When children are especially young, parents often attempt a tactic that fails to work once the child reaches a certain age of cognitive competence. The technique involves manipulating the child into believing that it wants what it is being given ““ usually medicine or some other unsavory item.
On Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff used the tactic on the American public at large.
In reference to the administration’s newest money plundering idea, “Real ID,” he told members of the National Press Club that it is time “to get the kind of secure identification that I am convinced the American public wants to have.”
The program is an attempt to create a uniform national identification card. Administration claims that it will secure our nation from terrorist-minded illegals and speed up the screening process at airports and border(s), are so unconvincing that “the American public” would be want of reason to want it.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the ID’s will have a digital photo or imprint, but not previously proposed radio-controlled computer chip. The technology is supposedly impossible to fake.
The Real ID Act of 2005 was originally a response to the attacks of Sept. 11 but is now also seen as a tool in preventing illegal immigrants from passing as legal residents.
However, that a single ID would be able to stop illegal immigrants from entering the country is not the only questionable claim of the program.
The Washington Post reported that the plan was originally slated to cost states 14 billion dollars, a staggering number that was almost immediately reduced to a “mere” 3.9 billion after 17 states voiced their intent to be noncompliant should the Real ID plan come to fruition.
Chertoff’s “American public” is left deciding whether it’s more ridiculous to inflate a federal program by more than 10 billion dollars, or that 3.9 billion dollars is supposed to be seen as a reasonable figure for superfluous documentation.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the adjusted figure is eight dollars per ID.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the price cut has apparently done little to ease the disgruntled states, as 29 of them have introduced legislation that would prevent them from complying with the federal mandate.
Six states had actually already passed such legislation as of the end of their respective Friday sessions.
That national security would be protected by a new ID is a generally weak claim. The legitimacy of Chertoff’s assertions that the ID’s would be impossible to counterfeit is effectively nothing more than political conjecture “”mdash; there is no way to know what hackers are able to penetrate until it is on the market.
Given that the administration’s proposed ID’s would have digital information ranging from birth certificates to Social Security numbers to home addresses, the short term national security benefits (before unsavory characters crack the system just as they have with conventional drivers’ licenses), are seriously outweighed by the loss in identity security.
The ID’s are to roll out across America between 2011 and 2017, but states are required to seek waivers by May 11 if they are planning to be noncompliant. In this clash between state and federal ideology, it will be citizens who suffer.
The administration says that after the May 11 deadline, any American from a noncompliant state who travels at a domestic airport would face “a vigorous secondary screening process.”
As if airport lines, tensions and tempers are not already tenuous enough, the administration is foolhardy in its attempt to use citizen convenience as a threat aimed at inducing state cooperation.
Students traveling home for breaks, commuting businessmen and women, and family visitors do not deserve to face increased federal red tape.
Illegal immigration, national security and airport expediency are certainly pressing issues relevant to the American public.
As such, they deserve to be dealt with through equally serious measures.
Attempting to curb illegal immigration or increase in national security through the exposure of public information may sound nice when Chertoff makes the public think they want it, but it ultimately fails on all levels ““ fiscal responsibility, logistical plausibility and common sense.
Rather use your fake ID than Chertoff’s “Real ID?” E-mail Makarechi at kmakarechi@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.