Wiston Papers

We need a National Identification Card

The United States is moving closer to a required National Identity Card for all residents.  It is the right step and is long overdue.

But the current legislation--the REAL ID Act--does little to reduce the myriad of unnecessary documentation Americans and legal visitors either carry or need as proof of citizenship or eligibility for a host of programs.

Congress passed the REAL ID Act in 1995 to comply with the 9/11 Commission recommended standards for approved identification documents for persons in America.  REAL ID established minimum requirements for an acceptable identification card.  The most commonly mentioned document is a state driver’s license, but others are legal, too.

However, well intended, REAL ID serves only to multiply rather than reduce the number of acceptable forms of identification.  The danger of such multiplicity is apparent...increased probability of forged or bogus IDs due to the impossible task of verifying a score of different documents.  This is simply wrong.

Homeland Security accepts valid state driver’s licenses as acceptable under the REAL ID Act.  But each of the 50 states has a different style and format.  To expect anyone to be intimately familiar with the variety of all 50-state licenses and to detect fraudulent ones is impractical.  Ask anyone responsible for checking the IDs of university students who come to a bar from all 50 states and you can easily see why so many underage students easily elude detection.

Other currently acceptable IDs include a U.S. passport, university or college enrollment cards, various Department of Defense Identification Cards, birth certificates, immigration green cards, NEXUS and SENTRI cards for travel between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, and Native American tribal documents.  

There are others...too many others...and that is precisely the problem.

The obvious solution is a single card for all persons in the United States. Just as we have only one legal currency in America, likewise we should require every person within our borders to carry a single the National Identification Card...a Social Security Card.  No other documentation should be permitted as proof of identity, citizenship, legal residency, permission to drive, or eligibility for social and health benefits.

Every child born in the United States would be named, swabbed for a DNA sample, and registered immediately with the Department of Social Security (SS).  The DNA and registration would then be sent to SS for insertion as biometric data on a new SS card. All SS information and data would concurrently be registered with all national law enforcement records.  

Every legal immigrant or resident would be subject to the same application and registration process.

The SS Card would contain the photograph of the owner, be encoded with DNA, fingerprint and retinal scan technology, must be renewed every two years, and replace current state driver’s licenses.  

    There will be opposition to this controversial plan, of course.  The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)  claims that a single National ID would increase surveillance and monitoring of U.S. residents.  True and that is desirable.

    Honest people have nothing to hide or fear.  But individuals engaged in illegal acts should be apprehended quickly and a single National ID card would expedite their location and detention.  

    Civil libertarians fear a centralized database of all Americans.  I, for one, favor such a repository that is easily accessible by national and local authorities.  There currently are too many disparate archives.  Communication failures  and lack of coordination among existing law enforcement agencies are compounded by the absence of such a centralized database.

    Citizen rights advocates claim that a National ID would increase instances of discrimination and risk denying certain persons of voting rights.  The opposite is true.  A single National ID would provide easily verifiable, irrefutable evidence of citizenship and eligibility.   

    Other opponents fear potential prosecutorial abuse by overly-zealous attorneys and a future malevolent government with easy access to our personal histories.  I am optimistic than current and future legal and technological safeguards will prevent such a scenario.

   

    Identify theft if you use a SS Card for identification?  Not if properly encoded...and that technology will soon exist.

    It is time for a single, easily verifiable, uniform National Identification Card...the Social Security Card.  Let’s trash the score of documents now in use, streamline and centralize the appropriate collection and storage of identification data including DNA, and tighten the monitoring and tracking of all residents in the United States.

Steve Coon

February 06, 2013