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12�15�01: Big Daddy
By Isaac Peterson
December 15, 2001�A New York state senator is bringing up a bad idea that has been
killed several times in the past and deserves another stake through the heart once and
for all.
Roy Goodman is a member of a special anti-terror committee that was created after
September 11. The committee came up with about 50 ideas to fight terrorism in this
country, and the national ID card was one of the ideas.
The subject has come up before, and hasn�t been adopted. In 1971, the Social Security
Administration Task Force considered turning Social Security cards into national ID
cards. In 1973, the Health and Human Services department decided not to push for it,
and so did the Federal Advisory Committee on False Identification in 1976. The Carter,
Reagan, and Clinton administrations were not in favor of it, and to its credit so far,
the present Bush administration hasn�t favored it either.
But some members of the House and Senate are fans of this turkey of an idea. It�s had
the support of Dick Gephardt, George Gekas (of Clinton impeachment fame), Mary Bono
(Mrs. I Got You Babe), and Dianne Feinstein. She has said the ID should contain
people�s photographs, fingerprints and retina scans. Others want the cards to contain
every bit of information known about a person.
They may be interested in the IDs because of Larry Ellison, the CEO and chairman of
Oracle. He said �We need a national ID card with our photograph and thumbprint
digitized and embedded in the ID card. We need a database behind that, so when you�re
walking into an airport and you say that you are Larry Ellison, you take that card and
put it in a reader and you put your thumb down and that system confirms that this is
Larry Ellison.� He even offered to provide the software at no charge.
Fine Larry, get one, but leave me out of it. Here�s why:
1. Centralized information;
2. Profiling, especially racial;
3. Potentially harsh penalties for failing to have one at any time;
4. A national ID would basically be a domestic passport.
Right now, information about me, and every one of us is in lots of computers all over
the country. Who knows how many? If you you own a home, car, property, stocks or
bonds, you�re in some computer database. If you have health coverage, a job, a 401K,
or life or homeowners insurance, you�re in some computer database. If you�ve applied
for credit, have credit, ever been sued, or ever been arrested, you are in some
computer database somewhere. And guess what? If the FBI doesn�t have a file onyou, but
you write and ask them if you do, they will be more than happy to start one. There is
just no way to know how many computers already have information about you and me.
Now, if we had national ID cards, a lot of that information scattered all over
creation and beyond will be in a central database. The plans I�ve heard floated call
for the little magnetic strips (like the ones on credit cards), to hold an awful lot
of information about you. And all that info would be kept in one place. I have to
wonder if there would be any provision to find out just what information is on the
card we would be forced to carry around.
And, with all the other garbage that�s been tossed around that�s �for our own good�
since 9/11, I have to wonder about this one�these are a lot of the same people who
holler about the government having no business in our lives. And they�ve been the
first ones who�ve come up with all those great ideas we hear about that tell me they
don�t care about us or the Constitution. All that information in one place . . . this
isn�t about making anything easier or safer for us, it�s about making it easier for
them.
Would we have the right to know exactly what information about us would be on the
cards, and whether the information is correct? How would we know? We probably wouldn�t
be able to find out. But if we could find out, would we have the right to demand that
incorrect information gets changed? And in a system that would have to be networked to
the extent this one would have to be, my money has to go on things getting screwed up.
Think about it. How many new bureaucrats would we need? Who would oversee and
coordinate what all these people are doing? What quality control would there be? Some
people want these cards to eventually take the place of Social Security cards, ATM and
debit cards, you name it. How do we get there without massive screwups?
If it doesn�t sound like all that big a deal, think about this: right now, when your
credit card is lost or stolen, you have to go through loads of crap to get it
replaced. Same with other cards we use all the time. But if we lose a national ID,
think of all the kinds of fresh hell we could be looking at, with all the information
on that card, and we really wouldn�t even know what all the information on the card
was. Think of the times you�ve read about hackers breaking into computers, even
government and military ones, and I hope I don�t have to press my point too hard. My
point is that these could take identity theft to the next level.
And some countries that already have them report that a small percentage of employees
with access to the database have been caught selling information on cardholders. So,
we would need to figure out some way to build safeguards against that in as well.
Racial profiling would move from an art to a science. The guy in New York proposing
the cards said national ID cards �would eliminate all racial profiling.� He didn�t say
how. He was possibly too high from whatever he had been smoking to explain that one.
�Well, Isaac, howcum you don�t think ID cards would end racial profiling?�
Well, to a lot of us, law enforcement hasn�t exactly been Officer Friendly. A routine
traffic stop for minorities is a different routine than most of you are used to. I�ve
had my car impounded for not having my driver�s license with me. And I had an officer
torment me because on another occasion he would not believe that my ID was a real,
state issued ID. (I wasn�t doing anything illegal or wrong either time. Except if you
count being a black guy. And I�ve had other arbitrary run-ins.) If we had national
ID�s, we�d probably have the same requirement as now, that we need them in our
possession all the time. I don�t have any trouble believing the penalty for not having
it would be worse than what the state can do right now. In countries that already have
national IDs, the police have the authority to detain someone for 24 hours. I don�t
have any trouble believing that some in law enforcement would ask for the card hoping
someone had left home without it. These cards would make it easier to discriminate.
What I just talked about was the local Barney Fife variety cops. I don�t even want to
think about feds.
