[Clips] Re: [Forwarded] RealID: How to become an unperson.

[R.A. Hettinga]

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 Delivered-To: clips at philodox.com
 Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 15:50:46 -0400
 To: "Philodox Clips List" <clips at philodox.com>
 From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
 Subject: [Clips] Re: [Forwarded] RealID: How to become an unperson.
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 Sender: clips-bounces at philodox.com


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  Delivered-To: cryptography at metzdowd.com
  To: hadmut at danisch.de
  Cc: cryptography at metzdowd.com
  Subject: Re: [Forwarded] RealID: How to become an unperson.
  From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry at piermont.com>
  Date: Thu, 07 Jul 2005 09:52:28 -0400
  User-Agent: Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) Emacs/21.4 (berkeley-unix)
  Sender: owner-cryptography at metzdowd.com


  hadmut at danisch.de writes:
  > But nevertheless, I do not understand why americans are so afraid of
  > an ID card.

  Perhaps I can explain why I am.

  I do not trust governments. I've inherited this perspective. My
  grandfather sent his children abroad from Speyer in Germany just after
  the ascension of Adolf Hitler in the early 1930s -- his neighbors
  thought he was crazy, but few of them survived the coming events. My
  father was sent to Alsace, but he stayed too long in France and ended
  up being stuck there after the occupation. If it were not for forged
  papers, he would have died. (He had a most amusing story of working as
  an electrician rewiring a hotel used as office space by the Gestapo in
  Strasbourg -- his forged papers were apparently good enough that no
  one noticed.)  Ultimately, he and other members of the family escaped
  France by "illegally" crossing the border into Switzerland. (I put
  "illegally" in quotes because I don't believe one has any moral
  obligation to obey a "law" like that, especially since it would leave
  you dead if you obeyed.)

  Anyway, if the governments of the time had actually had access to
  modern anti-forgery techniques, I might never have been born.

  To you, ID cards are a nice way to keep things orderly. To me, they
  are a potential death sentence.

  Most Europeans seem to see government as the friendly, nice set of
  people who keep the trains running on time and who watch out for your
  interests.  A surprisingly large fraction of Americans are people or
  the descendants of people who experienced the institution of
  government as the thing that tortured their friends to death, or
  gassed them, or stole all their money and nearly starved them to
  death, etc.  Hundreds of millions of people died at the hands of their
  own governments in the 20th century, and many of the people that
  escaped from such horrors moved here.  They view things like ID cards
  and mandatory registry of residence with the local police as the way
  that the government rounded up their friends and relatives so they
  could be killed.

  I do not wish to argue about which view is correct. Perhaps I am wrong
  and Government really is the large friendly group of people that are
  there to help you. Perhaps the cost/benefit analysis of ID cards and
  such makes us look silly. I'm not addressing the question of whether
  my view is right here -- I'm just trying to explain the psychological
  mindset that would make someone think ID cards are a very bad idea.

  So, the next time one of your friends in Germany asks why the crazy
  Americans think ID cards and such are a bad thing, remember my father,
  and remember all the people like him who fled to the US over the last
  couple hundred years and who left children that still remember such
  things, whether from China or North Korea or Germany or Spain or
  Russia or Yugoslavia or Chile or lots of other places.


  Perry

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 R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
 The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
 "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
 [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
 experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'