There can be no denying that since Black Tuesday our country has changed in ways we never would have imagined on September 10, 2001. Before September 11th, an attack on U.S. soil in which thousands of innocent people lost their lives in 30 minutes of stupefying evil was unthinkable to the average and above average American; it simply was not on our radar screens. And yet life hasn’t changed in America in some very important and costly respects. We still as society cling to the notion that we can have safety without giving up even a modicum of personal privacy or freedom.
I have read about and listened with consternation to the debates swirling around even the suggestion of a national identification card. For the record I see nothing wrong with a national I.D. card, one which has embossed upon its surface a picture of each citizen and embedded in its plastic sheathing a microchip with your current address, phone number, date of birth, blood type, drivers license number, SSN, and any police record. In other words nothing that is not already a matter of public record! All of this information would be part of a federal database and could be used by law enforcement officials to spot-check the collective identity. The card would be the size of a drivers license and clearly state that it was a federal I.D. card. Measures would taken to ensure that the card could not be counterfeited in much the same was our currency is now protected.
Much of the negative debate surrounding this issued has centered on issues of privacy and the right to be anonymous, to blend into the crowd, to go un-noticed by the various state and federal authorities. But haven’t we as a society already given up much of we seek to protect? Every baby born in the U.S. is now issued a Social Security Number before (s)he leaves the hospital; in order to dive a car you have to have a drivers license, with your picture, current name, address, birth-date, sex, and physical characteristics emblazoned across the front; colleges and universities issue student I.D.’s with the students picture on the front; and many companies require some sort of picture I.D. Credit card companies and other financial institutions routinely collect various types of personal information from us, and insurance companies delve into our personal medical histories with our consent. And yet we readily accept these intrusions into our lives, why, because it benefits us directly? Since when has public safety not been in our collective interests’?
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