Thom Q
VirgilT7@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 6/26/98 8:23:18 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> daugh@home.msen.com writes:
>
> <<
> This is NOT radical right-wing paranoia. Most of the elements of the new
> proposed national ID system are already in place NOW. The next step is for
> all information to be coordinated and completely accessible to any and all
> bureaucrats for their arbitrary and capricious abuse.
>
> The national ID card itself (which you will be required to carry) will have
> a magnetic strip (or chip) which is imbedded in it. That means YOU (when you
> have your mandated national ID card on your person) could be tracked
> wherever you go. Privacy will be an anachronism.
> >>
>
> Other cards that have magnetic strips: credit cards, ATM cards, hotel keys,
> appt keys, et al. The magnetic strips can't be used to somehow follow your
> movements. But the author of the article seems more interested in propogating
> a juvenile kind of paranoia than paying much attention to the benefits of such
> a system or to the fact that the system really doesn't add any new powers to
> the government but only makes the government more efficient. In any immensely
> large and complex society such as ours a standardized identification system
> makes perfect sense. And the presence of it simply has nothing to do with
> government encroachment of anyone's rights. It DOES have to do with making
> the government more efficient. The place to protect rights, however, is in
> the courts and the legislatures, and NOT upon the assumption of governmental
> inefficiency in enforcing its laws.
>
> Andrew