More security means less personal liberties

I have been listening to my old recordings of the Peter Eichman Show. There was a show on the national ID card. In the wake of the September Eleventh attacks many people were calling for a national ID card. The theory being that we would all be safer with one. It would store personal, possibly biometric information, about the card holder. It could be swiped by readers that would confirm the identity of the person with the card.

I am against this idea. I believe that you should fear a government that fears your identity. I am looking at the US government and I wonder why they care so much about knowing as much as they do about me. As it is, there are hundreds of databases around the world with some piece of information about me. That in of itself is not necessarily scary, but with a concerted effort those databases can come together and it would tell people my life story. You can see what I buy at Safeway. You can see my spending habits with my debit card. You can see purchases I have made on E-bay, you can see my drivers record. You can see tons of pieces of information that when put together can put my anonymity in jeopardy.

There was an article I was reading about the new concept car from Toyota. It has been making news because it can tell the government that I was the driver of a car when a photo-speeding-ticket was issued, not only that it is possible for the fine then to be deducted directly from my credit card before I get home. I am against the photo-speeding-tickets and other forms of photo-law-enforcement. If you are not caught in the act by a law enforcement officer then you should not be prosecuted. Truly the government has no proof who was driving the car when the violation took place. They can just say it was a particular car. Then the registered owner gets the ticket. That is wrong. People who do not see that as wrong need to think hard about the future implications of it.

Think about the GPS systems that are put into cars. They can tell where you drive, when you drove there, and how fast you drove. There was a car rental company that would charge the renters of their vehicles extra fees if they sped too much. There is also an idea to track your driving habits and charge you for the mileage you put on certain roads. It would be like a toll bridge, but it could be tracked on the other roads.

Toyota said that the smart card that you would use in their cars, the same one that would rat you out as a speeder, are coming whether we like it or not. The idea being that when you put the card into the car, it will allow you to start it. Then the car would adjust the seats, mirror, telephone numbers, and radio station to your favorite settings. This are neat features, however, these feature can be used to track more of your life.

Card readers that let you swipe an ID card to open a door to get into a room track when you went into the room. WSU wants these card readers on all the residence halls. Someone could then go in and see your patterns. They can see when you come and go. Parents can possible get this information to see when their kids are coming home at night. The university can review those records and compare those to your grades. They can then call you in for meetings to say your personal life habits are interfering with schooling. Think that is a stretch? WSU already tracks what students do off-campus and those thing done off-campus can get them in trouble with the school.

What you do is not all that private anymore. Someone knows what you are doing, not only that, proof of what you are doing is stored in some database somewhere. The only way around that is using cash and good-old-fashioned keys. It is hard to track cash purchases. Video surveillance cameras in store's can still show you doing cash transactions.

Each new piece of technology meant to make you safer or make your life easier also makes your life traceable. Why should the government care? What is the role and the purpose of government in a "free" society? Shouldn't the government be there to enforce the constitution and make sure that there is a economic system? Shouldn't it make sure we are safe from outside forces? Shouldn't a good government do its role and be not seen in nearly every aspect of a free man’s life?

Today I read about Senator Lamar Alexander and a group of former state governors in the Senate proposing an Internet use tax. Not a tax when you buy stuff, but simply a tax to use the Internet. Why does the government feel the need to tax everything? Didn't the Founding Fathers have a problem of England taxing everything? Why does the government tax things? That is the government’s way of getting money to spend on its programs.

The government only should tax what is necessary to provide those services. Adding an Internet tax is the same as adding a percentage point to your income tax. It is raising your taxes. The government needs to look at its role in a free society. It needs to look at what services are necessary to maintain a free and anonymous society. It needs to tax at a level to provide those services and no more. The government does not need to tax the Internet. The government does not need to have that extra money.

About thirty percent of your income is spent before you even see it. Why does the government need more than one third of the money I make? The government needs to build roads, maintain a free-market place, protect our borders, and uphold the constitution. It should not take one third of all the money that people earn plus more to do those things.

The government is bad at managing money and it spends way more on programs that are not things the government should even be doing.

With smart cards and national ID cards the government has one more method to tax the things we do. They have one more method to track the things I do. Think about the movie Minority Report. The government had those little robots that went through out the building checking everyone's biometric information (retinal scans) to see if one of the people in the building was a "bad guy" that they were looking for. Speed camera's and other law enforcement cameras take away from your freedom.

The argument most often heard is why should someone be afraid if he has nothing to hide. But they mean that in a criminal sense. If you are not breaking the law, what do you have to hide? What about the skeleton’s in your closet? What about those things that you do not tell other people due to embarrassment? What about your past? You are not always proud of the things you did at one time. Without anonymity those things that you do will no longer be something you can hide. It is no one else’s businesses where you go, who you hang out with, what you read, what you watch on TV, and what you do with your free time. Bring together databases and video surveillance of private American citizens will be the last stitches of your anonymity.

That is not far into the future --- that is now. England has video cameras all over the streets with government workers watching your every move. You cannot pick your nose in public without some camera seeing you and recording the event.

Technology is here to stay. How we choose to use it is up to us. How the government uses it needs to be something we are vigilant over. We need to make sure the government does not control our lives even more than it is already controlled.

Don't think your life is overly controlled by the government? Open a business. If it is "your" business then you should be able to make policies that you choose. You can't. The government controls that. Open your own airline. Guess what? The government has people in place to screen your passengers. Think about that. The government chooses what your passengers can and cannot do, not you as the business owner. Try using your constitutional rights. If you chose to use them in a way the government does not like, you will be arrested. Granted most of the time you will get away with doing your own thing, even if it is against the law, but once you add in the video monitoring, the databases, the smart cards, and the biometrics you will be caught even if no one is around when you do the things that you do.

We are turning into puppets whose strings are controlled by the government.