BURTON RIDGEWAY,

ON A NATIONAL ID CARD

And a national driver’s license

“ID cards are the primary tool of totalitarian governments.”
“So is leadership, law, regulations, control, the absence of laze faire anything, in so-called free societies!”
“Well, I mean control of movement.”
“ So an ID card that doesn’t restrict or keep account of movement would not be a tool of totalitarian governments.”
“Well, I still don’t like the idea, it’s an invasion of privacy!”

A national ID card has a frightening connotation to free people, but let’s not deal with connotation. If a card existed that could, in no way, be used for surveillance, personal accountability, political controls, or other intrusive purposes, there should be no objection to it - there will be, but there should not be.

We should use a national ID card to eliminate a known number (Social Security ) with which anyone can compile our movements and activities - marketers, or government.

A card should be issued to ALL individuals: workers, homemakers, children, permanent visitors, and street people. All births and death recorded. ( Assumption of a deceased’s identity, and identity-theft, should then be easily discoverable.)

This card must be issued free of charge.

Cities cannot reasonably compel landlords to verify legal residency. The only condition that would satisfy the Constitution ( but not those who want to erase our borders), is the Federal Government issuing evidence of legal residency, which, by definition, is a national ID card, because no card would not be issued to immigrants that is not issued to everyone. It would also be an ID card for the elderly, and the poor, who lack qualified Identification to vote.

With state-of-the-art technology, it is possible to have such a card with all the safety necessary: no threat to invasion of privacy, and no possibilities for surveillance, because the record in the computer would hold only basic facts not useful to anyone in regard to an individual. the computer would be unable to communicate with any other computer, except to say, “Yes”, or “No” to the questions:
1) Is this person real, and known to be in the U.S.?
(This card could possibly be Biometric, and issued to cross-border immigrants, as well. )

2) Any data required by the constitution for the national census.

This card would not *show* an ID number, but it must have our name, address, and picture on it, or it would not serve as an ID card for police stops, and doing business with government. We should not have to produce our drivers license when our a car is not involved, our SS# should not have to be produced to anyone but employers, IRS, the SSA.
Commercial transactions where the need for information to permit credit extension, and help find you if you skip out on a debt, is essential and should be left to each of us to decide if we want to reveal the information when applying; we should not *have* to.

I want this card to:
1)
Eliminate the general use of the Social Security number and our driver’s license, as ID, unconnected to the operation of a vehicle.
Currently, new laws are converting driver’s licenses into national ID cards. We must fight this; we must reverse it. Those who don’t drive get ID cards from the DMV, so there is an ID card! Driver’s licenses must be limited to the right to drive, nothing else.
Fight it! We should have a card limited to showing who we are, and that we have the right to be here. Nothing else. Co-mingle the purpose of any card, and we will find abuse an unavoidable result, as we already do.

Our privacy is outrageously invaded by internet search services, which, for a fee, will produce a report of a friend’s, neighbor’s, or stranger’s life - bank accounts, driving record, debts, etc., if you can provide his/her SS#, or driver’s license, in the name of commerce.
Availability and common use of such numbers must be eliminated.

The 2005 national security law requiring every applicant for a driver’s license to be confirmed as a legal resident is a good one-ideally, but realistically holds off a more efficient method of confirming legality, which is a genuine national ID card. There must be a single means of confirming legality of every soul in the country, managed by a single administration, not fifty-one.

2)
Confirm that a person is in the country legally, and to maintain an ongoing account of the population, which would eliminate the need for an eyeball-to-eyeball, belly button-to-belly button census count; even the sampling idea put forth to more accurately count minorities, new immigrants, and the homeless, is too expensive, and unnecessary.
The constitution does not require a census include the number of bathrooms, etc., so let this information be acquired in other ways. Business is given the benefits of census information. This should not be. Only data with which to know the number and make-up of the population, should be the only purpose of the census, to more fairly and accurately represent all citizens.
More reasons can be given for additional information to be included in the census than Democrats can find reasons for more taxes.

It would, of course, take time to discover every resident as the installation of the system progresses, but it will eventually do just that. I call your attention to my proposal for a national health insurance plan; such a program would bring in every resident who seeks medical care, which would generate a registration of that person, as well as the homeless, and vagrants, when dealing with police.
( I can hear the shrieks of the political paranoids as they read this. )

The census for the year 2000 had been estimated to cost 4.5 Billion, but actually cost us $6.5 Billion ; about $56 per resident.
( They had to hire 440,000 people to track down the millions who had not returned the form sent them. )
What a deal if that money were to go toward funding the Social Security trusts.

Imagine! The Supreme Court had insisted we do it the traditional way: a head count, one by one.
Ridiculous!
We could change that for 2010.

It was reported that 3.2 million minorities and poor people were not counted in the 2000 census, thereby depriving such communities of government funding for Medicaid, foster care, and other social services.
I don‘t know how anyone could know this; if they were not counted, how do they know these people exist? Did they discover which users of public services had not answered the census form?
If the card were to be used for the census count, then the computer would be programmed to produce the information needed, but still would not refer to individuals.

IF WE DISALLOW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PRIMARY TAXATION, WE WOULD NOT HAVE TO LOOK TO THEM FOR REDISTRIBUTION OF OUR MONEY.

If we changed the tax system ( see my Tax brief ), we would not need the census for “our rightful share.”
Bear in mind, wealthy states can’t ask for the same amount of money as their citizens paid, returned to them, for much of it is redistributed to not-so-wealthy states. Or is that being too reasonable?

All this can be avoided . . . most of the FIVE BILLION DOLLARS spent on the census can be saved with a card that maintains a daily, and as accurate-as-we-can-get count. Only a small part of the census money can be used to finance the installation of this system.
To repeat: any information on an individual would in no way be accessible to anyone, not even the person in control of the system. No one would have a number assigned to them that is known by any living entity; the computer would assign a series of numerals and letters to each person, with no possibility, or necessity of revealing it to anyone.

This is a fishing expedition to determine the degree of the interest, and hysteria, in connection with a card limited to the uses I’ve suggested. I see no problem with limiting our national assets to people with permission to be in this country. or producing statistical data for states to receive federal funds until such time as we wise-up and stop federal taxation of individuals.

What thoughts have you? If you tend toward hysteria, please take a tranquilizer before you type a word.
Oh! If you agree with me to any extent, on any point, please don’t leave it to those who disagree to be the only people who write me. You could add your voice instead of keeping your own council, giving me the impression that I stand alone.

As for a national driver license, I think state objections to one is based more on the loss of fee-income than state’s rights, and I don’t care what Tommy Jefferson had to say about federalism-he was an idiot!

WE INVITE YOUR COMMENTS. Please be civil.

© 1997 burtonridgeway@yahoo.com

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