House of Eratosthenes

Today’s headlines indicate that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, has recommended “black boxes” be included into all new vehicles.

US mulls ‘black box’:

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chief David Strickland told a congressional hearing on Thursday that the regulator is considering whether to make “black boxes” mandatory for all new vehicles. [ID:nN11246251]

The devices can capture data on speed, braking effort and other details which can be vital in reconstructing accidents.

I have never seen this level of intrusive legislation being put forth in my life time. In just the past week we have seen senators Schumer and Graham proposing biometric ID cards to be required of all Americans. In addition, part of the proposed health care reform act includes similar provisions where biometric medical records are to be obtained and kept on all citizens. That has already begun via the HIPAA regulations that we allowed to be enacted several years ago.

LP is referring to this, I think…

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill are proposing a new national biometric ID card that would be required of all U.S. workers. WSJ’s Laura Meckler explains the proposal and the objections from privacy advocates.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.

The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.

All workers.

This is something that needs to be put to a challenge, I think. Especially in our nation’s capitol, in which the rules are made. This notion that equality is always good and inequality is always bad.

Let’s require registration by all seasonal workers. Oh no, that’s discrimination and an invasion of privacy. All right then…let’s make everyone do it. No problem! There can be no invasion of privacy if everyone is losing their privacy at the same time. So the Sr. Vice President who helped start this company and has been working at it fifteen hours a day for thirty years…the mousey little admin assistant with no social life who’s never worked anywhere else…the chieftain of industry who is the grandson of the inventor of the widget his company sells, whose life has been a matter of public record since the day he was born. You all have to go get your National ID cards.

And then you need to stick a box in your cars so we know where you’re going and what you’re doing.

See, I think that’s how you get this veal-calf society going in America, where people guard their privacy with such zeal. This…is how you overcome that. Through our guilt. Our revulsion against anything that might be “discriminatory.” It’s a powerful instinct we have when we’ve been hearing, since third grade on the playground, “If I have to make one exception I have to make a hundred.” This misguided notion that if you have a raw deal, that’s just awful and nobody should allow it to happen — but if we all have the same raw deal then that’s quite alright.

Meanwhile, how much sense does it make to require Bill Gates to get a biometric card so we can confirm his identity? Absolutely none. How much sense does it make to require it of everyone who works at a hotel, a canning factory, a farm? Uh…quite a bit more. Yes, that would be unequal. There would be criteria defining the employer. The aforementioned HIPAA law already does this. Pages and pages defining what a “covered entity” is. We have health insurance requirements for employers with so-many-numbers of “workers.” It’s done all the time. Banking regulations. Auto manufacturing regulations.

When it comes to these outright brazen invasions of our privacy, suddenly we have to be equal in everything we do. It’s not a principle. It’s a pot-sweetener. Many among us, even among our knee-jerk libertarians who are indignant about driving around with license plates on their cars, will be shamed into silence if the argument shifts to “equality” versus “inequality.”

So there you have it, the government owns all our work and is perfectly entitled to maintain records on it. And now we’re “workers.” Workers, that’s another thing. If I could work my will, the word would be banished from Congress forever. Everyone caught with that word crossing their lips would be branded as a labor union lackey, which is probably correct close to 100% of the time, and placed in permanent exile.

When I was young I was taught through soft, humorous suggestions — nobody really stating it word-for-word — that blathering away about the communists taking over, was a sign of dementia.

It must be true. The older I get, the more signs I see that they are, and have been for awhile.

Yeah, great…something else the gov’t can use to track us. I have a friend who refuses to carry a cell phone because he does not like the idea of some entity – even the cell company – being able to determine his movement or location.

Why am I not surprised that this was brought to us by “Chuck-You” Schumer and Linsey “Graham-nesty?”

And yes…I’m SURE no employer would ever look the other way when an applicant happens to lack one of these fancy biometric ID cards, and they definitely can’t be counterfeited or used by someone else. Right? RIGHT?
- cylarz | 03/13/2010 @ 21:36
I have a national ID. It is blue and has United States Uniformed Services across the top. The mid-upper left has US Navy, Retired with the Navy Department hologram. The Rank is PO1/E6. I still am addressed as Petty Officer. It never leaves, ever. It has no expiration date except for the loss of care to medicare when I turn 65 in 9 and 1/2 years. That is food for an entire posting in and of itself.
In addition as a federal civilian employee, uncle sugar has plenty of info about me already. Like the Liar-in-Chief needs anymore? Yeah. Right.
Not a member of the union. I was in one once. Didn’t like it. Snivelers and crybabies for the most part.
- old retired petty officer | 03/14/2010 @ 11:37
This national ID card wouldn’t be so bad if you had to present it in order to vote.
- Winnd54 | 03/14/2010 @ 17:20

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U.S. Mulls “Black Box”Saturday, March 13th, 2010

U.S. Mulls “Black Box”
Saturday, March 13th, 2010