National ID cards will not help keep America safe




In order to prevent another tragedy like the one that happened on September 11th, 2001 our government came up with a couple ideas to do so. The idea I strongly disagree with is making national identification cards. Identification cards will not prevent terrorism and they also have fewer pros then cons making it less useful then we would want it to be.







“The first problem is the card itself. No matter how unforgettable we make it, it will be forged and worst, people will get legitimate cards in fraudulent names.” (Bruce Schaeier) This statement is completely correct and a perfect example is that during the 9/11 tragedy, 18 of the 19 hijackers deliberately used valid Virginia drivers licenses. Which makes it clear to us that if they can forge drivers licenses, which isn’t easy. So what makes you think they couldn’t forage national identification cards? Also creating 307,006,550 and counting national identification cards isn’t going to be cheap, its estimated cost would be over 17 million dollars, which isn’t exactly an easy price for U.S.A. considering we are in a recession and this project is likely to fail.




Another really good point that Bruce Schaeier made is that yes, the identification card will help a little but for those who have one or forged one, what will their identity tell you? Knowing a person’s identity doesn’t really tell you what their intentions are, especially when dealing with terrorism. Most terrorists don’t even have a criminal record therefore making it even harder to infer a person’s intention, bad or good. Another fact we must consider is that if we make these cards, any I.D. system possible involves people, who regularly make mistakes. Any person checking I.D.’s will eventually get tired and as the day goes on he will check the cards more loosely and loosely, making more mistakes as the day goes on and letting in more harmful people.




There is always a positive way to look at things, always. In this case there is a couple. Like, it would be much easier to keep track of people in the United States and making it easier for making a census. Also national identification cards make it easier to find work and people will be bothered less at airports making traveling quicker and easier if they have an I.D. card. It would also give people a job checking, making and collecting data for I.D. cards. However, if people are bothered less at an airport that means foraging it would be even easier because they will barely check it and a terrorist will walk in with extreme ease making the prevention even worse! So maybe the people will go through airports quicker but, that would mean a terrorist probably just got in quicker as well.




As you can see using I.D. cards to help prevent terrorism isn’t the best idea and we can not afford to make this kind of mistake with our low supply of money, we are in a recession. There are more cons then pros and there are also many immigrants immigrating into the United States everyday making us always have to update files, make more cards and spend more money. A solution would be to not make these cards and consider using another terrorism prevention mechanism that makes more sense and is more suitable for our country.