Background on AAMVA proposal, from Politech archives: http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=aamva
-Declan --- Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 17:48:47 -0400 From: James Plummer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: NCP: Privacy Villain of the Week: Sen. Durbin Privacy Villain of the Week: Sen. Durbin Sen. Dick Durbin (D - Ill.) held hearings this week <http://www.politechbot.com/p-03408.html> on his bill to standardize state drivers' licenses, a bill which would enable the fifty states, and, no doubt the federal government to swap, compare, and aggregate personal identification information into one large national ID database. Durbin opened the hearings by insisting this was "not a national ID." The Senate, as those earnest fellows on C-Span2 with beards and doctorates often tell us, is the greatest deliberative body in the world, a chamber of cooler heads who often function to quell the excess passions of the lower house. Perhaps that is why this space failed to cover a similar bill by Rep. James Moran, a bit of a hothead himself <http://www.jrnl.net/news/00/May/jrn7150500.html>, a couple months back. Or perhaps there's just so much privacy villainy afoot and only so many weeks a year. Regardless, the presence of such a bill in the Senate only a few months after the unveiling of the prototype by the "trade association" of state Motor Vehicle departments, the AAMVA <http://nccprivacy.org/handv/011206villain.htm>, is indeed troubling. Durbin's protestations notwithstanding, as the Free Congress Foundation's Brad Jansen pointed out <http://www.freecongress.org/centers/technology/ccl/020416Statement.htm> later in the hearings, "it looks like a national ID, walks like a national ID and quacks like a national ID." Centralizing such sensitive data makes it easier not only for governments and crooked government officials to keep track of citizens, but also sets up one single database that, once breached (or sold) would prove a virtual gold mine for direct marketers, identity fraudsters and every other bane of the consumer in between. And, of course, there is the canard that such an Orwellian scheme would "fight terrorism." An identity card is only as good as the information that goes into it and potential foreign terrorists with fingerprints not in any database and a bogus affidavit or utility bill could still get into the system. Or perhaps they could visit a local college campus where whizkids who want to hit the bars will undoubtedly have broken any "safeguards" within a few months. It would, as usual, be the law-abiding who suffer the greatest loss to privacy. It is too early to tell if Durbin (who not-so-coincidentally is quite keen on federal databases of firearm consumers <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34513-2002Apr11.html> as well) will get his ID scheme through the Senate. But it is not too early to say his support of the effort to put even more personal information at the disposal of federal databases and DMV workers makes him the Privacy Villain of the Week. The Privacy Villain of the Week and Privacy Hero of the Month are projects of the National Consumer Coalition's Privacy Group. For more information on the NCC Privacy Group, see www.nccprivacy.org or contact James Plummer at 202-467-5809 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] . To access this release directly, go to http://nccprivacy.org/handv/020425villain.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sign this pro-therapeutic cloning petition: http://www.franklinsociety.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------
