This, from our Republican government, all the while claiming they want
LESS government in their lives:

They Really Are Watching You
Ready for your own all-new, sinister ID card, courtesy of Homeland
Security? Shudder
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, May 18, 2005


Printable Version
Email This Article

Mark Morford
Archives
Subscribe to Notes & Errata
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Who is this guy?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Smoke Pot, Not E-mail - In which it is proven that excessive inf...
05/13/2005
My Totally Gay Boy Scout Leader - The tormented Republican mayor...
05/11/2005

Hang Up Or Get Off The Plane - Using cell phones on flights: Gre...
05/06/2005

What's On Jesus' iPod? Pt. II - Readers respond! Ministry, Moby,...
05/04/2005







Well, now we've done it.
Congress just passed it and Dubya has promised to sign it and the
Homeland Security Department is giddier than Mel Gibson in a nail
factory over it and marketers nationwide are salivating at the groin at
the prospect of it, and the next big step toward America becoming an
even more delightfully paranoid and draconian Big Brother wonderland
has now officially been taken.

It's called Real ID. It is, in short, a new and genetically mutated
type of driver's license for all Americans, replacing your current
license and replacing your Social Security card and replacing your
sense of well being and privacy and humanity and part of a new,
uniform, deeply sinister, national uniform card system whereby every
person living and breathing in these paranoid and tense times shall
henceforth be much more traceable and watchable given how we will all
soon be required by law to carry this super-deluxe computerized ID card
with us at all times, packed as it will be with more personal,
digitized info about you than even your mother knows.

Real ID is coming very soon. The legislation was passed with little
outcry and zero debate by both House and Senate just last week because
lawmakers snuck it into a massive $82 billion military spending bill,
and therefore no one was really paying much attention and this is the
way you get thorny disturbing culturally demeaning bills to pass
without resistance from smart people who should know better.

The new law will, according to the Wired News story linked above,
require everyone to hand over not one, not two, but fully four types of
documentation to renew their driver's license, such as a photo ID, a
birth certificate, proof that their Social Security number is legit and
something that validates their home address, like a phone bill. DMV
employees will then have to verify the documents against giant teeming
federal databases and store the documents and a digital photo of you in
a database. Isn't that fun? Doesn't that sound gratifying?

What's more, the card's design plan includes multiple openings for the
Homeland Security Department to add on whatever features they deem
necessary, with or without your knowledge, consent or who the hell
cares what you think because we do what we want now please shut the
hell up and quit asking questions.

Computer (RFID) microchip? Likely. Digital fingerprint? Sure. Political
affiliation? You bet. Web-site-visit log and religious affiliation and
recent sperm count and arrest record and drug addictions and medical
history and blood type and gender orientation and parent's/children's
home address and number of personal blog posts calling Dr. Phil a
"slug-licking ego-bitch charlatan" and your recent purchase history on
shotathome.com? One guess.

Make no mistake: Real ID, in short, takes us one happy step closer to a
total surveillance state, where everyone is stamped and everyone is
watchable and everyone is traceable and unless you live way, way off
the grid out in the increasingly nonexistent hinterlands, you cannot
escape the spazzy and twitchy and paranoid eye of Homeland Security.

Remember the scenes in that surprisingly not-awful Tom Cruise flick
"Minority Report" with the ubiquitous eye scanners, installed all over
the near-future city? And as poor Tommy ran around like a maniac,
little scanner machines installed by the gummint would read the eye
pattern of every citizen as they walked around and the system could
track anyone at any time no matter where they might wander and all the
info was dumped into a huge database that was studied and cross-checked
and manipulated by the CIA and FBI and Banana Republic?

Real ID feels much like that, only not nearly as cool.

Real ID is, as you might expect, giving civil liberties groups and
immigrant-support groups the hives. State governors across the nation
are none too happy, either, as implementation of the new law will cost
each state hundreds of millions of dollars, but, of course, the bill
provides zero federal funds to help. Such is the BushCo way.

This is the funny thing. This is the sad thing. This is the terrifying
thing. We have suffered one major debilitating act of terrorism in this
nation and we have recoiled so violently, so rabidly, so desperately
that we are still more than willing to give up whatever freedoms
necessary in a vain and silly attempt to control chaos and plug every
hole, when of course the nation is basically one giant hole to begin
with.

Of course, any good conspiracy theorist worth his secret underground
bootleg Area 51 videos will tell you this sort of citizen-surveillance
thing has been going on for years, decades, from spy satellites to GPS
to all manner of phone tracking and e-mail snooping and behavior
watching and this Real ID thing only takes it a little more public,
national, makes it part of the cultural lexicon because we have finally
weakened so much we just don't seem to give a damn what they do to us
anymore.

Don't think it's all that bad? Think BushCo's flying monkeys in the CIA
and FBI and Homeland Security really have your best interests at heart
and are genuinely trying to protect you from scary swarthy furriners
who want to sneak into our country and poison our Cheerios and paint
our flag orange and cover our wimmin in burlap? Have at it. The GOP
would love to have you. Oh, and while you're at it, enjoy that tiny
grain-of-rice-size bar-coded implant RFID microchip the FDA just
approved, which they can permanently slip under your skin in about 20
seconds, with nary a peep.

This is what's happening now. With Real ID (and who knows what else),
the government is cracking down and creating a new and improved and far
more devious and exploitable system to monitor its citizens because,
well, because we let them. Because millions of us have been pummeled so
successfully by the fear-mongering Right. Because we have never been so
lax, so blinded by warmongering and dread, so numbed to what might
become of us.

Ah, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is just rampant paranoia talking
and it's just a silly piece of harmless legislation and Real ID is
overall a genuinely good and useful idea that will ultimately make us
safer and more secure. You think?

Because hasn't BushCo proven to be reliable and honest and just reeking
with integrity about privacy and security issues so far? Hasn't the USA
Patriot Act been just a wondrous boon to police and CIA and our sense
that we are trusted and cared for by our government? Aren't we all
feeling just so much safer with this most secretive, least accountable
administration at the helm?

After all, why not trust the government on this? Why not put our faith
in the goodly Homeland Security Department? Maybe Real ID really is
patriotic and constructive and it will be a smooth and secure and
completely inviolable system, one that protects citizens while giving
them a new sense of freedom to move about the country with carefree
flag-waving ease, safe in the knowledge that their big, snarling
gummint is watching over them like a protective mother bear -- as
opposed to, say, a female praying mantis, who greedily screws her
lover, and then, of course, eats him alive.