In response to your headline question, do we REALLY want to find out?

it is like smelling milk after someone said this milk is bad what do you think. You can’t help but smell it.

the card stops identity theft. so the card is a big b-day gift to the banksters.

“… why put this creepy provision in the outline at all?”

Repetition will aid the corporate footstools in their “drumbeat of inevitibility” when this is finally passed.

In other words we can look forward to this being rammed through… if not this term then later on if Obama gets a second term… or it will be rammed through later on even if he doesn’t get a second term.

Footstools are a cheap and plentiful resource for our masters.

Maybe they’ve already lined Cher up for a PSA campaign.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Believe_(Cher_song)

This is going to end badly. They could get to the same place by tying federal highway funds (the hook used for the 21 and over drinking age) to State DMVs requiring drivers to carry passports– the biometric national ID that’s been around for 200 years (though the biometric part only since 2006). Foreign drivers could use their own nation’s passports or, if they’re eligible to work here, their temporary or permanent visas (which are also biometric photo IDs). Call it an anti-terrorism move and don’t mention immigration at all. The advantages of this approach are; One, 60 million Americans (and every legal immigrant) already has one so is good to go now and Two, the existing application process and Passport Office bureaucracy is already in place to easily sign up everyone else (especially if the Passport Office is pre-funded so the application fees can be waived). The point is, its easier to expand an existing program than to start a new one from scratch (Exhibit A: Medicare).

Once everyone has a passport, Uncle Sam can simply amend Section 3 of the I-9 form by eliminating Lists B (drivers license / military ID) & C (social security card / birth certificate), thereby requiring every job applicant to present documents from List A– US passport or visa. Easy Peasy.
http://schlissellaw.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/i-9-form.jpg

Both passports and visas are already machine readable, so (shhh, don’t tell anyone this), when we do eventually go to a Medicare for All system, we won’t have to re-register anyone or issue yet another national ID card to establish an online version of the single payer billing/EMR system that Taiwan uses to great effect (2.3% administrative costs),
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health-care-abroad-taiwan/

I think what they really wanted was for everyone to have a chip but didn’t have guts enough to do it.

I oppose any national biometric database.

Besides, any law that would actually, if enforced, eliminate undocumented workers in America is not going to go far. It will be unenforceable, in particular, when oranges cost 10 dollars a pound in high summer because the agricultural sector will have replaced all its undocumented worker labor with union-forming American workers with rights.

A good chunk of the American food economy is predicated on the presence of undocumented labor. For my own little part, I want these people paid and treated better. But the reality is that affordable produce comes from the exploitation of sub-minimum wage workers.

Obama gives up everytime the GOP sneezes there is no way the GOP will vote for this 666 mark of the Beast.
So just why is Obama handing the GOP this issue?
Just arrest the CEO of Wallmart and McDonalds for hiring illegals and the problem will be over the next day.
All this does is create fake more off the books jobs.

I
Want to
Believe

When you have a pimple on your face, the only solution is to cut your head off.

I believe in

Los Suns!!

More or less dittoing Twain; the ultimate goal is to force every Loyal Citizen to be embedded with some sort of RFID scanning-chip. It probably won’t happen under Obama or any Democrat, because the Teabaggers will kick up too much of a fuss, but once we have a GOP president again, the people currently howling the loudest about this threat will be the first in line to get their Anti-Terror Freedom Chip.

I’m surprise the bill does not contain a huge produce subsidy just like our corn subsidies.

Exactly. Frog kill by warming up the water little by little, so when it is finally passed, everyone will have gotten used to the idea & have given up fighting it out of exhaustion.

Me, too. What a great thing for them to do.

“Homeland Security Service” sounds so much more reassuring in the original German: Heimat Sicherheitsdienst.

So let me get this straight immigrants or anybody brown can’t walk around without papers at all times that is until the card becomes available.
Then even whites get the card but all brown people can’t leave home without it however people on the terrorism watch list can still buy guns?
Run that as an ad on Spanish TV

“This is not a racist policy!”

