National ID is a threat to liberty.

 This is the last day of year 2007 and the last day for Americans' privacy and democratic freedoms. Starting in year 2008 the federal REAL ID Act of 2005 requires states to issue federally approved drivers’ licenses and personal identification cards. This requirement is a form of a National ID for Americans and everybody living here legally.

The National ID must include a social security number, as well as a photo and the information currently on the card. It uses new Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology that allows government and some civilian agencies to scan this information from the card. The REAL ID Act of 2005 forces states to participate and to send drivers’ personal information and their driving record into a shared national database.

The National ID is part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) biometric database called Next Generation Identification (NGI). This system permits the FBI to collect and share identification information nationally and internationally about arrested people’s fingerprints, palm prints and photographs. This system includes the expanding technology that will identify people by scanning the iris of their eyes at distances up to 15 feet and by facial recognition up to 200 yards.

Federal authorities claim that they need NGI to fight terrorism. They say they will install the necessary safeguards to prevent this sensitive personal information falling into criminal hands. This assurance does not provide much comfort since there have been incidents where government agencies compromised veterans’ personal financial records and state secrets.  

This database also includes information job applicants provide to their civilian employer for security checks. The FBI compiles this information and exchanges it with civilian employers as necessary.  They will report to employers if an employee with a security rating is arrested for a crime.  

Americans’ main concern should be the potential for FBI and federal agencies to abuse this information. When they passed, the Social Security Act, government officials assured Americans their social security number would not act as a national identification and tracking number. “Not for identification” is printed on my social security card. Nevertheless, Americans cannot open a banking savings account without disclosing their social security tracking number.

The government already tracks our banking transactions. Government officials claimed they needed to monitor all our bank accounts as part of the “War on Drugs to prevent money laundering from drug sales. Freedom-loving Americans should have said, “No! You will not invade our privacy to prevent a few drug sellers, probably less than one-percent of the population, from banking their income.”  

However, Americans did not say this to government then. They did not reject the national security reasons Congress gave to justify this latest assault against Americans’ privacy and liberty. If people cannot see how government endangers liberty with this database on every citizen, they are not trying hard.

Americans are losing their liberty because they are ignorant of history.  They do not understand the uniqueness of what they have and why they have it. Many people claim, “The founders created this nation to preserve religious freedom.”  No, they did not. They revolted against the harsh rule of the King of England. Then, they created a democratic republic to secure their liberty and freedom from one-person rule by a monarch or from other forms of dictatorship.

 Rule by the people in the American Republic is opposite to a monarch ruling his or her subjects. Therefore, knowing the history of how America began, one would expect hostility in the culture to ideas of one-person rule by a king or other dictator. Instead, American schools teach literature and engage in pageantry that romanticize rule by the monarch. This may explain why so many Americans have ideas of royalty and rule by a monarch as something grand rather than something repulsive and threatening to their democracy. 

Americans decide their liberty by how much control over their lives they yield to government.  Citizens lose liberty whenever a government agency increases control over any area of their personal lives no matter the reason and no matter how small the advance. Americans would know this if their schools taught a balanced history that reported European and Asian peasant life under monarchs’ harsh rule.

The history on all continents is about people’s need to create government to provide protection from outsiders and about their need to protect themselves from their government.  The drug war, banking laws, the REAL ID Act of 2005 and the goals for Next Generation Identification are some government advances that show Americans are not paying enough attention to threats against liberty.

Contact Kenneth Brooks at P.O. B 882, Vallejo, CA 94590.  kenbrooks@ethicalego.com