Over at Huffington Post, David Bier goes into some detail on how the innocuous sounding “E-Verify” may very well morph into a biometric National ID system. The comments following the article were quite depressing – the all too willing sheep take umbrage at having it pointed out to them that our wise overlords treat us as children. Here’s what I had to say to that:

These comments are pretty sad. You guys are missing the big picture. The problem is not the light onus of obtaining said ID. The problem is the classic “slippery slope”. Today it is evil “ferners” who “steal our jobs” that we are trying to control. But what will it be tomorrow? If you agree to a system wherein a citizen must obtain permission from the government to engage in Activity A (work), then you will have no right to complain when the government adds more and more activities to its Control List. With the ability to biometrically identify anyone anywhere at any time (think biometric scanning drones so high in the sky you won’t even know they are there) perhaps a “Save Our Roads” bill will allow the government to decide if your car should be allowed on certain roads at certain times (aka “road rationing”). Or perhaps in order to equalize economic resources you will only be permitted to shop at certain stores thereby forcing you to shop at others (to save jobs). Or perhaps restricted from buying certain items (“Bill is overweight so no beer for him”)

In short these systems allow us to be corralled around in our daily lives like sheep. And all of it is for our good, of course. Government is now our shepherd and technology the sheep dogs… and judging from these comments most of us are all too willing sheep.

I’ve written on this topic before at greater length, please see this page for more.