What good would it have been to know the names of Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, or the DC snipers before they were arrested? Palestinian suicide bombers generally have no history of terrorism. The goal is here is to know someone’s intentions, and their identity has very little to do with that.
And there are security benefits in having a variety of different ID documents. A single national ID is an exceedingly valuable document, and accordingly there’s greater incentive to forge it. There is more security in alert guards paying attention to subtle social cues than bored minimum-wage guards blindly checking IDs.
That’s why, when someone asks me to rate the security of a national ID card on a scale of one to 10, I can’t give an answer. It doesn’t even belong on a scale.
Bruce Schneier
April 1, 2004
A National ID Card Wouldn’t Make Us Safer
[See also my web pages on National ID Card Flaws.–Joe]
But wait, but wait!
I thought preemptive justice was the way of the future. Just like how making a law to include health records in background checks will instantly make the data appear with perfect accuracy, automatically (magically) indicate those that will become violent predators in the future, and also those that have not yet been diagnosed.
Self-defense is the old way, Mr. Huffman. Now our “safety” is being guarded by the social engineers. The new way is:
1. Preemptive justice
2. Excessive signage (This is a Bare-Fisted Defense Zone)
3. Harsh penalties for inanimate objects
If you don’t believe me, get the FBI UCR statistics and look at the increase in public safety and drop in crime against persons and property since the New Way has become the standard. No, that huge mountain in the graph is not the crime rate, it’s the public safety rate.