Is there a trade-off between civil liberties and security with NIDS?
NIDS would allow individuals to be easily tracked. However, knowing the identity of people will not prevent crime. If the identity of the person who will commit the next crime were known then prevention would be trivial: simply find the person and stop them from acting. However, since crime and acts of terror cannot be predicted, being able to track individuals will not increase security. A NIDS would make everyone vulnerable to the problem of incorrect data in the database. If the data on the card or in the database is incorrect, then innocent people will be victimized through no fault of their own. If other government databases are any indication, a system as large as a NIDS would contain a significant amount of incorrect data. NIDS, then, do not provide additional security against terrorism. With NIDS we compromise civil liberties without increasing security.
