Policemen can pull up a variety of information from your driver's license number. Airports should be hooked up to the same systems, so that agents can identify that the name matches the license number and therefore the license is legitmate. This will prevent the use of fake ID's. If college students can fool bartenders, i'm sure terrorists can fool gate agents. Also Criminal history could be pulled and any red flags would automatically be thouroughly searched. Other countries could probably link their passport records to the system, and it would then recognize those passengers too. If someone does not have one of these forms of ID, they will just be subject to more thourogh search. If agents could scan the ID rather than entering in numbers, that would be even more effective.

Judging from much of what is written here, I am in the minority.

I for one, do not want to give up my anonymity, my privacy, my right to be free in my movements by giving the authorities any greater access to tracking my whereabouts. I don't want to have to produce my "papers" at various points during the day to any "official" who demands them. I do not want to be forced to prove that my intentions are not against the "people's interests" at every turn. One key to our freedom is that you have to be proven guilty and not the other way around. In places where where this tenet is not followed, people who can not give a good accounting of themselves can just disappear.

It ain't worth it, folks. Throughout the past century governments have shown themselves not not to be trusted, murdering hundreds of millions of their own peoples: Nazi Germany, Stalin and Lenin in the USSR, Maoist China, Iran, Iraq, and many, many others. One key to their ability to do this was their ability to limit the freedom of movement. I realize that we are long way from the likes of Lenin here in the US. But little by little we are being asked to give up our freedom in the name of security. Remember, the ultimate in security is a prison cell. I'm against volutarily giving government the key to my cell. Instead of asking for more sophisticated ID's that allow tracking and profiling of travelers, we should be fighting their being forced upon us.

Boatman

Sort of in this vein....when Attat's name was discovered and ran through the FBI's computers, he came up as a suspect in a bombing in Israel.

So, my question, is 1) Why was he allowed here in the first place? and 2) If so (because he was just a "suspect"), why in the world was he not being monitored?

Databases are nifty, but if not properly managed and coordinated they do little good evidently ;(

National ID cards are an outmoded idea that do not work, especially in these circumstances. Neither France nor Spain nor Germany have ever arrested any known terrorist based on his ID (and these countries have had ID's for years). In fact when they arrest terrorists, they find in something like 100% OF CASES that the terrorists have had one if not many fake ID's.

In fact, it is widely known that French police have abused the national ID for years by using it as a n excuse to harass and even jail anyone they want for any reason (no ID? 24 hours in prison if they so wish)