Here's an IDea

So, I was talking to MK last night. She had just spent the better part of a second day trying to change her driver's license from her previous state of residence to her current one. It's still not done yet.

It's clear that the new, higher, hurdles of bureaucracy are yet another consequence of 9/11, and more to the point, the federal government's inept response to said event.

There's long been a knee-jerk resistance by many to the idea of a national ID card, as it represents an infringement on the right to privacy. It seems like one of the few fights that we, the collective little guy, can win against an executive branch and federal court system that evidently no longer believes in such a right. I myself used to be one of those jerking knees. Here's why I changed my mind.

• Your driver's license has long been your de facto national ID card
• Your Social Security number has long been your de facto national ID number
• Any twinkie with Internet access and a few bucks can find out everything that you've ever done

Now, I'm not saying that we should give up the fight for our rights, especially to privacy. What I am saying is that, in order to get along in today's society, you need (1) a piece of hard-to-forge identification and (2) a unique identifier, probably a number. As Marcellus Wallace would say, "Now that's a hard motherfuckin' fact of life, but that's a fact of life your ass is gonna have to get realistic about."

So, I say, why not do it right?

The SS number should be reimplemented as a two-part number, along the lines of public key cryptography. That's a rant for another day.

But as far as photo IDs go: Stop letting Congress punt their responsibility to the respective state DMVs. They don't want the job of issuing IDs and they do it badly.

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Notes: Marcellus Wallace is a character in Pulp Fiction. The image on this page was swiped from some other blog.