One of the things that truly defines a society or its form of government is the level of openness of that society. And one of the things that baffles people about the United States and inspires the hatred of our nation is the level of openness we have enjoyed.

Some call that liberty. In America, there are some private places where class and credentials define people and determine who is welcome and who is not, but the majority of society is classless, with individuals making their own choices—about matters important, mundane and trivial.

We have become so accustomed to coming and going as we wish that we fail to measure our liberties against other nations and societies by comparing the degrees of openness.

Tyranny is not measured by concentration camps or genocide alone. It is measured by the lack of openness about individual choices. During the 20th century, the most highly developed tyrannies—Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union to name only two—controlled their populations in microcosm.

These states played God, knowing not just when a single sparrow fell, but exactly who every individual was and where they could be found at any given moment. What made that possible, even before the age of the ubiquitous computer, was the individual identity document. The advent of the computer age has made such massive and pervasive control of populations even easier for those with the will and the money to track every individual in a nation.

You knew you were in fascist Germany or communist Russia because you couldn’t go as far as the corner news kiosk without having your identify documents in hand to display for anyone—in or out of uniform—who demanded to see them.

Nothing New
Those sudden demands for identity papers told you instantly that you were not in a free and open society. And today, there are many nations, including some so-called democracies, were identity papers measure the freedom and openness of a society and its government.

The post 9-11 debate over national ID cards is nothing new. It keeps coming up every few years, as I was reminded by some recent requests about my columns on national ID cards. One of the most recent was my Hindsight of Oct. 1, 1996.

In that column I discussed how some old-fashioned liberals had become present-day fascists, relying in part on comments made by old-fashioned liberal comedian Mort Sahl on CNN’s “Larry King Show.” But the key to that article was a quick summary of proponents and opponents of the then current debate over national ID cards.

Gunowners will not be surprised to learn that one of the leading advocates of national ID back in 1996 was Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who certainly exemplifies the liberal to fascist metamorphosis. Six years ago, Feinstein saw the national ID card as an important tool in the battle against crime and terrorism. I haven’t heard that she’s changed her mind.

Back in that column I also quoted Robert Ellis Smith, an attorney who was also publisher of the Privacy Journal. Smith was clearly opposed to the national ID card, which in those days he equated with terrorism itself. He objects even to the current driver’s licenses issued by the states—every one of which already includes a photograph, “on the grounds that it forces me to satisfy the government that I am a real person before I can exercise my constitutional right to travel within the United States.”

Smith further commented then on the fact that the ID requirement served only to lead the public to believe that they were somehow safer. His key question then was, “Don’t we realize the dangers in allowing the government to establish identity and legitimacy?”

New Advocates
The national ID debate has gotten hotter since Sept. 11, with many new advocates stepping forward, all of them promise greater security, but many have their own agenda. Unfortunately, a majority of the American public—already major consumers of safety and security—seem to be willing to accept the regimentation and invasion of privacy that a national ID card would introduce into their lives.

Among the many new proponents of a high-tech national ID card are the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA), a Democratic Party policy group called the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), and a number of technology businesses who see this as an opportunity for profits and perhaps increased stock prices.

On Jan. 21, 2002, The Washington Times editorialized in opposition to the national ID card proposals.

“Mandatory fingerprinting used to be something we imposed on military personnel, criminals and criminal suspects.” The Times began.

“But if the idea of national ID cards being pushed by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators gets traction, every American will soon be inked—or tagged by another biometric identifier, such as a retinal scan—all in order to make us ‘safer.’ Whether we’ll be as free as we used to be is another matter, of course.”

The AAMVA—which represents the driver’s licensing agencies of the 50 states—wants $100 million from Congress to erect the US government’s first-ever national ID system—complete with a centralized database to keep track of all of us.

The Times editorial said this system “would supplant existing state-level and state-issued driver’s licenses, and we’d all have to carry one. These so-called smart cards could be used to track our movements, activities and purchases, and all the information would be dumped into Uncle Sam’s very own PC to be used for whatever “informational purposes only” the government deems appropriate.

“David L. Sobel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center is among the lonely voices urging a thoughtful pause,” The Times said. “ ‘This type of system will be a radical departure for this country,’ he said. And he warned flatly: ‘It will be abused.’ ”

Widespread Opposition
“Others agree,” The Times noted, “and they run the gamut from the liberals at the American Civil Liberties Union to the conservative at the Christian right. A broad spectrum representing almost every viewpoint in the American political spectrum, seems united in the belief that government cannot be entrusted with such power, and that waging war on terrorists should not require us to abandon the very freedoms that make us a target.”

Meanwhile, the PPI recommends that the government adopt technology applications that include:

• “Smart” ID cards, based on state-issued driver’s licenses with embedded computer chips for holding fingerprints, other identification methods and additional information. The chips would have security features to limit information use to specific agencies, as well as prevent forgery and fraud.

• Digital surveillance methods, along the lines of the FBI’s e-mail and keystroke capturing programs, subject to obtaining proper warrants and other controls.

• Face-recognition technology to spot known terrorists and criminals at high-interest events such as the Winter Olympics in Utah.

The Democratic think-tank also believes that the federal government should also consider funding programs to widen the use of smart IDs to other identity-sensitive areas, he said, and any federal support for state programs must be based on performance metrics.

If the very words of the proponents of high-tech national ID don’t scare you, nothing will.

Thus, it looks like nothing would help Osama bin Ladin and the al Qaeda to claim victory over America more than the adoption of a national identity card that closes our open society.