How is a federal ID any more secure than other forms of ID?
Because it's centralized.
You can get them. It's difficult, but cyberattacks do happen.
They would be a lot MORE difficult if the "social security card" bore either a picture, of a physical description.
I don't see how a federal card will make theft less likely.
By including a physical description of the person who owns it.
Then, here it is:
Joe Shmoe goes into an RV dealership and buys an $80,000 RV, using Bob's name and credit.
However, the national ID's physical description calls for someone who is 5'8" tall, Caucasian, and brown eyes. Joe has the Caucasian part, but he's 6 feet tall and has blue eyes.
The dealership knows that something is amiss. Bob gets a telephone call; Joe gets arrested. End of story.
Comprende?
If a person can look at an ID, I'm sure that they can look at a picture.
I agree.
Besides, what happens if you gain wight, get surgery, lose your hair
You can
update your national ID.
ID's aren't th most complicated thing in the world.
Still, it never hurts to streamline it even further.
If they're standardized, then forgers will just switch to that.
But, it would be a lot harder for forgers to convince people that they rightfully own this ID if the people looking at it had federal archives to compare it to.
Inspection is largely not that thorough unless random people are sampled (like in airport security) and happen to get caught. In order for it to be more thorough, more people would have to be hassled and scrutinized, and I'm not in favor of that.
Who said that I advocate increasing the number of random searches?
This merely makes the current random searches more likely to yield accurate results.
If someone has stolen your identity and you have proof, that is more than enough to make a case.
Yeah... complete with months and months of court battles and tens of thousands of dollars in legal expenses. In the meantime, personal lives must be set aside. Personal relationships must suffer.
It's better to
prevent identity theft than it is to recover
after it's been committed.
There's no need for another federal registry that can still be faked.
It would
replace all the
existing identification-based federal agencies.
We're not going up one and going down zero. We're going up one, and going down about ten or twelve.
It's just giving the government further powers it doesn't need.
No, this is merely a new type of exercise of an existing power: The Necessary and Proper Clause.
This was more of a side argument, but you should look at the means in which identities tend to be stolen: it's either because people have their cards directly stolen or third parties that are retaining the information (like banks, phone companies, etc.) get hacked and databases are lifted.
Perhaps, but, if the guys looking at the national IDs can see if it's fake or not, just by comparing it to the archives, it would stop a lot of ID thieves in the
process of doing it.
No, just simple observation. We live in the digital era and there will always be people who foolishly give up their info. to the wrong people. That shouldn't be my problem or an excuse to create another registry.
Even if the registry that we're creating would eliminate the
need for various other registries?
I mean, I can think of five different registries, merely at the federal level, that specialize in identification documents.
1. Social Security Office
2. Identification cards for soldiers in the military
3. Medicare
4. Medicaid
5. Passport office (typically, a subdivision of the Post Office, but not always).
So, if the Federal ID system were to replace all previous ID systems, we would have a net
reduction of at least four.
Why does the federal government need that information in the form of a new ID card
Because it will
replace old ID cards.
Furthermore, why does ANY government body need my biometric information?
Who said anything about biometric information?
Look on your driver's license. It's the exact same information.
The federal ID would just be one more to the pile of crap,
That would
replace a lot of other piles of crap.
Only difference is that the Fed would have its own database instead of just your state.
Huh? That doesn't even make sense!
Grammatically, it doesn't even make sense!
Because a Federal ID does not make anyone more secure or more safe.
Unless it stands less chance of standing up to close inspection.
It just gives the Federal government one more means to pry into your life
While getting rid of all the other means of prying into your life.
Each state has its own ID because each state has its own sovereignty, its own ID requirements, and its own laws.
And so, the federal ID cannot simply work with the states to make sure that the federal ID can serve their purpose?
Inconvenient, but hardly a crisis.
I agree, but, imagine, trying to take out a loan online. The creditor that you're applying for lives in a different state, and requests that you xerox your driver's license and send that to them. You do so. How do they know that this state's driver's license is legitimate. If the state has a registry that can be used to verify your physical description, what if they don't KNOW about that registry, or they know about it, but don't know how to use it.
A FEDERAL registry would merely take all that confusion away.
There is no real reason why the fed needs another registry, another ID system, or another way to track your activities.
Unless that one registry/system/tracking method can do the jobs of
five of them.
If you are suspected of something, then they need to deal with the state level and get your information that way.
That would compromise federal supremecy.
The fed should not be going above the individual states.
The Federal Supremecy clause says the exact opposite.
As far as I know, the full faith and credit clause requires each state to accept the IDs of all other states,
That won't stop them from making careless errors, nor will it stop private entities from thinking that other states' IDs are illegitimate.
If different states are too incompletent to recognize the IDs of other states, then that is their problem.
It's not just
their problem. It's the
people's problem!
The expansion of power is unnecessary.
I already told you: It's not an expansion. It's a centralization, streamlining, and condensing of power.
Which they can do anyway by using your medicare file number.
Yes, but it's not centralized.
Full faith and credit clause.
That only works if it's intentional. It doesn't do much if it's out of negligence.
It also does absolutely jack squat for negligence of private entities.
I don't think you understand the difference between state and federal power. You just view this as simplifying people's lives and making them more convenient, but you don't understand what it means for implied federal powers vs. state sovereignty.
Let me put it this way:
Does the government have a legitimate interest in knowing who you are?
Is a national, centralized ID system a legitimate means to achieving that interest.
If you answered "yes" to the above questions, then, the government has business having a national ID system.