"“This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666.”--Revelation 13:18
As technology grows more sophisticated and the government and its corporate allies further refine their methods of keeping tabs on the American people, those of us who treasure privacy increasingly find ourselves engaged in a struggle to maintain our freedoms in the midst of the modern surveillance state.
Just consider the many ways we’re already being monitored and tracked: through our Social Security numbers, bank accounts, purchases and electronic transactions; by way of our correspondence and communications devices--email, phone calls and mobile phones; through chips implanted in our vehicles, identification documents, even our clothing. Data corporations are capturing vast caches of personal information on you so that airports, retailers, police and other government authorities can instantly identify and track you. Add to this the fact that businesses, schools and other facilities are relying more and more on fingerprints and facial recognition to identify us. All the while, banks and other financial institutions must verify the identities of new customers and make such records of customer transactions available to the police and government officials upon request.
In recent years, this information glut has converged into a mandate for a national ID card, which came to a head with Congress’ passage of the REAL ID Act in 2005. REAL ID requires states to issue machine-readable drivers’ licenses containing a wealth of personal data. However, because the REAL ID Act has been opposed by many states due to its cost and implementation, we have yet to be subjected to a nationwide implementation of a national ID card. That may all change depending on what happens with the immigration reform bill now before Congress.
A centerpiece of the immigration bill as proposed by Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is a requirement that all U.S. workers, citizen and resident alike, be required to obtain and carry biometric Social Security cards (national ID cards under a different name) in order to work within the United States. Attempting to appease critics of a national ID card, Schumer and Graham insist that “no government database would house everyone’s information” and that the “cards would not contain any private information, medical information, or tracking devices.” However, those claims are blatantly false. Indeed, this proposed biometric card is nothing more than an end-run around opposition to a national ID card.
Civil and privacy rights advocates, as well as liberal-, conservative-, and libertarian-leaning organizations, have long raised concerns that a national ID card would enable the government to track citizens and, thus, jeopardize the privacy rights of Americans. President Reagan likened a 1981 proposal to the biblical “mark of the beast,” and President Clinton dismissed a similar plan because it smacked of Big Brother." ...more
