[IP] NYTimes.com Article: Op-Ed Columnist: May I See Your ID?
Op-Ed Columnist: May I See Your ID?
March 17, 2004
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Someday we'll look back with shame at the infringements of
civil liberties in the last few years.
There's been a broad pattern of injustice to individuals
(mostly Muslims) in the name of protecting security for the
rest of us. Think of the detention of more than 1,200
Muslim immigrants in the U.S., the jailing of children in
an extralegal zone in Guantánamo, and the unending
imprisonment, without access to lawyers, of "enemy
combatants," even when they are American citizens.
But that ground has been well poked over. For me, the
tougher question is whether there are some areas where we
should be more aggressive about sacrificing our liberties.
In fact, I think there are two where we could significantly
increase our security with a negligible cost in freedom.
First, we should adopt a national ID card. Surprisingly,
this is anathema to many conservatives. If the right is
willing to imprison people indefinitely and send young
people off to die in Iraq in the name of security, then why
is it unthinkable to standardize driver's licenses into a
national ID?
More than 100 nations have some kind of national ID card.
And the reality is that we're already moving toward a
government ID system - using driver's licenses and Social
Security numbers to prove who we are - but they neither
protect our privacy nor stop terrorists. Instead, they
simply promote identity theft.
At least seven of the Sept. 11 hijackers, some living in
Maryland hotels, managed to get Virginia ID cards or
driver's licenses, which can be used as identification when
boarding planes. Americans routinely travel to and from
Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean with just a driver's
license.
Some U.S. officials privately fret that security may depend
on a harried immigration officer in Maine who is handed a
forged Guam or North Dakota driver's license. One
undercover federal study underscored the vulnerability last
year by using off-the-shelf materials to forge documents
that were then used to get driver's licenses in seven
states and the District of Columbia. The forgeries worked
in each place attempted.
So why not plug this hole with a standardized,
hard-to-forge national ID card/driver's license that would
have a photo, a fingerprint and a bar code that could be
swiped to check whether the person is, for example, a
terror suspect who should not be allowed onto a plane? We
could simultaneously reduce identity theft and make life
tougher for terrorists.
The other area where I'd like to see a tougher approach has
to do with "cookbooks" to make anthrax, sarin and other
chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Over the last few
years, I've collected a horrifying set of booklets,
typically sold at gun shows or on the Internet, detailing
how to make mustard gas, VX, anthrax or "home-brew nerve
gas."
"One of the greatest feelings in the world is knowing you
have the technology to wipe out your whole neighborhood,"
one booklet declares.
Another book says: "Nerve gases have been called `the poor
man's atom bomb,' with good reason. They make the World War
I gases look like kid's stuff. I'm sure you'll be surprised
how easy to make and use these little gems are." It offers
advice on how to distribute the nerve gas to devastate a
city, "using one or more ultralight aircraft."
In fact, biological and chemical weapons are not quite that
easy to make or use. But a cult or terrorist group,
particularly if a member had a background in chemistry,
could make sarin, just as the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan
did before releasing it in the Tokyo subways in 1995.
Sure, I cherish the First Amendment. But remember what
Alexander Bickel, the eminent First Amendment scholar, told
the Supreme Court when he argued on behalf of this
newspaper in the Pentagon Papers case. Pressed by the
justices on whether publication could be blocked if 100
Americans would certainly die as a result, he reluctantly
agreed: "I am afraid that my inclinations to humanity
overcome the somewhat more abstract devotion to the First
Amendment."
W.M.D. cookbooks present such an exceptional situation.
They have as little free-speech value as child pornography,
and they are more dangerous. We have been largely spared
chemical and biological attacks because the knowledge
needed to make effective weapons hasn't been easy to get.
Now in these cookbooks we're seeing "information
proliferation" that empowers terrorists.
In these exceptional circumstances, we are - I hate to
admit it - better off banning books.
E-mail: nicholas@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/opinion/17KRIS.html?ex=1080520831&ei=1&en=f52f2a1159ba3041
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