The Need for a National Id Card

William Safire discusses the threat of a national identification card in his essay titled “The Threat of National ID.” He points out both the pros and cons to having a national ID. He makes very valid points to support the idea of not requiring a national ID, but his attacks to the side in favor of the ID card are too far stretching. He is reaching out to the worst possible outcomes of having a national ID and saying it will happen. There is a need for a national ID in the United States because first, it will shorten the gap between private and public information. But is that any different than what we already do now. We carry around a driver’s license or an ID card. It is required by law to have one but you don’t need to carry it on you as a pedestrian. But, the same information will be stored.

Safire’s idea that a mandatory national ID will lead to the implantation of a chip is not a strong reason to not “start” a national ID system. Scientist and doctors have already done tests on the chip implantation and found the chip does not work because it moves around the body. Also, because it is a chip that must be scanned instead of being swiped like an ID, anyone who can create or modify a scanner can have access to a person’s information as he walks by and the person wouldn’t know anything of it. This would mean all the information would be on the chip instead of the information being in a computer and the card pulling up that information, which makes the information far less available to the public.

In all reason, the national ID card would make daily life safer for people. Because it would be a national ID card, it would have to be managed by the federal government; and the higher up the government ladder you go, the more security an item will get. In the future scope of the idea, drivers’ licenses would be national instead of being distributed at the state level so as to have both the national ID and the drivers’ license in one card. So, from then on, instead of submitting information to the state governments to get an ID, a person would have to submit it only once to the federal government for all identification. There would be a less opportunity to obtain false identity because the government would have a one time standard checking system for everyone.

Lastly, added information collection