Driver's Licenses Spark Privacy Debate

[BlackVelvet04]

Driver's Licenses Spark Privacy Debate

By ROBERT TANNER, AP National Writer

That plastic card, the one with the lousy photo that's jammed into your wallet or purse, isn't just a license to drive. It's the green light to buy a drink, the ticket to federal benefits, the must-have document to get aboard airplanes. Now it's also the flash point for an argument about how best to balance America's security needs with worries that personal privacy could be swept away.




Privacy advocates warn that the new federal standards for driver's licenses will effectively create a national ID card, centralizing information that can be misused — by letting the government track the whereabouts of innocent people, for instance. Government officials say they're just making the cards more secure, and that the worries are overblown.



Many of the law's specifics have yet to be decided. Will licenses include biometric information like fingerprints or retinal scans? Will "machine-readable" mean bar codes or radio frequency identification systems — in which a tiny computer chip transmits data and can theoretically be used to track location?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&e=1&u=/ap/national_id_card

[shraby]

1. One thing we DO know is that

governments have traditionally abused power. That's the reason we have a bill of rights and a constitution.

[quinnox]

2. The government should be able to track everyone

because if you aren't a criminal then what do you have to hide anyway? - sheep logic

Oh, why not just implant electronic devices under everyones finger's already, and skip all the preliminaries! After all, we are merely human cattle owned by our government. <sarcasm>