-Pat Buchanan

Joe Lieberman wants to strip terror suspects of their citizenship I wonder how he feels about immigrants? I wonder how he feels about people on the terror watch list buying guns?
I wonder if anti Government militias qualify as terrorists according to Joe?

Ah, yes, Pat Buchanan. I knew there was an empty space on my list of People Who Can Bite Me.

Sure Pat No Irish need apply wasn’t Racist either. People like Pat are why Mexicans leave the Catholic Church once they come to America in increasing numbers.
That and priest scandals we unlike Pat have kids to worry about.

Maybe he would like to question the allegiance of people with citizenship in 2 countries.

YEAH!! Great for the whole Los Suns organization for doing this..

Nobody in the WH thinks this policy sounds just a wee bit Nazi? Talk about politically tone deaf and out of touch!

What’s the Spanish word for sun & why didn’t they use it? Or is sun a Spanish word for the English sun, or something else? Don’t know Spanish.

How does the card stop identity theft?

Joe is not seeing how his policies could be twisted by future Presidents to go after Jews. Its like he is a closet Nazi.

Glad you asked. I was thinking the same thing. Will stores be required to scan you fingerprints or eyeballs & your ID card every time you buy something? What about online purchases?

Jeff Kaye is upstairs!
UK Foreign Office Secret Opinion: It’s OK to Gather Evidence Through Torture

Sol and very good questions I have no idea why not.

Heh. I used to know that.

Cui bono?

IT contractors – Lockheed, CSC, and others
Employers who send recruiters to Mexico for undocumented workers (bet they deduct it as a cost of doing business)
Other companies who use the ID as a data mining tool, just like they did with the Social Security (not for identification purposes) Number.

BTW, biometric doesn’t mean that it is implanted, just that it uses some identifying mark (such as a fingerprint or iris scan). This is much cheaper and easier to implement (many employers already have done this with employee ID cards) than the bugaboo of implanted RFID chips. And as this weekend’s pursuit of the Times Square bomber shows, one doesn’t need an implanted RFID to track someone geographically. My guess is that the biometric measure will be a fingerprint, allowing dovetailing with FBI and state law enforcement databases. And providing employers a fingerprint for their biometric access and time recording systems. Meaning more IT business interfacing with employer systems.

And of course there’s the biometric industry itself.

It’s a National ‘Show Me Your Papers … er Chip’

Ding. Ding. Ding.

Unintended consequences. Think that there are any Democrats who understand this implication?

My sense is that it will not be applied where the Social Security Number is not currently applied. Even if there is specific legislation prohibiting these applications, who is going to enforce it and how large will the penalties be? Try no one and not much.

I’m pretty sure that the democrats could get the republicans on board, if they threw in a free, but required, baptism when they issue the believe cards.

OT–KO just reported that the Times Sq bomber left the keys to his getaway car in the Nissan bomb, so he had to take the train home to Connecticut.

Maybe he was a Tea Partier, after all? lol

I wonder if the GOP and Joe thinks its ok for immigrants to buy guns?

Hello, Minority Report! Holy shit.

We can’t let this happen. If this is what we elected in 2008 then I’m gonna start printing Bill of Rights toilet paper and selling it on the internet.

Fuck this administration.

We seriously need an option other than these people and reps.

If your goal was to further control the population, don’t you think that a comprehensive form of ID would be a good step?

Not that I wish to provide further explanation to this comment, but it relates to the article because the main thrust of it is about a new proposed national ID. Certainly, a reasonable question would be “Why do we need more ID?”

You won’t be able to stop it, but at least you’ll know why.

We could call it USAID. Oh…wait. Taken?

Phoenix Woman is upstairs!
WaPo Persists on Ignoring the Racism of the GOP Elephant in the Room

Kris, the fricken D’s have been attempting this since at least the 60′s. I remember fighting it in platform resolution committees at the county and district level for several cycles in a row.

(I don’t know about the R’s, they might very well have been wanting it also, the Fascist versions of them)

OMG, dating websites will be data mining it.

