Your Paperz Pleeze

Your Paperz Pleeze

No one really understands the impact of undocumented workers in the U.S.. On the one hand, they take jobs from legal workers, but on the other hand, they make many things affordable for middle and working class people, like eating in a restaurant, and the jobs they take usually suck. Further, if job loss is the concern, it shouldn’t be the poorest people we focus on, it should be the most wealthy, who take jobs from the U.S. overseas every year. But, no, we’ll focus on the people who have the least power in our national dialogue, as we usually do.

Indeed, the ruse of "immigration" has given the U.S. some of her most hideous moments, with U.S. Border and Immigration guards joined by rednecks and vigilantes to chase down people who literally risk their lives to find a job.

But, the best is yet to come.

Under the guise of "immigration control" we are about to be issued a national I.D. card.

Your paperz, pleeze

Such I.D. cards are emblematic of totalitarian governments, and Americans have always resisted such documentation. Federal law doesn’t even require a person to carry I.D., though several states require that a person give some identification if asked by a cop. We are, by circumstances if not law, required to have a birth certificate. If we are to be considered a "dependant" we have to have a social security number, but the social security number, when first issued, was promised NOT to be an I.D. card. Attempts by some states to force the SSIN as a driver’s license number have been rebuked by citizens. Most states have state issued driver’s licenses, and there has been a growing movement to force a national driver’s license on the citizens, but, except for the national commercial driver’s license movement, little progress has been made. California has a law entitling law enforcement to perform an arrest on anyone cited for any traffic infraction who doesn’t have an identification document; well on the way to totalitarianism.

Currently under consideration as a cure for "illegals" is a national ID card. It shouldn’t be surprising. The term "illegal alien" betrays the very linear mindset of someone who is obsessed with "law". Unable to see law as a shifting, if generally lagging, expression of social control, creating crime as it creates order, some people cling to the "law" as though it were a real thing. Those freaks make it very difficult for the rest of us, and that mind set is about to emerge in your biometric I.D. card.

These patriots want to protect you from "illegals". From a North American
Minuteman Border, Legionaires protest a Catholic Church about being
"soft" on illegals. Owner of the original photos is not known;from here


Though termed a "worker" I.D., it will function as means of discriminating between those who may work, and so remain alive, in the Land of the Free, and those who may not live. Increasing social control has a corollary: increasing numbers of marginalized residents. More laws always mean more criminals. Stronger means of identification and control of people will result in a larger, more distanced, and more dangerous underclass.

It’s easy to see if we understand the "worker I.D." as what it is: a ration card for a society which has too few resources. The card is a quick way of screening people in, or out.

  
It isn’t the iris of the eye that is scanned, it is the retina.

The card has "biometrics" meaning "measurements of the living being". The biometrics mean you can personally be positively identified. It will eventually carry not only your retinal pattern but your complete work history and credentials, probably even health and perhaps genetic information. Further, each time it is scanned, you will leave a trace, a history of your coming and going.

Like all such changes, it doesn’t happen all at once. The changes are incremental; currently your cell phone and car can already report against you, and many corporate I.D. cards now carry biometrics.

Link
Gattaca, a 1997 movie about complete identification in the near future.
Identification is based on biometrics, and places each person accurately
in society.  The name G-A-T-T-A-C-A derives from the bases of
RNA, guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine.
The technology already exists for most of the ID in the movie.

Increasingly, to take part in society, to obtain the things you need to live, you’ll have to be hooked in. An irrational fear of strangers, known as "xenophobia" will power the acceptance of the "worker" I.D., but it is the average American who will be most impacted by the card. Why not simply make the worker "the" I.D.? It would serve as driver’s license, air travel I.D., medical records I.D., in short, it will represent the total person. Indeed, it is already quite possible, and even cheap, to simply insert an RFID, a Radio Frequency Identification chip into every person as they are born. A programmable chip would be fairly simple to install into a person, and could be read by any cop, or any door threshold; no retinal scan is necessary, no card is need.

If it seems far fetched, consider your pet, which probably has a chip, and your beef, which likely also had such a chip. The technology is there, it is simply not possible to be too paranoid about this.

There are people in cities all across America who are so electronically tethered that they would look at such identification as time saving. You don’t even need to swipe your card, just smile into the reader beam, your purchases are automatically billed. It would be as though you were royalty, simply going to the store and taking what you want, paying with your smile.

Likely, though, there are readers in Sierra County who are creeped out by the whole idea. We still live in a place where a person can go into the woods and feel alone. You aren’t alone, several nations and even a few corporations can identify you from space, sorry. Don’t leave toilet paper behind when you do your business in the woods, you might be I.D.'ed and cited. Today, in 2010, that sounds far-fetched, but consider the federal government moving to evict homeless people from the woods, the increasing control of the "roadless areas", and the increasing police powers of Federal agents. Consider the growing move away from helicopters to satellite imagery (if you haven’t tried Google Earth, you should) to find drugs, smugglers, and other people who work off the grid.

Again, you simply can’t be too paranoid.

Biometrics. A great article here refers to a business week article that can’t be found..

Still, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that you can still get away from surveillance, this card should bother you. The loss of everyday privacy that is implied by acceptance of this technology is shocking.