Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform
The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.
Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf) is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.
Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.
This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.
“It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things,” said Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”
For now, the legislation allows the database to be used solely for employment purposes. But historically such limitations don’t last. The Social Security card, for example, was created to track your government retirement benefits. Now you need it to purchase health insurance....
E-Verify Makes Working for a Living a Privilege Granted by the Government
...E-Verify turns the relationship between the government and the people upside-down. In order to stop the tiny percentage of those starting jobs in the United States each year who are unauthorized workers, E-Verify would force everyone in the nation to obtain affirmative permission from the government before performing work and earning money.
The other objections are also troubling, but they all follow-on from this one. The ACLU outlines the privacy and security dangers inherent in compiling sensitive information, including identifying data and employment history, in one database. Those risks already exist with existig government databases, but further centralization "would be a goldmine for intelligence agencies, law enforcement, licensing boards, and anyone who wanted to use this vast trove of detailed information for other purposes."
Note that IRS agents and police officers have already been caught abusing databases for personal reasons as well as criminal purposes. There's no reason to think the E-Verify system will be immune.
One potential official abuse pointed out by the ACLU is the expansion of E-Verify "into a comprehensive national identity system that would be used to track and control Americans in ways that have never been done before." We're already well on the way there with Social Security numbers. The E-Verify system could well formalize the requirementf for a national ID — especially now that drivers licenses are included in the database, paving the way for their de facto status as national ID cards.
