Good news on the National ID boondogle called “Real ID”.  New Hampshire is considering just saying no:

Last year, Congress passed the Real ID Act in an effort to curb terrorism.

That means by May 2008 all states must issue drivers licenses and ids that meet tougher federal standards laid out by the Department of Homeland Security.

Information on a ‘Real ID’ would include a person’s full name, date of birth, home address, physical features and arguably the most controversial aspect, some sort of bar or chip that can be read or scanned, much like a credit card.

All of that personal information would be stored on a database to be shared nationwide.

Republican Representative Neal Kurk ushered the measure to bar the state from adopting Real ID through the House last month.

He told the Senate Committee the new federal plan won’t enhance national security at all.

:55 … Remember the 9/11 terrorirsts were in this country legally and had legally obtained documents. The real id system will enhance government control and citizens will suffer. Perhaps that is why the Real ID Act is opposed by the Naitonal Governor’s Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, the conservative Cato Institute and the liberal ACLU.

Indeed, traditional political opponents find themselves on the same side of this issue.

Whether Republican, Libertarian or Democrat much of the criticism centered on privacy.

Some, like Jennifer Coffey with the gun rights group 2nd Amendment Sisters, worry about identity theft.

12:46 it creates a beautiful database that is easy to get into. If they get into the NH Liquor Store database and stole people’s names and credit cards. They got people’s names and address from Fidelity and social security. And those were much smaller databases.

Democratic Senator Iris Estabrook spoke of being tracked.

2:43 it doesn’t seem to me that as Americans we want to live with radio signals being omitted from our required ID cards. That doesn’t sound like America to me. And it doesn’t sound like something we need in order to have drivers licenses.

Opponents see Real ID as a first step to a national identification system that would require people to carry their papers even when walking their dog.

Republican Representative Steve Valincourt warned Senators similar systems haven’t worked out so well in other countries.

1:10 in the 1930’s we are told the Netherlands went to this type of system for national id…Of course late in the 30’s, some other people goose-stepped their way into the Netherlands, and all the work on National ID had been done.

Benjamin at reasonablenut asked this last month and I’m just now getting caught up with things enough to respond:

It’s a simple question, really: What constitutes the offense where you would not rely on the authorities?

-Rape/killing of your wife/girlfriend?

-Fucking with your kid in any way?

-Untowards aggressive action against your person?

-Targeting your specific property?

At what point do you say “fuck it”, and find and kill the motherfucker?

It’s only a little more than a hint in his post so I will explicitly spell it out.  This is not about stopping an attack in progress.  This is about truly “taking the law into your own hands”.  You are judge, jury, and executioner for someone you believe to be worthy of nothing more than pushing up daises.  What is the criteria that would cause you to disobey the law and take another human life because you thought it was the right thing to do?

Good question.  Timothy McVeigh had an answer.  I think his threshold and his execution were severely flawed however.  As he said while in prison awaiting “the needle” he should have read Unintended Consequences before, rather than after, destroying the Murrah Federal Building.

Mahatma Gandhi was faced with similar problems and used alternatives that Ben didn’t really want us to consider.  It’s not entirely fair to limit someone else in the solution a to particular problem but that is the way Ben has phrased it.  This is actually kind of a pet peeve of mine and Raymond has commented on this recently as well.  You really need to isolate what the problem is rather than focusing on the implementation of your solution.

If, in the cases above, the problem might be described as one of eliminating “a threat to society” it’s possible this can be accomplished in ways other than to directly murder them.  For example you might be creative enough to trick him into a gun battle with the police.  Long term those always go poorly for the individuals.  The last minutes of Bonnie and Clyde are particularly illustrative.  You might be clever enough to frame the scumbag with a crime the police are particularly interested in solving or the attack on a powerful drug dealer who have their own system of “justice” that achieves the desired results.

If the problem might be described as punishment rather than elimination of the threat then you might be able to eliminate their ability to be employed.  For example child porn on the computer of a grade school teacher pretty much means the end of that career.  When they get a new job exploit another vulnerability and eliminate that line of work.  Continue as needed until MacDonald’s won’t hire them because they are always vomiting on the job (syrup of Ipecac does remarkable things).

I guess what I’m really going to saying here is that similar to some of the other people Ben asked this same question I’m going to wimp out.  Not because I haven’t put a lot of thought into it but because I have put a lot of thought into it.  Basically we have a social contract that says we don’t take the law into our own hands.  If things reach the point where that social contract isn’t being fulfilled by the authorities then we have a different problem and the individual that really should be pushing up daises is probably much lower in the queue of people you need to be dealing with.  So with that in mind I would like to refer Ben to a different page of mine.  What is the threshold that you decide the social contract has been broken and needs to be “forcefully renegotiated”?