Screw The Workers
If you want to work at a US port you are going to have to pay up to $159 for an ID card good for 5 years according t the AP article, Port workers to pay for Homeland Security ID.
Workers have to get cards in the near future, but no decision has been made as to when the ports have to have the equipment to read the cards. This program was required by Congress in 2002, but they didn’t do anything until Congress reminded them in October, 2006.
You would have thought that they could have used the cards they designed for airports, but there are no cards for airports. They won’t be introduced until later.
5 comments
Any idea when all US citizens will be required to carry a national ID card in order to travel from state to state?
Anya, a de facto national ID card was passed into law last year, in the form of a law that requires all states to keep uniform standard driver’s license information, to be supplied to federal law enforcement and maintained in a massive database. It was attached to a must-pass defense bill. The law is known as the “Identity Theft Effectiveness Protection Act” … sorry, I couldn’t resist; actually, the name is the “Real ID Act,” and you can Google it, or search the ACLU web site for it. Here is the most recent action I know of regarding the law; it’s a bipartisan attempt to insert some much-needed privacy provisions.
I don’t know that the law says anything about using the mandatory national ID as an internal passport, but of course that concern is very much in the minds of civil liberties advocates.
It isn’t just that they are building these Stalinist data bases, it’s that you are expected to pay for them to do it to you.
If I hadn’t been receiving letters from the VA last year about the possibility that all of my personal information had been provided to criminals by a careless VA employee, I might not be as attuned to the problems of the government collecting this information.
Getting the workers to pay for their own ID cards is an insult. On the other hand if ID cards are introduced here as planned we will be shelling out for the damned things ourselves
From what I’ve read about your plan, Jams, it’s even more pervasive. It’s the fact that they demand that you pay a special fee for the damn thing that rubs salt in the wound.