In the latest episode in the increasingly bizarre but all too real saga of standardless secret administrative no-fly orders from the DHS to airlines, prohibiting the transportation back to their home country of US citizens, Oklahoma native Saadiq Long is being prevented from returning home to the US to spend the holiday season with his […]
We don’t normally require our friends and family to show us their papers to establish their identities. We have better ways of recognizing who they are. Many US government agencies, however, seems to want to make government-issued ID credentials the only way to establish who we are — even when Federal regulations require them to […]
In June, the Department of Homeland Security and the President’s Cybersecurity Coordinator published a proposal and request for comments on a for a “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace” (NSTIC). It’s hard to belive that such a system implemented from the top down at the behest of DHS and the White House would remain, […]
We note with interest the recent decision in Doe v. Reed (No. 09-599), which marks the first time in a few years that the Supreme Court has directly (albeit somewhat uncertainly) addressed whether the government can permissibly require individuals to be publicly identified. Leaving aside what the legal implications of the ruling may be, we […]
S. 3427, a bill introduced in the Senate this week by Senators Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) and John Cornyn (R-TX), would require would require ID “verification” as a prerequite to buying a prepaid cell phone or SIM card. The seller or reseller of the phone or SIM card would be required to collect your personal information […]
We’ve been getting a lot of questions about the new Arizona “immigration” law, S.B. 1070, which we mentioned earlier in this blog. As we read the text (PDF) of the law it imposes no new requirement to show ID credentials or other evidence of identity. On the contrary, it gives people even more reasons to […]
Heads up, Arizona readers: Your state legislature is on the verge of enacting a REAL-ID type national ID requirement in the guise of “immigration reform”. And a heads up to readers elsewhere: Congress is also considering an ID mandate as part of an “immigration reform” bill. For a while after 9/11, the excuse offered by […]
From time to time, people ask us, “But why don’t you want to show ID when you travel? What’s wrong with that?” There are probably as many answers to that question as there are people who resist government demands to show ID when they travel, even when it’s scary and involves some personal risk to […]
Whenever questions are raised about national ID schemes like REAL-ID or PASS-ID, their more public-relations savvy proponents are always quick to say, “But of course this isn’t a national ID card”. The same goes for L-1 Identity Solutions, the prime drivers license, ID card, and ID and biometric database contractor, aggregator, and data miner for […]
The new “reality” television show Homeland Security USA has prompted a Facebook group calling for it to be taken off the air, and protests against its bigotry outside the ABC-TV / Walt Disney Corp. offices in Burbank, even while ratings and viewership have been falling steadily since the first episode. This week, though, the show […]