Show Me Your Papers, Komrade!

by Joe Pulcinella

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Oh, how true. Especially for those who voted to entrust our security to a police state. The feared National ID Card legislation sailed though both the House and Senate and will probably be signed into law by the president. But wait! Don't the Republicans stand for freedom? After all, didn't the administration denounce the National ID Card way back when?

The White House will not pursue a national identification card system, despite renewed clamor from pockets of government and industry following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. ‘We are not even considering the idea,’ said a Bush spokesman on Thursday.
-- InfoWorld, September 27, 2001

Just goes to show you that you get what you ask for. And we're getting it good and hard.

Posted 12/9/2004 4:44:20 PM by Joe Pulcinella

Pennsylvania had one of the first "secure" photo IDs, many years ago, and it was ridiculously easy to falsify. One simply had to get another person to apply for a replacement license, then take the resulting photo card to the DMV. This dodge worked for many, many years. There is no way of knowing how many insecure IDs will be used as the basis of the new "secure" IDs.

Posted 12/13/2004 11:12:33 AM by Vince Daliessio

Just go and get your driver's license renewed and you'll see the very people who will now be the first line of national security.

Posted 12/10/2004 4:07:04 PM by Joe Pulcinella

Well, you can be sure that these "secure IDs" will be insecure, easily forged, and linked to databases of all your financial data. I'm betting there will be quite a lot of mistaken idenity, false imprisonment, evasion, and financially ruined people created by this system. But I'm an optimist.

Posted 12/9/2004 6:43:18 PM by Vince Daliessio