<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by bxwatso:
Now, I am against the survelance society we have become, but I don't see how this new ID card is a further step toward Stalanism.</font>
Why Not Implant a Microchip?
Sound crazy? Well, it is. But as a thought experiment, it well illustrates how incremental incursions on liberty can lead to dramatic losses of privacy over time. Consider our experience with Social Security numbers.
People worried when the Social Security Act was passed in 1935 that the Social Security number (SSN) would become an all-purpose identifier--an understandable public response, at the time, to a rather dramatic institutional change. But government officials reassured the public that the SSN would not be used for any such purpose. Equally important, they showed restraint and only gradually expanded the federally mandated uses of the SSN--not mandating its use by other federal agencies until 1943. A step at a time, during the 1960s the SSN became the taxpayer identifier used by the IRS, the identifier for federal civilian and military personnel, the Medicare identifier, and more. In the 1970s Congress passed laws requiring the SSN's use for legally admitted aliens and anyone seeking federal benefits--and also gave the states free rein to use SSNs for identification purposes. A series of federal laws passed in the 1980s required the issuance of SSNs to ever-younger children if their parents wanted to claim them as dependents on federal tax forms--by age 5, age 2, age 1, now at any age. People got used to it.
[This message has been edited by tazi (edited 01-21-2003).]