Barry Steinhardt from the ACLU sends along these relevant links: http://www.aclu.org/news/2002/n021102c.html http://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy/AAMVA_Speech.html The Progressive Policy Institute (linked with the Democratic Leadership Council) wants licenses to become microchip-implanted smartcards holding not just retinal scans or fingerprints --- but also "food stamps, voter registration, library cards, hunting and fishing licenses" and a wealth of corporate data like E-Z-Pass, gas station automatic billing, and banking information. (http://ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=140&subsecid=290&contentid=250175) The PPI dismisses privacy concerns thusly: "A small but vocal fringe of special interest civil liberty and privacy groups has already begun to demagogue the issue in the media. Countering such misinformation and paranoid scenarios about 'tracking' the movements of citizens will take a patient and and concerted education effort." -Declan --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50418,00.html DMVs Pushing for Standard License By Declan McCullagh (declanat_private) 2:00 a.m. Feb. 15, 2002 PST WASHINGTON -- Your driver's license soon may become a lot smarter, and a lot more worrisome. State motor vehicle agencies want Congress to standardize the license, share more driver data between states and mandate techniques such as biometrics to "uniquely identify" each of America's 228 million drivers. The group behind the push for what critics derisively call a "national ID" is the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA), which met last weekend in Arlington, Virginia, to figure out how to talk Congress into handing them $100 million for the project. On Monday, AAMVA arranged for buses to take conference-goers to Capitol Hill for a day of lobbying legislators. Welcome to the latest tug of war, post-Sept. 11, between security and privacy. The AAMVA's fans in Washington note that four of the five hijackers who crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon had fraudulent identifications, while detractors argue that standardizing drivers' licenses is tantamount to a national ID card in all but name -- and un-American in any form. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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