unintended consequences: Davis recall leads to US internal passports

Major Variola (ret) mv at cdc.gov
Wed Sep 10 14:02:45 PDT 2003


At 11:53 AM 9/10/03 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:
>California's law against Driving While Speaking Spanish is only
>about 10 years old, and was a Pete Wilson thing.
>It happened about when I moved here - did other states start
>doing similar things in the mean time?
>The Feds started bullying states into collecting SSNs
>when issuing drivers' licenses in the mid 80s,
>ostensibly as a way of preventing duplicate registrations,
>but I hadn't heard they'd been doing this.

Interesting.  I didn't know the history.

What is morbidly fascinating is how the driver's license is/has become
the internal passport.  And now, when it is being brought back to
a certification that one "knows how to drive", the scum who manipulated
it into an internal passport are shiiting bricks.

As a Ca driver, I'm in favor of it ---we have to pay for uninsured
drivers insurace or risk collisions with them.  As someone who
won't be going to Mexico, I don't care if they require real passports
(instead of a Ca driver's license) to re-enter the country.
If the US wants to get real borders, that's fine with me.  If they
want to deport illegals, that's fine too, so long as they don't violate
civil rights doing it.  (Hint: stopping people on the street because
they look foreign is not acceptable.  The INS was doing that
in Orange or San Diego county recently.  I wrote to some mexican
activist reminding them that no one in this country needs
to speak to pigs, if you're not driving.)

\begin{rant}
Illegals (and unlicensed pharmacists) also drive an anonymity industry:
credit-card-like debit cards that don't require proof of income, just
cash;
prepaid phones that don't require a billing address, etc.

I've read that to enter a Fed building you need "ID".  I'm curious
what happens if you haven't got it.  Adrian Lamo had his card.
I'm currently ignoring the conscription notices I get from the
local jury droids; if I *volunteer* someday (after reviewing
fija.org) I'll be sure to be without ID.

Also heard on the tube that 60K fake IDs are caught at the border
annually.  Wonder how many aren't caught.

NIB magnets are probably overkill, but it was the first and last
useful swipe my license's magstrip will see...





More information about the cypherpunks-legacy mailing list