The National Consumer Coalition's Privacy Villain of the Week is Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY):
Sen. Hillary Clinton told WABC radio this week that to combat the scourge of cheap lawn care by migrant wokers, she advocates not only an entry/exit work visa program with biometric identifiers but perhaps even a national ID card for every American, complete with a biometric identifier such as a fingerprint or iris scan. http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2003/2/11/120029
Clinton also mentioned in the interview that that she is opposed to illegal immigration, something careful watchers of Democrat voter registration in the 90s might find a bit puzzling. "People have to stop employing illegal immigrants," she told WABCs John Gambling. Apparently, voting is fine, but work is out of the question.
Clinton's endorsement of a biometric national ID scheme was coy, saying "we might have to" go to a national biometric ID even though she's "not a big fan." Clinton could have outlined less-invasive procedures, such as real border control, which would probably void the need for biometric numbering of migrants, not to mention U.S. citizens. But she did not, which is not very surprising.
Hillary's protestations of neccessity seem particularly disingenuous since she has a history of pushing for schemes to track and number every American. Clinton's infamous attempt to take over the American health care system ten years ago had as its linchpin a scheme to give every man, woman, and child in America a "universal health identifier" ID number. That plan unfortunately lived on in the HIPAA regulations, though thanks to the heroic efforts of Congressman Ron Paul, the numbering scheme has been without funding on a year-to-year basis up until now. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/8/15/155946.shtml
Health ID numbers put the most sensitive personal data in large government databases, a juicy target vulnerable to exploitation — by insiders and hackers alike — for purposes ranging from blackmail to the black market. The same holds, of course, for the massive databanks of biometric information of the type Clinton claims we "need." Perhaps the only more sensitive information in a government database is the type seen in raw FBI files, the kind brought to the White House by self-identified Hillary hiree Craig Livingstone back in the first term of the Clinton Administration. http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/3/26/163951
None of this sounds like the actions of someone who isn't a big fan of government tracking. What Hillary's latest pronouncement sounds like is the kind of coy posturing of a politician who says one thing and does another, but not without leaving some weasel room. This was widely known in 1990s America as "Clintonspeak." Nowadays, this kind of carelessness of language and hidden intent will leave the speaker known as the Privacy Villain of the week.
The Privacy Villain of the Week and Privacy Hero of the Month are projects of the National Consumer Coalition's Privacy Group. Privacy Villain audio features now available from FCF News on Demand. For more information on the NCC Privacy Group, see www.nccprivacy.org or contact James Plummer at 202-467-5809 or via email.
She's another one that needs to get a pinkslip. In a more perfect world she'd be asking me if I "wanted fries with that." I've opposed National ID Cards as part of a national coalition in the past on and June 27, 2002 and will continue to fight against this threat to liberty. This issue keeps resurfacing and is not likely to go away anytime soon. Plenty of conservatives like Lisa Dean of Free Congress Foundation and libertarians like me have stepped up to the plate in the past on this issue. I now call on liberals to do the right thing as well and tell their favored Senator Clinton to shove that fascist ID Card right up her ass.
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Link courtesy of James Plummer of National Consumer Coalition's Privacy Group via the In Defense of Freedom mailing list.