Thanks But No Thanks, Larry Ellison

While much has been said about those who engaged in "price-gouging" in the wake of last month's terrorist attacks, perhaps the most self-serving response has been Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's offer to donate free software to the federal government for the development of a central national identification database.

It is not difficult to imagine how this generosity would ultimately yield financial gains for Oracle, though it would be amusing to see Ellison's offer accepted by the same federal government that brought anti-trust cases against Bill Gates for giving Internet Explorer to consumers for free. In this instance, we would all pay for Ellison's charity by opening ourselves up to government abuse and diminished civil liberties.

Having to fork over your papers to the authorities is characteristic of Nazi Germany and South Africa under apartheid, but not of a free constitutional republic. First, though this may seem a remarkably passe' concern, the federal government has absolutely no constitutional authority to require American citizens to carry a national ID card or to maintain a central database containing Americans' identities. A government unconstrained by the Constitution is not one that should be trusted with its citizens' identity information. The Constitution should not be a casualty of September 11, 2001.

So what, asks US News and World Report columnist Randall E. Stross. Only a society of hermits and self-sufficient farmers can be secure without a national ID card, accompanied by a digitized photograph and fingerprint. "If there's a prolonged debate over national identity cards," wrote Stross in the October 8 issue, "I hope it will not run along the old ruts, the individual's interests versus the state's. This vital matter is really between citizen and fellow citizen, the obligations of community members to one another." Just add three words (for the children) and we have now unassailably justified any conceivable expansion of government.

Never is it asked precisely how the National ID card would have stopped the recent terrorist attacks, because all known participants entered the country legally. Note also the assumption that a national ID card could not be falsified, a laughable assertion in the face of contemporary technology. The national ID card is simply an unconscionable invasion of privacy that counterfeiters would be able to reproduce as effectively as current forms of identification, in time if not already.

Stross repeats the most popular counter-argument of the pro-ID crowd to the question of privacy: It's too late to worry about that, because in this digital age the private sector already has your identity on file. "Yet these are outside our oversight," writes Stross. "A federal identity database, however, would be ours, accountable to us, governed by rules that we the public direct."

This is hopelessly naive. First, the routine invasions of privacy seen in American life today hardly justify making the situation worse. Second, the abuses visited upon us by the private sector pale in comparison to those the government is capable of. Government possesses a legal monopoly on lethal armed force. Junk mail can be thrown away, annoying cold-call telemarketers can be put into your answering machine, companies that misuse data can lose business or be prosecuted. What checks are there against government abuse of such a database?

Does Stross really think we are going to take a majority vote each time the database is about to be put to some use? (As if that would necessarily protect individual rights even if it were the case.) Are we going to be taking daily tours to monitor the uses of this database and correct abuses? "We the public" are not going to be managing this database, nor for the most part will our elected officials. Government bureaucrats will be in control of this information.