So, I’d seen bits and pieces about a silly scheme supported by Sens. Schumer and Graham to create some sort of national worker ID card, but I didn’t think such a bad idea would make it into legislation. Well, it’s apparently part of the immigration reform package:
The national ID program would be titled the Believe System, an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment. It would require all workers across the nation to carry a card with a digital encryption key that would have to match work authorization databases.
“The cardholder’s identity will be verified by matching the biometric identifier stored within the microprocessing chip on the card to the identifier provided by the cardholder that shall be read by the scanner used by the employer,†states the Democratic legislative proposal.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a civil liberties defender often aligned with the Democratic Party, wasted no time in blasting the plan.
John Cole reacts appropriately:
Apparently they think the outcry over the Arizona “SHOW YOUR PAPERS†bill is that it will only be applied to Hispanics. Polls pretty clearly demonstrate that half the country has no problem with the Arizona bill because it will not affect them- it only is an inconvenience for “others†(meaning brown people). But start talking about a national id with biometric data that everyone has to be issued, and you will think the death panels and health care reform debate were a walk in the park.
And I’m not even talking about the actual merits and downsides to the id card. I’m talking about the freak-out that will be inevitable, some of which I will probably even agree with. This is just stunningly tone deaf.
I’ve talked about the merits (or lack thereof) of national ID cards. What an incredibly stupid move.
