Security Theatre XIII: I Know Who I Am, But Who Are You?
I have said before that ID cards may tell you who someone is, but they do not tell you whether or not he is a Bad Guy. In short, nobody has an ID card stamped with “Terrorist” or “Tax Cheat.” You are lucky if it is marked “organ donor.” That’s only one problem with using ID cards as a crime and terror fighting tool.
Notice, that the ID card only may tell you who someone is. It might also be fake. And as much as the Federal government wants to make sure people aren’t using fake identification, they seem to be having a hard time identifying fake IDs.* Since the people who make fake IDs will always come up with ways to continue counterfeiting them, fake IDs constitute a second problem with using ID cards as a crime and terror fighting tool.
The flipside of this issue is that it is possible to falsely use the identity of a real person: identity theft. It’s a huge problem that is growing bigger all the time, sometimes aided by the very offices we trust to keep our personal information private. Identity theft is yet a third reason why ID cards should not be used as a tool to fight crime and terror.
If you have not yet read Bruce Schneier’s essay on the fact that ID cards can’t make us safer, you really should.
Cartoon Short Reel: The Zany Adventures of Economy and Education!
Oh that wacky Economy! He seems to be slowing down, and he doesn’t know why! Inflation is continuing to rise, and as much as he says it’s just energy costs, the core is up too, and worse yet worker’s wages aren’t keeping up! It looks like the mean old FOMC is gonna have to raise interest rates again! I wonder how Economy is gonna hide from the FOMC this time. And as if that isn’t enough bad news for poor old Economy, he’s managed to lose $2 Million Million dollars of investors’ money. It’s enough to give poor Economy a heart attack, but hilarity continues at the hospital, since “the nation’s emergency-care system is overcrowded and overwhelmed, ‘at its breaking point,’ concludes a major investigation….”
Meanwhile, silly Education has managed to get herself wedged between a policy that won’t meet its goals and a system that refuses to measure how far from the goal they are in the first place! Oh Education, how do you get yourself into these messes?
Oh, and a follow up on the President’s upcoming visit to the Seattle area.
*Not to muddy the issue, but the ID in question was of the type issued by the Mexican Consulate to Mexican citizens for identification purposes. To the best of my knowledge CNN is wrong that they are only issued to “illegal” aliens; that may be the de facto use as legal aliens would have other forms of ID available to them. Furthermore it was a fake consular ID! But the article mentions that “The cards are not valid for entry into federal government buildings.” A lot of people think we need to provide a valid way for illegal aliens to find legal jobs, but if they can’t enter a Federal government building, how can they possibly apply for any kind of normalized status?