There have been many pushes to centralize and standardize our individual identification data at the federal level. But when given the choice, American voters and their representatives have always rejected the idea of National I.D. Alas, that hasn't stopped the government with going ahead with it anyway.
In a new report published by the Cato Institute, Jim Harper of the Competitive Enterprise Institute details how a patchwork of state-level systems and programs that collect and share data already does everything the National I.D. proposals of the past ever hoped to, and is poised to do much more.
Harper's report identifies six different programs that in conjunction with each other can or already do provide federal, state, and local authorities with near-instantaneous access to huge amounts of identifying data. Combined, they form a de facto National I.D.
The most familiar (and also most complete) of these systems are the federal REAL ID driver's license standardization mandates and the E-Verify digital employment eligibility checks used by a number of states.
For those who have followed the years-long controversy over REAL ID, the report's most dismaying insight may be that the fight is essentially over. After years of resisting or refusing implementation of the Department of Homeland Security's REAL ID requirements, all 50 states are now in at least partial compliance.
The result, the report says, is a nationwide system in which "even a small-town sheriff in rural Georgia or Vermont could have access to a database of hundreds of millions of Americans' images." Between that and E-Verify, that sheriff could easily tie a face to a Social Security account—a National I.D. measure that voters have vociferously opposed, and that was rejected when it was proposed in the 1970s.
This de facto National I.D. becomes even more expansive when combined with a number of new technologies that states are starting to roll out. Harper discusses the possible combinations of REAL ID and E-Verify with the facial and license plate recognition technologies many states are already using, either in experimental or full-fledged forms.
It's troubling enough that a single license plate recognition unit bolted to a telephone pole on a small town's main street might allow Barney Fife to build an extensive record of residents' comings and goings with minimal effort, or that a facial recognition program tacked onto the New York Police Department's city-wide CCTV network could automatically track and log your walk from Harlem to Chelsea. But a world is fast approaching in which Barney and Bill Bratton can share that information with each other immediately, without any meaningful oversight or restriction.
The post National I.D. By Any Other Name Still Stinks appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>If immigration reform passes, life will get tougher for foreigners who want to come here illegally. Those trying to sneak in will face more agents, fences and drones. Those who slip through will find it harder to get work—thanks to a mandatory system to verify the legal status of all new hires.
But they'll have company in their misery. It may not have occurred to those who support stricter enforcement that the new system will affect anyone applying for a job. Under the proposed legislation, you will not be able to take employment without explicit federal authorization.
The online system, known as E-Verify, currently lets employers check that new employees are legally allowed to work in this country. Some states already mandate its use. But the immigration package now in the Senate would make it compulsory nationwide for every employer.
How would it work? When you get a new job, you'd have to provide your name, Social Security number and one or more documents to show that you are who you claim to be—such as a passport or a driver's license.
The employer would then enter the information, which goes into the E-Verify system to be compared against government records. If your documents appear to match, you would get permission to work. If not, you would get a "tentative non-confirmation" indicating that you don't qualify.
That may sound simple and painless for anyone who is here legally, and usually it is. But not always. In 2011, the federal Government Accountability Office reported that about one in every 400 submissions results in an erroneous disqualification.
Emily Tulli, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, estimates that in 2012, based on the apparent error rate, "160,000 workers had to contact a government agency to fix a database error or risk losing their jobs." Once every new employee has to go through E-Verify, the number will multiply.
The index of those deemed ineligible is the equivalent of the federal "no-fly" list, which has mistakenly barred infants and U.S. senators, as well as many people who were never told why they are excluded. But a "no-work" list is obviously far worse.
Most of us can manage to find food and shelter without ever getting on an airplane. Doing so without a job is not so easy. Those deprived of the opportunity to make a living would include a lot of native-born citizens as well as many people who were born elsewhere but have come here legally.
The victims can always challenge the decision, of course, but the burden is on them to prove their eligible status to some federal bureaucracy. It can take weeks or months to correct an error. In the meantime, the employer may decide the unfortunate applicant is too much trouble and hire someone else.
"A survey of immigrant workers in Arizona found that a third were fired immediately after receiving a tentative non-confirmation," says the ACLU, "and not one was notified by the employer that they had the right to appeal the E-Verify ruling—even though that notification is required." So even if the problem is fixed, the damage is done.
It would be bad enough if the immigration bill merely compelled universal use of E-Verify. But it creates another requirement that carries ominous potential. It mandates the use of a new means of verifying identity. Virtually everyone would have a photo in the federal archive, and it would be compared with the photo on the identification you provide, to confirm you didn't steal someone's identify.
Here, skeptics fear, there is more than meets the eye. They regard this provision as a big step toward a national ID card that would be essential for everyone. By requiring a government-approved photo ID to be used for verifying identity for purposes of employment anywhere in America, the measure may effectively create a national ID system—even as it disavows any such purpose.
Once it has become common for employment, its use could easily expand. Why not use it for voting? For gun purchases? For boarding an airplane? For access to unemployment insurance or other government programs? Social Security numbers originally were not supposed to be used for identification—yet today they are, all the time.
This new approach may or may not contribute to discouraging illegal immigration. But it's pretty certain that in the end, our sphere of privacy and autonomy will shrink, and government power will grow.
The post How Immigration Reform Will Harm U.S. Citizens appeared first on Reason.com.
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