ACTION ALERT
American Policy Center
Opposes SAVE Act
Sunday, February 24, 2008
By Tom DeWeese
NewsWithViews.com
Mr. Roy Beck Numbers USA 1601 N. Kent Street Suite 1100 Arlington, Virginia
22209
Dear Roy:
As we agreed during our conference call in December, I want to fulfill
on my obligation to address our concerns with Sections 201, (Mandatory
Employment Authorization Verification through the E-Verify System)
and 203 (Establishment of Electronic Birth and Death Registration
Systems) of the SAVE Act (Secure America Through Verification and
Enforcement Act. H.R. 4088)
First let me reiterate that I have great respect for the job Numbers USA
has done in defeating the amnesty bills. We are certainly on the same
page in the battle to stop illegal immigration. We agree with efforts
to enforce the laws and we even agree with your stand on "attrition
through enforcement." I am a major proponent of efforts to take away
the incentives and government handouts which attract illegals to this
country. And I believe that by doing this it will not be necessary
to load 20 million illegals on buses and ship them out - it will happen
automatically as we have seen in several communities which have cracked
down.
Our differences are in the need for government data banks which snare
all Americans in their nets in order to find the few law breakers.
I fully accept your claim that you aren't interested in creating a
National ID. I accept that your motivation is to protect this country.
However, I think that in your zeal to achieve those goals you are
helping to create that very National ID system.
Freedom is a very difficult thing to protect. I suppose the definition of
freedom can be twisted to accept anything in its name. Many believe
that freedom means being safe. Many now believe that creating a national
matrix to document our every movement is freedom.
A very wise friend of mine just related a bit of a parable to me that
I think puts the situation well into perspective. She asked me this
question: Do you know why Zebras have stripes? My answer was - for
camouflage. She said, do you see black and white in the landscape
of Africa? The stripes don't blend in. The fact is, when a lion (the
predator) seeks to capture a Zebra (the prey) he focuses on one animal
from the herd, chasing it down until it drops from exhaustion.
When a herd of Zebras runs to get away from the lion, the stripes make
it absolutely impossible to focus on just one animal. Therefore the
lions can't detach just one from the herd. The stripes are the Zebra's
protection.
It would be to the great advantage of the lion to have a system to focus
on one Zebra - a chip, an ID card, some way to break it from the herd.
On the other hand, it would be a great disadvantage to the Zebra to
have such a system of identification.
The question of whether a National ID is good or bad is really a question
of who is the predator and who is the prey. In the case of illegal
immigration clearly those of us who want to rid the nation of illegals
are the predators. So it is easy to support such means to rid us of
this threat. Some of us may even take pride in being able to "show
our papers" to prove "we are American citizens." It's pretty compelling
- until the same system is used to make us the prey.
That is my fear, and that is why I oppose any excuse to create even a small
piece of a National ID databank system. Like you, I certainly have
political enemies. Someday I will certainly be the prey.
Once begun, even for an honorable purpose, how can the system be controlled?
Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff has said, "Again, eventually,
this might allow us to do double-duty or triple duty, have the same
license also be used to cross the border, and be used for a whole
host of other purposes where you now have to carry different identification."
Could it be that those other purposes won't match what you are hoping
to accomplish? Could it be that once such a system is in place it
will be out of our control?
Congressional testimony by Professor Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland
explains in great detail the problems inherent in trying to integrate
existing data banks as a means to guarantee identification.
"While most proposals have been well intentioned, some have been misguided
in that they overlook the potential for unintended consequences or
underestimate the technical challenges and risks inherent in their
implementation."
Professor Shneiderman, an expert in human-computer interaction, went on to say:
"A national ID system requires a complex integration of social and
technical systems, including humans to enter and verify data, plus
hardware, software and networks to store and transmit. Such socio-technical
systems are always vulnerable to error, breakdown, sabotage and destruction
by natural events or by people with malicious intentions.
For this reason, the creation of a single system of identification could
unintentionally result in degrading the overall safety and security
of the nation, because of the unrealistic trust in the efficacy of
the technology...
We must ask whether there is now a secure database that consists of 300
million individual records that can be accessed in real time? The
government agencies which come close are the Internal Revenue Service
and the Social Security Administration, neither of which are capable
of maintaining a network that is widely accessible and responsive
to voluminous queries on a 24 hour by 7 days a week basis."
No matter how much we may desire a quick, easy solution to deal with
the issue of illegal immigration; no matter how well intentioned we
may be to enforce tough laws to make it happen, sometimes such actions
are worse than the problem they seek to solve. So it is with using
federal data banks to establish "verifiable" Identification.
Moreover, the E-Verify System is not designed, nor ready for the massive accessibility
required to meet the requirements of Section 201. The SS data bank
is dirty. And it was not created for the purpose of authenticating
citizenship.
But you argue that the E-Verify System is already in existence and therefore
not helping to create a National ID Card. Consider this congressional
testimony by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC): "Under
the newly announced changes, the Department of Homeland Security will
(1) greatly expand E-Verify, (2) raise fines against employers by
25 percent, (3) increasingly use criminal action against employers,
as opposed to administrative action, (4) add to the numbers of databases
E-Verify checks by including visa and passport databases, (5) ask
states to "voluntarily" allow DHS access to their motor vehicle databases,
and (6) use an "enhanced photograph capability" that will allow employers
to check photographs in E-Verify databases. These do not resolve the
many problems already in E-Verify; instead, the Department of Homeland
Security has made the employment eligibility verification worse."
