National Identification Cards

By Wolf Shipon

Danes who desire to dump their drawerful of records and licenses may be delighted to discover that Denmark is dangling close to a decision on a comprehensive domestic document.

The Ministry of the Interior is calling it the Citizen Card, and a preliminary decision could be made on its existence by mid-1996. The idea of a national identification card, however, is spreading around Europe and to America as well, for different reasons. For instance, the European Union has had such a card listed as part of its charter since its drafting in order to facilitate travel and trade.

A document released by the Danish government stresses that citizens would never be required to carry the Citizen Card, but it would be an alternative option to carrying the currently mandatory driver's licenses, student IDs, passports, hunting licenses and other non-electronic identification. The card, like
"Personally, I'd
welcome a single
card for my medical
and credit card
records."
— Arno Penzias

these other documents, would display the citizen's name, picture, and date of birth on its surface.

It can be safely said that the primary purpose of the Citizen Card in Denmark is to ensure that private records are accessible only to the citizens whom they concern. Apparently, a prevalent Danish fear is that the Internet allows private government records to be accessed anonymously, whereas the old bureaucratic paper process ensured more security. The government will not eliminate in-person transactions, but feels that the demand is very high for secure 24-hour electronic transactions.

The Citizen Card is meant to remedy that by using integrated circuit (IC) technology to validate all private electronic transactions. The Citizen Card would have a microchip which could not be tampered with or copied like the currently popular magnetic strip. Any attempt to remove the chip would destroy the card and the chip's internal memory.

Authorities describe the Citizen Card's primary purpose as a "key" to electronic systems which, used in conjunction with a personal identification number, would guarantee that the person accessing information, including e-mail, is authorized.

Upon hearing the idea of a Citizen Card which would give access to tax information, job histories and health records, most people react by saying that the consolidation of access to that information gives the government too much power to intrude in the private citizen's life. Ironically, the law enforcement agencies in Denmark do not want to see the Citizen Card's IC technology developed because an IC card would ensure the exchange of highly encrypted information (data in secret code). "Their problem is that it bars them from gaining information from tapping, which happens to be an important source when investigating serious crimes. No court decision can decipher an intercepted transmission," according to the document released by the CRS office.

But people remain nervous about the idea in this country as well. Under the Clinton administration, Americans may remember the 1994-5 failure to introduce the Clipper Chip, which would require that telecommunications companies install a chip in their telecom devices that would allow federal agents to monitor communications through a "back door" after obtaining a court order. The rationale was that technology provides more ways for crimes to be committed, so there must be a greater number of ways to stop those crimes. Meanwhile, conservative forces in the United States are clamoring for a Worker Identification Card to help fight illegal immigration and the loss of American jobs, while the Postal Service is proposing a Citizen Card-type model in order to secure electronic communications and consolidation of bank records, as well as secure communication with government agencies, according to postal representative Chuck Chamberlain at the April 1995 CardTech/SecureTech Conference. All these events are documented in a paper by John J. Miller and Stephen Moore titled A National ID System: Big Brother's Answer to Illegal Immigration.

Nasa Ames, which has had a quiet budget for development of the U.S. Card for at least three years, had project supervisor John Yin talk to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who quoted him saying that the card's uses would extend beyond government interaction to allow private companies to offer card-related services. This, in combination with recent hints from the Internal Revenue Service
"Ever send a
fax — from
a beach?
You will."
— AT&T

To allay these fears, the current Danish legislation, which is still on the table, stipulates that the card will only serve as a means of identification and will not store any records. In other words, the agencies would store records about the citizen independently of each other and would not have access to the records kept by other agencies. The only person outside the agency with access to those records would be the citizen himself.

But even the Danish model has people running scared. In order to ensure that the card is not being abused by another person who found out the card's PIN, a history of where and when the card was used (at which personal computers or public "self-service stations") would be kept on file by the government. Opponents argue that this would allow authorities to invade the citizen's right of privacy and find him after a transaction is made. The government rebuttal: "Authorities can already monitor your progress like that today when you use credit and debit cards."

In America, the existence of a right-to-work national ID to reduce the employment of illegal aliens would mark the first time the federal government had the power to refuse private employers the right to hire a worker. It would deliver a degree of government involvement in employment unparallelled in American history, initiating the genesis of a national registry of eligible workers.

Arguments against such a Worker Card include:

It would do nothing to stop the employment of illegal aliens, just as fining did nothing.

Most areas of the country do not have illegal aliens.

The cost of electronic validation systems would be an infringement on free enterprise.

The Constitutional powers do not exist to validate such a system.

Such a system would simply increase discrimination against non-whites in employment.

The information would be abused by the government. For instance, whereas the Social Security number was originally developed to confer federal benefits to the correct person, now it is a de facto national identification number. Another example: during World War II, private census information was used to locate Japanese-Americans and place them in concentration camps.

A national health care eligibility card concept, like the one Clinton has advocated, could be merged with this card. It might allow employers unlimited access to review health histories, including sexually transmitted diseases.

Error rates in national databases tend to be high, so some deserving citizens may be denied employment due to a computer error or bureaucratic misunderstanding.

A comprehensive national registry led to the total persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, and no other system could persecute a people who looked, talked and acted like Germans and who enjoyed 80 years of full civil liberties -- people who, like many westerners, thought such a thing "would never happen here." Perhaps not -- but how about lack of conferment of health benefits to those who use their national IDs to validate the purchase of tobacco? The debate about a worker card or a comprehensive, all-in-one citizen card will likely continue for a long time, and America's slow legislature will probably only institute such a voluntary card after speedier parliamentary systems in Europe afford Americans a look at how the card performs.

Nobel-prize winning researcher Arno Penzias of Bell Labs wrote this in response to a question about the feasibility of such a card: "Personally, I'd welcome a single card for my medical and credit records. If others want separate cards, be my guest. Why mix that up with a national ID scheme?"

Variations on the theme of a national ID, such as the one postulated by Penzias, will likely be heard more frequently in the future, particularly in the private sector. For more than a year, AT&T has been airing commercials taunting: "Ever send a fax -- from the beach? You will."

It is likely that private industry will adopt federal suggestions for new technologies in order to make citizen identification options a less intrusive, private endeavor that is not politically challenged.