National Id Card Research Paper

An Unnecessary Proposal: National Identification Cards As a response to investigations after the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and Flight 93 attacks on September 11, 2001, America and four supporting countries invaded Iraq in March of 2003 to remove weapons of mass destruction and end Saddam Hussein's contributions to terrorism. Likewise, vigorous dialogue concerning a standardized, national identification card surfaced in September 2001. Furthermore, in 2005 Congress enacted into law the REAL ID Act that supported the use of a standardized driver’s license as a national identification (Swartz 14). Neither response provided adequate security for America citizens. A national identification card would not bring significant benefits to
A conservative projected cost was eleven billion dollars for the undebated provision that was attached to a military appropriations act for Iraq and Afghanistan (Swartz 14). Another estimate provided by The Department of Homeland Security projected the cost at twenty-three billion dollars. To understand if the REAL ID Act is a good buy, citizens must be able to compare the legislation’s purchasing power (Swartz 14). For instance, twenty-three billion dollars would substantially fund most of Tennessee’s 29.3 billion dollar budget for the upcoming year, and three billion dollars is a substantial amount to every state battling current economic hardships. What would these billions of dollars purchase? The expenditure, which would not cover collecting new information about citizens, would simply cover the cost of linking current databases and document storage fees. If the price tag provided a genuine upgrade in security, the sacrifice would be worthwhile; however, paying more cash for an existing product is not economically
Even if the system was impervious to hackers, incorrect data entry or misinformation in the system could allow an innocent person to be misidentified as a terrorist ("National Identification Cards" par. 55). Another scenario might involve the challenge a biometric identification card provides to sophisticated terrorists. Maryfran Johnson, editor of Computerworld, predicts that the card will not deter terrorists, but she “expects them to rise to the challenge” ("National Identification Cards" par. 51). The terrorists’ attacks of September 11, 2001, expose the major limitation of the proposed national identification card; the card cannot prevent such assaults. With the exception of one, all of the hijackers had obtained an American identification document. Furthermore, the hijackers had acquired sixty-three driver’s licenses. All the licenses were authentic, but the terrorists had in some cases given fraudulent information to obtain them. The fraudulent information was no more than an incorrect address. Lastly, each terrorist had legally entered the country with a visa (Redman par. 2). Having a biometric identification card would not have deterred the terrorist’s actions. If Mohamed Atta had presented his identification card prior to boarding American Airlines Flight 11, his fingerprint would have verified his