And since the cards would hold records of where you�ve been, police would have plenty
of incentive to demand a card, hoping to find something in your record you�ve done
somewhere else. I can see how these cards could open up all kinds of fishing
expeditions, looking for some reason to make someone�s life just a little bit less fun
than it already is. So no, I don�t see how national ID cards would end racial
profiling.
The people who want these things say they would be a tool to fight terrorism, but I
have my doubts about that, too. These cards would supposedly be impossible to fake,
but if our government can make them, how long do you think it would be before someone
like Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden could find out how to make them? When Australia
issued theirs, it was only two months before the first forgery was found.
And the last thing is that the cards would be, in some ways, a domestic passport. It
would be a record of where you�ve been that you�ve had to produce the card, and that
would give the federal government a way to track where we�ve been, terrorist or not.
And don�t forget, the government is the one who gets to decide whether you�re a
terrorist.
Tom Campbell, who used to be a congressman from California said �I strongly oppose a
national ID card. If you have an ID card, it is solely for the purpose of allowing the
government to compel you to produce it. This would essentially give to the government
the power to demand that we show our papers. It is a very dangerous thing. The card
could be used by police to track travel movements or to single out people with
unpopular views or certain ethnic backgrounds for surveillance.�
You can tell me I�m paranoid, and I�ll tell you there are too many people working too
many hours of overtime to give me reasons to feel that way. Since 9/11, too much of
what is coming from the top has not a thing to do with catching terrorists or keeping
us safe, despite what they�re telling us. Military tribunals, USA Patriot Act,
expanded police powers, expanding wiretaps, searching homes and computer hard drives
without warrants or notification�all the ideas that are law or that are still just
being talked about are making us a police state. And most of this stuff Ashcroft
wanted to do before September anyway. You can tell me I�m an alarmist, and I�ll just
tell you why I�m alarmed.
So, to put all of the above another way:
1. The idea smells worse than a bucket of catfish out in the sun all day at a Willie
Nelson concert.
2. For fighting terrorism, national ID cards would be as useful as a football bat.
These cards would be the latest tool for invading our privacy and having the
government in our lives. Our government would go from Big Brother to Big Daddy.
Isaac Peterson may be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Copyright � 1998�2001 Online Journal�. All rights reserved.
You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of
the content.
12�15�01: Media distorted Florida court ruling to invent Bush victory
By Nancy Kuhn
December 15, 2001�In its ongoing effort to aid and abet George W. Bush�s illegal
occupation of the White House, the corporate-owned, pro-Bush media sunk to a new low
in their desperation to hide the truth that Al Gore got the most votes in Florida and
clearly won the 2000 presidential election.
In its much ballyhooed count of the undervoted Florida ballots, the media consortium
that hired the respected National Opinion Research Council (NORC) to inspect some
170,000 ballots promised to prove once and for all who won Florida and thereby the
2000 presidential election. The problem was that the media consortium didn�t like the
results of what NORC found. And even when the consortium applied the rules each of the
67 counties said they would have used in determining the intent of the voters, the
result was inescapable: Al Gore won.
The way the media consortium hid this truth was to distort the Florida Supreme Court�s
ruling. The media consortium didn�t include in its recount a several thousand legal
undervotes for Al Gore in Broward and Palm Beach counties that the Bush campaign had
illegally blocked the canvassing boards in these counties from tallying. When these
legal Gore votes are added to the vote totals, Gore wins under all scenarios,
including in the counties where Gore had requested manual recounts.
What the media consortium failed to report was what the Florida Supreme Court�s ruling
actually said. The Florida high court�s ruling clearly called for �the counting of all
uncounted votes where the intent of the voter is clear.�
With the revelation by Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff of the existence of emails
sent by Terry Lewis, the judge assigned to oversee the counting of the uncounted
ballots, instructing the counties to also count the overvotes where the intent of the
voters was clear, it�s inescapable that Judge Lewis knew that the Florida Supreme
Court wanted all uncounted votes where the intent of the voters was clear to be
counted.
The truth is, there are no scenarios that George W. Bush would have won under had the
U.S. Supreme Court not stopped the counting of legal votes in Florida. The Florida
Supreme Court�s ruling is what the law was in Florida in 2000 and the Florida Supreme
Court was exercising its authority to settle a disputed election�authority that it had
clearly been given by the Florida legislature. Despite this evidence, the media
consortium clearly lied in order to invent a Bush victory and hide the truth that Al
Gore won the election.
By stopping the manual recount, the U.S. Supreme clearly trampled Florida election
law. In addition, five of the justices in fact set aside the votes of every American
who cast ballots for president and substituted their own, thereby inventing an
authority for themselves that the Constitution does not give them. Contrary to the
media consortium�s clearly false headlines, there�s no question that the actions of
these felonious five U.S. Supreme Court judges inescapably changed the outcome of the
2000 presidential election, not only in Florida but nationwide, and clearly trampled
the will of the people who chose Al Gore to be their president.
The reason I was able to uncover this media lie is the fact that I lived in Florida
for 16 years and I volunteered on numerous election campaigns when I lived there.
Because of my experience, I know the disputed territory and Florida election law
extremely well. It�s absolutely crucial that we expose the lies of the media
consortium and get the truth out to everyone that Al Gore won the 2000 election and
that there�s an illegal occupant in the White House.
Copyright � 1998�2001 Online Journal�. All rights reserved.
You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of
the content.
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