's reading the biometrics involved in the process.
Chortle at this last if you want, but the point is that this technology could be misused and abuses as well as be protective.
For those who don't travel abroad all that often, this may not sound like a bear you need to wrestle. But don't forget, what your country and all the other countries do can hit you in the pocketbook — always a hurtful thing. So, it's better to be in the know.
Besides even a once-in-a-lifetime traveler could end up being on an international data system where they can tag you in Brussels as well as in Britain as a poor risk, just because you once got arrested at a protest to set the minks free from coat bondage.
This isn't tomorrow stuff either. It could — at some expense — be put into effect just as fast as the process is plotted, the money appropriated and the systems set up. Speed would depend on the price and determination of the labor pool doing the job.
This country — for now — appears to be focusing on digitized photographs and personal information, including name and birthplace, for passports. But other countries are calling for those driver's license chips to be embedded in their visas. I can't help but think that American passports will increasingly turn to IDs where your physical details will confirm who you are. These include scanning fingerprints as well as your irises, which are supposed to be uniquely yours.
Fingerprint scanning already goes on and is seen as productive — at least by law enforcement and the State Department— because it can be matched up with criminal records. But some places, such as Belgium, are considering the use of retinal scanning.
The trouble is that the different countries appear to be working on their own versions, which means the United States, for example, might have to have an array of equipment instead of one kind to process all.
The airports could end up having lines that direct international travels to the eyes, nose, chin, finger or big-toe lines to check in and out.
This is all straight out of Tom Cruise's film "Minority Report." And if you recall, that didn't end all that well because it got to the point where you could end up in isolation for a crime that you never actually got a chance to commit... and maybe wouldn't have when the chips were down. Call it the movies, but I've kind of come to the conclusion that many things that man can imagine, especially when scientifically based, aren't out of the realm of becoming a reality.
So here everyone is in 2005 knowing that the worrisome thoughts of a previous generation about Social Security cards being used as IDs are so passe that they almost seem funny.
Life has become far more complicated than that with people's lives condensed into chips of a negligible size that can pinpoint them in a flash. Depending on your perspective, that's awesome or awful.
And the most hilarious part is after all the research, all the think-tank dabbling into marking the process work and all the expense, nobody's talking about how this is going to stop a terrorist or other criminal who has established a new but false identity and has the license or passport to prove it.
