Should we have national ID cards?

Should We Have National ID Cards

Since the events of 9-11 , the United States has floundered in a quagmire of civil rights versus the security of our homeland . We no longer live in the same world as the one before the terrorist attacks . Tough decisions have to be made about how we intend to prevent future attacks and what those decisions might mean for our personal freedoms

To say that merely giving everyone a government-issued ID is the answer is to oversimplify the issue . of the 9-11 hijackers had fake ID 's

Four of them had legal ID 's , and only two were on the FBI 's watch list The hijackers did not escape the scrutiny of security because of a lack of a national ID card , they escaped scrutiny because there was not a reliable system in place with law enforcement and intelligence (Abernathy and Tien

Standard ID cards are not voluntary at all , according to an article in the Christian Science Monitor . Anyone who has to travel for business run a business , drive or enter and exit public buildings knows that an ID is mandatory if one is to accomplish various daily activities (Etzioni . According to an article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Proponents of new national ID systems believe that adding technological features to the cards themselves will eliminate problems inherent to such systems , like fraud and forgery . History does not smile on this belief . If a card can be affordably mass-manufactured , it can also be forged . The addition of "high-tech " features--embedded "smart " chips biometric interlocking , and linking of card data to databases--all promise to make cards less forgeable , and for a while will succeed However , a cruel paradox of identity card systems is that the more secure a card is , the greater its value , and the greater the incentive and reward for breaking the card . Any card or device in the public 's hands long enough will be cracked . The more secure the card , the more expensive it will be to roll out , and the more costly will be its eventual failure (Abernathy and Tien

Privacy concerns with a National ID Card are formidable . Bruce Schneider , a security specialist , contends that a security system should be based on how it will fail , rather than how it will succeed . The ways in which it would fail are numerous and far-reaching , and based upon the meshing of disparate databases with conflicting architecture Additionally , Schneider believes that the inherent value of a National ID Card , would encourage forgery , since the payoff would be much greater "That 's why " he says "when someone asks me to rate the security of a national ID card on a scale of one to 10 , I can 't give an answer . It doesn 't even belong on a scale " Knowing someone 's identity does not always insure that we can know what they are planning , either as many suicide bombers have no history of criminal activity , and notorious criminals like the DC Snipers...