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