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A Number, Not A Name: Big Brother By Stealth by Claire Wolfe
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This article and last year's "Land-Mine Legislation" address similar issues. However,"A Number, Not a Name" contains updated, corrected and more detailed material. It was also written for a respectable publication (The Freeman, May 1998, The Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, NY.), and its chief virtue may be that you could share it with your grandmother or your pastor more readily than some of my more inflammatory stuff. The version presented here is the original, unedited copy. It differs somewhat from the version printed by The Freeman. When Colorado Congressman Dan Schaefer held a Consumer Protection Seminar in October 1997, he thought he was going to educate constituents about guarding their privacy against con artists. Instead, it was Schaefer who got an education. "My concern with privacy," snapped the first person to rise for a question-and-answer session, "is what the damn government is doing to me." A flood of comment followed--nearly all of it about laws passed by Schaefer's own Republican 104th Congress and signed by President Clinton. Together, these laws create the most comprehensive ID and citizen-tracking system ever imposed upon any country. Yet they have received little attention in the mainstream media and in some cases were passed with little or no debate in Congress. In the Beginning was the ID Card Since September 30, 1996, the U.S. has had a mandate for a de facto national ID card. Public Law 104-208, Division C, Title VI, Subtitle D, Section 656
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IMPROVEMENTS IN IDENTIFICATION-RELATED DOCUMENTS(b)(1)(A) ...A Federal agency may not accept for any identificationrelated purpose a drivers' license, or other comparable identification documen