Reading the PDF, it explicitly says there will NOT be a central database of biometric information. It will be stored on the card. The document strongly hints that the biometric identifier will be a fingerprint scan:

collection of fingerprints from applicants leading to prompt issuance of a biometric-enabled credential

So the card will be swiped and compared with a fingerprint scan done by the same machine. That will identify the individual. Then the machine will periodically call in to a central database with the card # (technically a digital encryption key) and verify that the card # is still valid.

Bear in mind this is the “LIBERAL” Senate proposal, so it’s virtually assured that some variation of this system is what we’re going to get if immigration reform passes, unfortunately.

Cui bono? Excellent question. The Brits, BTW, are collecting DNA and fingerprints. Lord knows what our masters here have in mind; good bet they won’t really tell us.

Jason Rosenbaum is upstairs!
Decision Time at the FCC: Latest Report Points to Protection of Net Neutrality

See, I always say, “Fine, pour out the milk, I don’t need to confirm that for ya.” Gets me some funny looks, but, really — why would the first person be wrong? Everyone knows when milk is off, unless you just drank orange juice or ate something really savory.

There’s no need for confirmation: throw out the milk.

“creepy national ID thing”? Umm, we already have it – It’s called your SS card. Adding your picture – like most drivers licences and credit/debit cards already do these day – and your finger prints to it is no big deal, really.

And don’t go arguing like a hysterical drama queen that it’s “un-American” because it tramples my right to privacy. That privacy ship sailed decades ago with the advent of credit reporting bureaus.

We are a country of 300 million plus and growing and the only fair and balanced way to keep legal Americans safe from illegal interlopers is with a national ID card.

So, quit yer bitchin’ and show your proud to be an American by having a national ID card that you can whip out at any time to prove it. It doesn’t hurt, really it doesn’t hurt a bit…

I’m getting several visions here…

a) The vision of a fuckup in the system and suddenly you’re a non-person. Can’t get a job, open a bank account, or get access to an account you already have, etc. Think this is farfetched? The SS admin generally is one of the government’s best run and most efficient agencies but even they have a big problem (about 23,000 people a year) in erroneously recording live people as deceased. McClatchy and the L.A. Times both had articles about this back around June of last year.) Once you’re listed as dead, getting unlisted proves to be hard. In the meantime, benefits stop, credit card accounts get closed, IRS refunds go unpaid, and in some case, the IRS even refuses to accept your tax return.

b) I see a whole new growth industry in the corruption of people in position to issue fraudulent cards, the same way many DMVs have people who will issue a fraudulent driver’s license for some under the table cash or drugs. (Although I admit, the states tightened up on this to some extent after 9-11.)

those oranges also have to be *affordable* for the u.s. born wage slaves as well…let’s face it minimum wage isn’t a real living wage ANYWHERE in this country and in places like silicon valley $30.00/hr isn’t enough to live on…

If the argument is that prices would rise if legal workers were used, then the logical side effect of that is that wages would have to go up to counter the rise in basic food stuff. God forbid our wages would rise for once. You are focused far too much on the race to the bottom that we’ve been pursuing for the past 30+ years.

Yes, perhaps there are not enough legal workers that would be willing to do the horrible work that most choose not to. The real argument is though that the use of illegal labor and outsourcing has killed this country.

I know the government will not pursue these bastard companies who bleed us dry, but I hope there is a special place in hell for them when their day eventually does come.

Yeah and the the RFID chip they have setup for phase 2 is no different. They are streamlining the ID system and the side benefit is they can track all of our movements. Go ahead response back with your, “I don’t have anything to hide…” bullshit.

Then what point do the card serve? If the card is fraudulent, the data on it to be compared against will show whatever the person wants it to. It is far too convenient that phase two of any plan such as this would then expand on it and include RFID, central database, so on and so forth.

Once you get everybody in the system you go to all digital currency. If it is reported that someone is murmuring against the government you just close their account and they starve.

I have heard this from Mr. Friendly before. It seems he needs a whole sub-class of labor to keep his grocery bill down. He doesn’t seem to care that the people providing him with cheap produce cannot afford to eat it themselves.

Yep. Adn/or you use the RFID to locate and round them up for those FEMA camps.

Achtung, your papers please. Shnell! This country has gone down the tubes