Footnote to the preceding

It's not directly related to the Fourth Amendment, but it is about privacy. Through Information Clearinghouse, I learned that on January 6, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX, 14) introduced what he called the Identity Theft Prevention Act.

This act[, Paul said in introducing the bill,] protects the American people from government-mandated uniform identifiers that facilitate private crime as well as the abuse of liberty. The major provision of the Identity Theft Prevention Act halts the practice of using the Social Security number as an identifier by requiring the Social Security Administration to issue all Americans new Social Security numbers within five years after the enactment of the bill. These new numbers will be the sole legal property of the recipient, and the Social Security administration shall be forbidden to divulge the numbers for any purposes not related to Social Security administration. Social Security numbers issued before implementation of this bill shall no longer be considered valid federal identifiers. ...

Thanks to Congress, today no American can get a job, open a bank account, get a professional license, or even get a driver's license without presenting his Social Security number. So widespread has the use of the Social Security number become that a member of my staff had to produce a Social Security number in order to get a fishing license! ...

At the very end of the 108th Congress, this body established a de facto national ID card with a provisions buried in the "intelligence" reform bill mandating federal standards for drivers' licenses, and mandating that federal agents only accept a license that conforms to these standards as a valid ID.

Nationalizing standards for driver's licenses and birth certificates creates a national ID system pure and simple. ... [T]he "intelligence" reform legislation imposed federal standards in a federal bill, thus creating a federalized ID regardless of whether the ID itself is still stamped with the name of your state. It is just a matter of time until those who refuse to carry the new licenses will be denied the ability to drive or board an airplane. ...

The Identity Theft Prevention Act repeals those sections of federal law creating the national ID, as well as those sections of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 that require the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a uniform standard health identifier – an identifier which could be used to create a national database containing the medical history of all Americans. ...

By putting an end to government-mandated uniform IDs, the Identity Theft Prevention Act will prevent millions of Americans from having their liberty, property, and privacy violated by private and public sector criminals.

Now, Ron Paul is just about as right-wing as they come, but putting an end to the use of Social Security numbers as the universal identifiers they are rapidly becoming is something I've been advocating for years and undoing the backdoor national ID card snuck into the intelligence "reform" bill (I do put the quotes in a different place than Paul does) is a fine idea.

I've thought before about the fact that in certain areas, particularly with regard to privacy issues, left and right diverge and recombine in strange ways. This is another example. And by the way, whatever else may be said about him, kudos to Ron Paul for not letting yellow and orange alerts stampede him into surrendering the concept of privacy.

Footnote: A few other posts about issues surrounding the development of a national ID card in the US are from September 19, September 22, and January 3. There have also been a few about the even more blatant moves in that direction in the UK: January 15, 2004, April 26, and December 16.