T. Kenji Sugahara wrote: > I was digging through the NIPC report and found an article that was > really interesting. > > I know a lot of individuals would shy away from a nationalized ID > system, but how about an idea proposed by the National Electronic > Commerce Coordinating Council? It proposes a "confederated" system in > which Americans could use multiple identifiers for clusters of > agencies and/or businesses. "That advantage of this system over a > national ID system is that no single identifier would follow an > individual everywhere." There are two large problems with national ID, and this proposal only addresses one of them. The problem it addresses (and not all that well) is the civil liberties issue of making it too easy for the Government to track your personal activities. The problem it does not address is identity theft: no matter what ID you specify, if it becomes a national ID, then its value as an identity theft document increases a lot. The offices that issue these credentials don't do a great job of authenticating applicants, and the cards themselves are not very tamper-resistant or difficult to forge. Therefore, making them valid national IDs just increases the motive to steal or fake them. National ID is a pathologically bad idea. But various branches of the Government won't give it up because the ways in which it is pathological are non-obvious. Crispin -- Crispin Cowan, Ph.D. Chief Scientist, WireX http://wirex.com/~crispin/ Security Hardened Linux Distribution: http://immunix.org Available for purchase: http://wirex.com/Products/Immunix/purchase.html Just say ".Nyet"
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