Category Archives: ID Cards and Identification

Speaking of Google, here's an interesting if (so far) overwrought item on The Dark Side of Google: as it puts books online it will not only know what you search for but what you read…one search history to rule them all and in the DB bind them…

Hiibel lost today, 5-4, but on narrower grounds than you'd guess from reading the case summary which says baldly that he lost on both 4th and 5th Amendment grounds. It's pretty much a disaster on the 4th, but the 5th is only a part disaster. Most importantly, the Court punted on the issue of whether the 5th Amendment would apply if the suspect really had something to hide. Justice Kennedy's majority opinion says that since Hiibel had not only nothing to hide but no reason to think he did, he can't take the 5th.

Of course there's a catch-22 there: if you can only assert the 5th when you are guilty, or near guilty, or reasonably fearful you are guilty, that suggests the cops ought to be investigating you, which pretty much undermines the privilege.

But at least the issue survives, however mangled, for another day.

The dissents are here and here.

One down, six to go….

Update: I forgot to mention that although the media will say the case states that “police can require IDs” what it actually states is that legislatures can require suspects to tell police their names (not 'show ID'—the majority states that the statute at issue is satisfied by an oral statement) when the police have a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed, the person is relevant, and are investigating it. The distinction will undoubtedly be lost on the ground, and erased by subsequent cases, but it's there for now.

The biggest trouble with national ID cards is that if you have an evil government, they make bad things easier.

Shanghai monitors Internet cafes: SHANGHAI'S INTERNET cafes and bars are being plagued with video cameras and hi-tech logging software, put in place by authorities to make absolutely certain no “forbidden sites” are viewed.

According to yahoo.com and the Shanghai Daily newspaper, Yu Wenchang from the Shanghai Culture, Radio and TV Administration said monitoring will begin in all 1,325 of Shanghai's geek centres by the end of June.

Banned websites include both pornographic sites and sites with “superstitious content,” such as Falun Gong, the site of a spiritual group.

A number of people have already been sent to prison for downloading and uploading banned material, and it looks like with the new system in place even more will get busted.

The newspaper report also says that all people in Internet cafes will now have to enter the number on an identification card, as proof that they are over 16 years of age. Cafes allowing underage users to surf the web will be fined at first, and if caught again they will have their licenses revoked.

It doesn't follow from this, necessarily, that ID cards make bad government more likely, or that they necessarily have the same bad effects under decent governments.

I'm certainly prepared to believe that if you have a government that wants to engage in thought control, you have much bigger problems than a little card. On the other hand, governments and indeed everyone, tend to go for what's cheap and easy. If an ID card regime makes some choices cheaper and easier than they were formerly, surely it increases the odds that people will advocate them?

Security Guru Bruce Schneier (who wrote the book that was my intro to serious crypto) argues in an op-ed that A National ID Card Wouldn't Make Us Safer primarily because the GIGO problem for the data we'd use to issue the card makes it near worthless as a security device. What's worse, he says, a national ID card becomes a single point of failure for security if people trust it.

I agree about the GIGO problem (everyone serious does too as far as I can tell). And I agree that the ID cards have about no value as an anti-terrorism tool, although that's where the political push is coming from (their real virtues if they exist, are elsewhere). And I've argued before that over-reliance could be a problem in other ways, but didn't make the single-point-of-failure argument. May have to add that to the list…

Here's a story that implicates a vast number of the isses about national ID cards all in one debate. Florida's own Gov. Bush lobbies for drug-tracking database.

The stated goals for this propsal are pretty laudable: to crack down on prescription drug abuse, e.g. the Rush-style doctor shopping.

The actual details of the proposal make it clear that the project has no chance of achieving its stated goals, since participation by pharmacists and doctors will be optional. If you are a pill mill, you won't play. Plus, it won't provide answers in real time, and will use old data, so it won't be very effective in the best of circumstances. (Sounds pretty boondoggle-like … these are solved problems.)

No one knows what it will cost or how to pay for it.

The proponents are trying to push it through the legislature in a rush.

So far, this is all pretty standard for all too many ID card proposals.

Bonus Florida angle: if the proposal does make it through the legislature, it will be open to attack on the grounds that the legislature is now functus officio.