How might a full-fledged national ID card be imposed on Americans?
The government would probably not succeed in ordering all Americans to report to their local post office today to apply for mandatory national ID cards. The outcry would be too great. But the government might accomplish the task gradually, by establishing precedents that make it just a little bit harder for people to function if they lack new quasi-mandatory forms of ID. Once the populace had grown accustomed to living with a particular new violation of their privacy and freedom of movement, the stage would then be set for winching the noose even tighter. As they say, the only way to boil a frog is–slowly. But the flame is being turned up. Ten years ago, nobody could have imagined that to fly from Manhattan to Albany, you’d first have to obtain authorization from the government, by presenting a government-issued ID card. Once that coercive violation of air-passenger privacy had become routine, it was a small matter in the post-911 world to require passengers to present ID up to three
