From the WSJ Opinion Archives
OUTSIDE THE BOX
Wild Card
We need a better ID, but not a national superego.
Opponents hear the crunch of Nazi jackboots and the request for identity papers: Ausweis, bitte! Supporters see bomb-sneakered Islamic fundamentalists strolling onto their aircraft of choice. The issue is a national identity card. In light of Sept. 11, should one be required?
Some identity measures seem acceptable intrusions into our freedoms. Checking photo IDs on check-in and before you board an aircraft helps with security. Requiring a passport to enter the country allows a criminal background check by immigration officials. Social Security numbers are required on tax forms and on paperwork for every type of federal benefit--Medicare, food stamps, student loans--and nobody seems to mind. But it is going to take something more than these easily obtained identity documents to keep terrorists off airplanes.
The starting point for increased security against foreign terrorists should be a U.S. ID card for noncitizens wishing to enter or travel in the United States. Twenty-seven million immigrants live in America; six to eight million are here illegally. We won't find all the illegals, and yes, the process will be difficult for foreign students and green-card applicants who will be inconvenienced in their home countries as they fill out the forms, submit their thumbprints and await checks against the U.S. database before they are given their ID cards. Some will object that they are not terrorists. True, but they are not American citizens either, so the national ID card is an appropriate security measure for them and us.
Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware has already drafted legislation requiring that "tamper-proof visas with biometric components"--fingerprints, for example--"be issued to all temporary foreign visitors" so that their presence at work or universities can be tracked in real time. One couldn't get on a plane in Paris bound for America, as Richard Reid did, without an ID card check.
It turns out the Immigration and Naturalization Service is already testing an automated passport-control system called INSPass (the INS Passenger Accelerated Service System) in a dozen U.S. international airports. Members swipe their ID card through a terminal at an arrival kiosk, verify their handprint in a biometric reader and go directly to customs.
The airlines have suggested a similar system, a kind of airport E-ZPass, a voluntary ID card for anyone who wants quicker access through security checks. Your bag would still go through the X-ray machine, and you would go through the metal detector, but you'd swipe your ID card through an entry port machine and get in a reserved line for cardholders. Perhaps you'd get preferred parking too, or merchandise discounts in airport stores and lounges, or even use of the ID card as a credit card. Would people pay a fee to avoid an hour in line? You bet. And if it were combined with thumbprint technology, air travel would become a little safer too, since there would be positive identification of some travelers.
But then comes what New York Times columnist William Safire calls "the holy grail of snoopery," a mandatory U.S. ID card for every American citizen. Many European countries already require such cards, but Americans instinctively reject the idea. We don't want any government tracking our movements, looking over our financial and health data, and asking us for proof of identity at Madonna concerts and NFL playoff games.
It begins with obvious characteristics: name, address, sex, race, date of birth, and a thumbprint that can be verified in a scanner. The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators wants to add all this--and an individual's legal status--to new, uniform state drivers licenses for the 200 million Americans who are licensed to drive. They think of it as a kind of domestic passport. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois wants to add Social Security numbers and is preparing legislation to implement the AAMVA plan. The Department of Transportation is working on a similar system.
A critical concern is who has access to the database that contains all this personal information. For any national ID system to work, there must be a comprehensive national database. It must include all 286 million Americans and be accessible to the police, FBI, INS and airport security personnel at every airport in the country and abroad. Otherwise the system is of little use.
Local police investigating a burglary would have access to it. So would thousands of IRS agents who already have access to 10 billion documents containing all kinds of personal information about millions of people. Surely your bank will want you to swipe your national ID card when you apply for a loan. Will gun shops, blood banks and used-car dealers also have access to all of our data?
Another problem is the accuracy of the database. If any of the data on your card were transferred there erroneously--a digit is transposed or your middle name is misspelled--you may be rejected at the airport-screening machine. "Sorry, your thumbprint does not match your name and/or Social Security number. Please step aside."
How long would it take the bureaucracy behind the airport screening machine to sort that out? Will you be banned from flying in the interim? Could one bureaucratic mistake turn us into outcasts, unable to do anything--fly, draw money from our bank account, maybe even get into our office building--until Washington corrects its error?
Experience suggests such errors would be frequent. A Cato Institute study in 1995 found the error rate in large government databases to be from 5% to 20% for the Social Security Administration and 10% to 20% for the IRS.
The Newhouse News Service reported on a 1999 Justice Department study in which 93,000 civil-service job applicants were checked against the FBI's nationwide criminal database, using name, sex, race, birth date and Social Security number. The database attached a criminal history to 5.5% of people who had no criminal record, and 11.7% of the people with criminal records escaped detection by giving false information. Isn't this FBI criminal database check exactly what will be done by airport scanning machines every day? So will one in 20 of us be prohibited from flying until all the errors are corrected?
Increased security to protect us from terrorists is a very good idea. But extending it to a national identity card for every person in an enormous and diverse nation turns out to be very difficult to do. And it runs counter to the culture of individual liberty that has not only been the hallmark of our society but a prime factor in its two centuries of success.
The need for increased homeland security will inevitably and properly lead to closer scrutiny of personal identity information. But we had better institute it one careful step at a time.
Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is policy chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears Wednesdays.