The fact is the Real ID Act is not going to just help create a NATIONAL
ID, instead it is helping to create an INTERNATIONAL Biometric ID
Card. The world is being enrolled into a single global biometric ID
system through documents purported to establish and authenticate identity
- passports, driver's license Social Security card and others.
On March 1, 2007 REAL ID's "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" was issued,
revealing REAL ID's global biometric connection. The three main entities
driving this system are: The Department of Homeland Security, The
American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, (AAMVA) and
the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
AAMVA is an international association of motor vehicle and law enforcement
officials and is responsible for international biometric driver's
license ID card standards and an international information sharing
agreement.
ICAO monitors travelers, designed biometric "e-passports" required for
"Visa Waiver Nations" and is affiliated with the United Nations.
Together, DHS, AAMVA and ICAO are fulfilling the three elements necessary for
a global biometric system. The fact is, whether it is your intention
or not, by including Sections 201 and 203 into the SAVE Act, you are
aiding this international ID effort. This won’t increase security,
but rather prepare us for a tyranny unknown in human history.
I believe that you are honestly trying to create a method by which Identification
can be verified. However, it appears you have accepted the premise
that the Driver's License is the proper means of identification. In
fact it is not. The driver's license is strictly an authorization
to drive on American streets and should stay that way. To enforce
an ID through DMVs means empowering a hoard of state government employees
who were never supposed to have such power, allowing them access to
information they aren't supposed to have and in so doing, creating
a false sense of security that simply isn't valid.
In order to protect the privacy of the American people it is essential
that we decouple identification from driver's licenses.
The only proper government entity specifically designed to have such information
and responsibility is the U.S. Department of State. It alone should
have the responsibility to create documents that establish and authenticate
identity and that monitor and permit border crossings. And that is
really what we are talking about here - border crossings, legal or
illegal.
In fact, the State Department is now developing a new passport "card"
that possibly could be used to satisfy citizen status that you seek
under SAVE. It is less than a full passport and it comes in a wallet
size that could be easily carried just as the driver's license. While
it is true that the Card contains an RFID chip (not to our liking)
the chip contains no personal information - only a unique number linking
the card to stored records contained in secured government databases.
The passport Card currently is not valid for flying, but that could
be fixed.
I don't specifically advocate use of such a card for many of the same
reasons argued here. But, if we are determined to go down the road
of government documentation of American citizens, then something on
the lines of the passport Card is preferable to creating a vast new
system through state DMVs, as long as its purpose is very narrow and
strictly enforced so as not to be expanded for secondary uses.
As I have stated before, we have no problem with attempts to strengthen
efforts to enforce immigration laws. But these should include building
the wall; deploying troops if necessary; supporting the Border Patrol;
detaining illegals for court appearances; denying services like schools,
hospitals and welfare to illegals; denying citizenship to the new
born of illegals; denying college tuition discounts to illegals; and
prosecuting sanctuary cities.
None of these things require the establishment of databases. Recent history
has shown that removing such incentives in communities has resulted
in lower illegal populations. They leave voluntarily.
Simply looking to punish businesses by making them the first line of defense
when the federal government refuses to do its job by enforcing the
items listed above, is cowardice and grossly unfair. It puts a burden
on both employers and potential employees (a vast majority of whom
are law abiding Americans) rather than putting the burden where it
belongs - on illegals.
As we seek much needed solutions to the very real threat of illegal immigration,
we need to disengage from the politics of fear. We are being given
a false choice in the immigration war. We are being told that we must
sacrifice freedom so that we may have order and security. It's simply
not a true choice.
As Katherine Albrecht, author of the book "Spychips" wrote, "One of the
most surveilled people in history were the Soviets under communist
rule. During Stalin's decades-long reign of terror and the KGB era
that followed, government agents could intercept and read mail, listen
in on phone calls, and plant informants to probe their neighbors'
political views and assess their loyalty to the state.
The surveillance was near complete, but did the watchful eye of the state
keep the Soviet people safe? Hardly. It seems no coincidence that
history's most watchful regime was also one of its most deadly. Between
1917 and 1987, the Soviet government killed over 60 million of its
own citizens - more than any other government in the 20th Century."
Freedom is a difficult concept to retain. We live in dangerous times indeed
and we must be very careful in our actions as we seek to achieve certain
goals. Just because the technology exists, does not mean that it is
the solution to our problem. Nor does its existence require us to
use it, especially if such use will make this or other problems worse.
This is the case with integrating unrelated, and poorly verified data
bases which always has unintended consequences.
I believe Sections 201 and 203 of the SAVE Act are helping to create
parts of a matrix that will lead to a National ID system which will
destroy our liberty. Those are the very liberties you see as threatened
by illegal immigration. Illegal immigration can be stopped - but if
allowed to start, a National ID will be forever. In such a system
today's predators will be tomorrow's prey.
For these reasons, the American Policy Center and others are now prepared
to resume our fight to oppose the SAVE Act.
Tom DeWeese is the President of the American Policy Center and the Editor of The DeWeese Report
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