ID card plan pits privacy vs. security By ROBERT TANNER

Privacy advocates warn that the new federal standards for driver’s licenses will effectively create a national ID card, centralizing information that can be misused — by letting the government track the whereabouts of innocent people, for instance. Government officials say they’re just making the cards more secure, and that the worries are overblown. …

States can opt out — refuse to make changes to their driver’s licenses that will be required under the federal law — but then the licenses would be useless for any federal purpose, from getting benefits to boarding an airplane guarded by federal screeners. …

Many of the law’s specifics have yet to be decided. Will licenses include biometric information like fingerprints or retinal scans? Will “machine-readable” mean bar codes or radio frequency identification systems — in which a tiny computer chip transmits data and can theoretically be used to track location? …

Civil libertarians warn that the push to make the driver’s license the “gold standard” for ID will only make it easier to steal someone’s identity — and will increase the value of counterfeit licenses, undermining the hopes that these steps will provide better security. …

The biggest danger is that, as the nation becomes more security-minded, and relies more on driver’s licenses as ID, our society changes, Johnson said. “You just wind up being a nation where you have to show your papers to go anyplace. That’s something the American people have never put up with.”

Until the Radical Right conquered America through fear. mjh

Daily Howler: Amazing! One reporter penned the piece which should have been in every paper

Omigod–somebody did it! Somebody wrote the “fact check” report which should have appeared in every newspaper after Bush’s performance last Tuesday. “Bush exaggerates a few facts about Social Security,” said the headline–a headline which was excessively polite. But Rex Nutting actually spotted the news which came from Bush’s ballyhooed forum. Readers, when an American president convenes a big forum and proceeds to lie in the public’s face, that’s the biggest news story that day! As far as we know, only Nutting, among major scribes, bothered to sit down and write it.

Nutting is Washington bureau chief for CBS Marketwatch, and he seems to be the only reporter in that city with the nerve to tell the American people that their president is baldly dissembling. Here’s the opening of his report:

NUTTING (1/11/05): President Bush made several factual errors Tuesday about Social Security’s long-term financing problems at a photo op event designed to educate the public about the retirement system.

Bush vs. facts

Bush: “As a matter of fact, by the time today’s workers who are in their mid-20s begin to retire, the system will be bankrupt. So if you’re 20 years old, in your mid-20s, and you’re beginning to work, I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act now.”

The facts: The Social Security system cannot go “bankrupt,” for it has no creditors. By law, the trustees will continue to pay reduced benefits even if the trust fund is exhausted. Payroll taxes will continue to come in and benefits will continue to be paid.

According to the trustees’ intermediate economic forecast (neither doom nor boom), the trust fund will be able to pay about 73 percent of scheduled benefits in 2042 and about 68 percent of scheduled benefits in 2078.

Future presidents and Congresses could also choose to fully fund scheduled retirement benefits from general tax revenue. …

Bush: “Most younger people in America think they’ll never see a dime.”

The facts: Social Security says younger people will see a lot more than a dime. Their retirement benefits–even under a “flat-bust” system–will be significantly higher than today’s benefits in real terms.

For low-income Americans, currently scheduled benefits for those who retire in 2080 are $19,906 per year in 2004 dollars. If Social Security can pay only 68 percent of those benefits, that would be $13,536 per year, compared with benefits of $8,804 for low-income retirees who retired last year.

For the highest earners, Social Security is currently promising $53,411 per year for those who retire in 2080 (or $36,319 per year if Social Security can pay only 68 percent). Current maximum benefits are $21,891 per year for those who retired last year.

Nutting wrote the kind of report that should have appeared in every newspaper–and on every TV channel as well. When a president convenes a major forum and proceeds to make outrageous misstatements, that is the biggest news of the day. And the American people need to be told that this event has occurred. They deserve to be shown the actual facts. And they deserve to be told, quite directly, that their “president” has been misstating facts.

But only Nutting, at obscure CBS Marketwatch, sat down and wrote this obvious piece. Bigger scribes took a different approach, covering up for the powerful president.

http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?dist=&param=archive&siteid=mktw&guid=%7B6D56656B%2DD357%2D4082%2DBD70%2D35F6E6D0AA71%7D&garden=&minisite=