Jun 29, 2012 -- 11:04PM, mountain_man wrote:

Jun 29, 2012 -- 10:31PM, rangerken wrote:

Picuture IDs work...simple as that.

No, they do not. Not everyone has one or can get one. These voter ID laws are nothing but a way to keep the poor and minorities from voting. They have absolutely nothing to do with stopping a crime that is so rare it's only been prosecuted a few times a decade. Voting is a Constitutional right. They should be trying to make it easier to vote, not harder.

>>>>> Still the system is not working properly.

Jun 29, 2012 -- 10:31PM, rangerken wrote:

Picuture IDs work...simple as that.

Ken

So we can sign you up for a national ID card then? Because that's the only way to do this fairly.

I'd be happy with a national id card, with no automatic benefits at all.

I don't think the Nazi analogies are entirely fair. Many nations have national ID cards, such as Germany, Canada and Holland. None of them are significantly less free than the USA.

Personally, I'm ambivalent on them. I can see both the arguments for and against. Setting up an ID card system can be incredibly expensive (estimates for setting up such a system here run between £60 and £90 per citizen). Although it's not necessarily a threat to liberty and privacy, it has the potential to become one if misused (although, as noted, many nations have them and manage to avoid it). But it also provides an absolute proof of identity and while not entirely immune from fraud and identity theft, it's likely to reduce such incidences. And it would have to be free (or rather, funded through taxes) to avoid it becoming a default poll tax.

The BDFL already ordered universal healthcare and such a card can be used to combine national medical cover, passport, voting ID and so on in one card. The way I envisioned it, the national database which the cards would be administered through would have notes added to citizen's entries. So, for example, it could contain your medical records so, if you collapse in the street, the paramedics just need to swipe your card to find out if you have a history of, say, heart problems or a cop could swipe your card to know if your driver's license is valid. Obviously, A) individuals such as a cop or a paramedic would only have access to the relevent entries on your record; B) access to the full database would be very strictly limited; C) you would have full access to your own records at any time and for any reason and D) there would have to be a very robust system for correcting errors in a timely fashion.

Also, we have to remember two things: Firstly, that a world where your DNA is scanned for purposes of verifying your identity is not very far away and secondly, that records similar to the one I outlined above are already in use by private companies. Anyone seen Minority Report? That world is not at all far away. We need to decide what we're doing about it now or others will decide it for us.