Nowhere to hide

OK, I'm an anti-war, Jewish, democrat who has, in her life, had a warrant out for her arrest for non-payment of a traffic ticket. That was years ago and I'm no longer a wanted woman, just so you know. These are the facts about me, printed freely here, but I don't want to carry them around on a card that has data about my retinal scan on it, too.

I've been reading Running Scared, again, this morning. He talks about this New York Times article discussing the possibility of a "national ID card". It all springs out of a discussion regarding forms of ID, and having standard

"documentation required to obtain a driver's license, and the data the license would have to contain".

What I want to know is, if we ostensibly all have Social Security cards, why would we need *another* national ID? Is it so there's more of my information available to the government in more places? Jazz makes a point, and he's right, that they can already find us if they want to, but things like this make me immediately not want to be found. I keep having flashes in my head of Nazi soldiers saying, "Papers!". At the very least, I'm thinking that it's a telemarketer's treasure trove.

I know that there are good reasons to support this, but I also know that there are way too many people in the world who would find a way to abuse the information. What would someone know about me by scanning my ID card? How much of it is their business? Can they discriminate against me because of it? I see the possibilities for misuse and it makes me nervous. In theory I don't totally disagree with making the ID documents required to obtain a driver's license standardized; indeed, that might make it easier to know what the heck you have to bring with you if you go renew, but the data that the license contains, well, that's the part that makes me nervous.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches
and seizures, shall not be violated..
— Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

"People asking to see your ID before you travel isn't unreasonable", you say? I say, "What does that open the door for?". The founding fathers came here to set up a free society, the likes of which the world had never seen before. Does the threat of terrorism strike more fear into your heart than the fear of despotism? You can't let your foot off the brake on issues like these, because if you do, before you know it, you're rolling uncontrollably backwards down the hill.