PRESIDENT BUSH “does not support a national ID card,” a White House aide says. And, contrary to popular belief, he’s never proposed one, even in the form of national standards for state driver’s licenses. The National Strategy for Homeland Security, issued by the White House last April, merely suggested states could adopt stiffer, uniform standards–not that the president was pushing the idea, mind you. House Majority Leader Dick Armey has twice killed any manner of national ID, most recently by inserting a flat prohibition in the House version of the homeland security bill. Nor is the Senate seriously contemplating a national ID card, even one limited to non-citizens. The homeland security legislation on the Senate floor this week avoids the subject entirely. Washington has its head in the sand on a national ID, raising again the question of whether the Bush administration and Congress are truly serious about fighting a domestic war on terrorism. The administration opposes arming pilots, a sure deterrent to hijackers (Congress, wisely, may overturn that decision). Ethnic profiling at airports is also outlawed, leaving us with a dysfunctional security system that harasses ordinary passengers without providing real security against terrorists. No, a national ID card isn’t the solution to the entire terrorist problem, and a system of ID cards wouldn’t be foolproof, though it would be as close to foolproof as is scientifically possible. But it would enhance security enormously, which is all the more urgently needed in the absence of armed pilots and profiling. How would it help? A national ID card, issued on the basis of serious proof of identity, would do what a driver’s license or a Social Security card cannot: provide virtual certainty that the holder is who the card says he is. It would do this through a biometric device–whether based on fingerprints or retinal pattern or, someday, on DNA. If the card holder were in the United States on a visa, the card would expire on the day the visa runs out. Someone here illegally wouldn’t have a national ID card in the first place. Such a card would link with criminal record retrieval systems and immigrant or terrorist watch lists. It would be extremely difficult to tamper with. It would replace the practices that made it scandalously easy for the September 11 hijackers to board airplanes in Boston and New York and Washington. Five of the 19 terrorists had obtained Social Security numbers with false identities, the Washington Post reported. The other 14 “probably made up or appropriated other numbers and used them for false identification,” the Post quoted Social Security officials as saying. What makes Social Security cards so important is that they can be used to obtain driver’s licenses, which are all but universally accepted as valid identification. Driver’s licenses are notoriously easy to obtain. Some states don’t even require Social Security cards. Seven of the hijackers had Virginia state ID cards, despite the fact they lived in Maryland motels. A few months after September 11, federal authorities broke up a Virginia ring that had created hundreds of false IDs for foreigners from Muslim countries. A national ID card would make such fraud immeasurably more difficult to commit, while making it easier for most Americans to go about their business at airports and the multitude of other places where identification is routinely requested. The major objection to a uniform card is that it curbs our freedom. It does not. It may reduce our privacy, but not much more than has already occurred because of credit cards, bank accounts, electronic toll passes, movie rental cards, car rentals, phone usage, driver’s licenses, voter registration, and airline records–all of which are readily available to investigators. And each American has a number we now get at birth and carry through life: our Social Security number. Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard Law professor who favors a voluntary national ID card, concedes there’s “a question of the right to anonymity.” But he argues cogently that we can’t “afford such a right in this age of terrorism” and, besides, the Constitution has never recognized a right to anonymity. It’s a sad fact that much of the opposition to a national ID card comes from conservatives and that the root of that opposition is hard to distinguish from paranoia. Armey, an otherwise sensible conservative, insists a national ID card or even national standards for a driver’s license are “more suited to a police state than to a free country.” When he first blocked a card in 1999, he declared it “a classic victory over Big Brother.” Phyllis Schlafly wrote last year, a month after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, that a national ID card smacks of the requirement in totalitarian countries that citizens present “papers” on demand to government officials. This concern is shared by leftist ACLU types and right-wing libertarians. Their fears are misplaced, especially in decentralized and democratic America. “An identity card is not tyranny,” as Thomas Donlan of Barron’s has written. “It is an identity card.” A number of measures that stop short of a national ID card have been proposed. One is a national traveler’s card that would be voluntary and would speed legitimate passengers through airports. Republican congressman John Culberson of Texas has offered legislation to create this card. The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators has called for uniform state driver’s licenses. Like a traveler’s card, this is a good idea. But neither goes far enough. If a credible, trustworthy system of identification is what’s needed–and it surely is–then why stop short of that? The most recent poll shows 70 percent of Americans favor a national ID card. At the moment, the president and a majority in Congress are spooked by a few cranks and ideological groups. They should brush aside essentially frivolous objections and install a national ID system now. –Fred Barnes, for the Editors
