Quill pens, ink wells and ledger books

I saw a news story recently that I found interesting since it concerns a topic that I have been talking about with friends and relativities for some time now. It is one that we all should be thinking about in this day and age as it has a direct effect on our everyday lives.

What I'm talking about is the idea of a national identification card. The news story announced by our Secretary of State and the head of Homeland Security proposes that we make use of modern technology to replace the current passport for crossing the northern and southern land borders into the United States.

The implications of and the reasoning behind this plan are obvious even to those that don't follow current events in the news. I think it has more far reaching ramification's for our society than even its advocates realize. The issue of a national identity card had been debated for a number of years now and that debate has intensified is the post 9/11 world.

Like so many other matters in our country this one has become both political and polarizing. I see three major groups among our population. Two of them are firmly on one side of the issue or the other. There are a number of very sound arguments on both sides of the debate and I could easily become an advocate for either side. Civil liberties groups and privacy advocates want no part of this plan and see any attempt to initiate a national ID card as in incursion on fundamental rights by the government. Government agencies like Homeland Security, law enforcement and a large number of ordinary citizens view this as a reasonable measure to be taken to insure our safety and to thwart efforts by terrorists bent on visiting great harm or destruction on us.

Yet a third group either has no opinion one way or the other and it some cases is completely uninformed and disinterested in the topic. Many of these will be influenced by one of the two previously mentioned groups or the mass media who I believe tend to align themselves with the former of these groups rather than the latter. Since the initial proposal affects only border crossings I think this large middle group will remain uninterested for the time being most of them not being affected one way or the other by any changes in the law.

This will leave the debate about this first step toward what I think will eventually will become the de facto national ID card the subject of advocate groups on both sides of the issue. I hope that the average citizen will become more interested and offer input on the subject but at this point I am not optimistic.

The reason I find this topic so interesting is that I have long advocated a debate on what I feel is the core issue here. Are we going to make use of the technology available to our modern society or will we shun it due to fears of how it could be misused? This annoys me to no end because we continue to concentrate on selected parts of a given topic rather than make a decision on the core issue which would nullify these other matters one way or the other.

I tell my friends that years ago accounting was done by rooms full of men working at desks with ledger books making entries with quill pens dipped in ink wells. These armies of men have been replaced by computers making the work much faster and more efficient. It also opened up the means for fraud and theft that never existed with the old manual system. Also making any efforts of that nature by those so inclined much easier to perpetrate. While the more modern system has its problems I don't know of anyone who is advocating a return to the manual system because of them. First because it doesn't make any sense but more importantly because it would cause business and trade to grind to a halt in our modern society. We as a people have weighed the consequences of using this new technology and made a collective decision that despite its drawbacks it is in our best interest.

I feel much the same way about the national ID card. There are many ways that our nation could benefit from each individual having a unique identifier. An “electronic finger print” if you will. So many of the problems that I hear being discussed in the news such as voting fraud, identity theft just to mention a few could be resolved by such use of technology and computers.

I will be the first to admit that such a system has potential for being abused and that safe guards would have to be built into the system. If we are not yet there we are approaching a time when encryption and other technologies will make such a system manageable if one key component is addressed. That “key component” is you and I, the citizens of this country. It requires that we become involved enough to educate ourselves on the subject sufficiently to make an intelligent decisions about who we should trust to implement such a system and know the questions to ask to insure that there is proper oversight in its use.

I realize in this day and age when such a small percentage of the population bothers to exercise their right to vote that this may be asking a lot. I would at least like to have a public debate on the subject to weigh the advantages and disadvantages involved so that we can be proactive rather than reactive on the topic. If we do nothing eventually a situation will occur that will have us make a decision in haste and select the first solution offered which may not be the one best for our interests.