Even the blood of persons normally averse to the excesses of state power often fails to boil when they consider our metastasizing national identification regime.

     I know, I know. You're yawning already. "Increasingly intrusive surveillance of me and my every move? Comprehensive tracking and logging of everything I do, with the centralized database(s) linked in real time to the swipe-able biometric card? Governmental permission required to proceed at designated checkpoints? Hey man, you know, whatever it takes to stop the terrorists, immigrants, and ordinary folks walking to and fro as if they possess a birthright to freedom and individual rights! Me, I've got nothing to hide! Bring it on, Big Bro! Love it!"

     The assumptions informing the insouciance depend on which era you're living in, of course. Roll back the tape twenty or thirty years to the 1970s and listen to a guy back then fretting about the prospects.

     "I suspect that this linking of everything we do financially to the Social Security Number is going to cause us a lot more trouble than we presently think, Ed." (Name of the guy's friend is Ed.)

     "Uh...."

     "In fact, Ed, I would not be surprised if twenty or thirty years down the road, every other day there's a news story about how scads of private information of employees or credit card holders or drivers has gone missing, compromising not only a specific account but also the whole financial life of the person whose information falls into the wrong hands."

     "Uh...."

     "Further, what with all the advances in computers and government officials' insatiable demand to control us as much as possible, I would also not be surprised if all the information the government is collecting on everybody were eventually slapped into one centralized database, actual or de facto, linked in turn to a nationally standardized, SSN-tagged, presentable-on-demand ID card, to wit, a national identification card. Of course, all this aggregated data would increase the power of bureaucrats to push us around, as well as render us more vulnerable to the antics of hackers and cyber-terrorists. If some large-scale terrorist attack ever happens on American soil, bombing of the World Trade Center or whatever, that would only speed up the trend toward universal surveillance. I'm guessing the first checkpoints would be centers of mass transportation where government either runs the show directly or is heavily involved. Airports, then maybe even trains and buses."

     "Oh, that tears it! Enough already! You and your wacko science-fiction devo pervo scare-mongering, Bartholomew! Look, this isn't the Soviet Union. Can't happen here, not in the United States of America. The People would never stand for it! Orwellian monitoring of all our domestic travel!? What comic book did you get that out of? Chee-e-e-zus! Man, you are out there! Look, I'm sure libertarians have interesting things to say now and then about abuses of state power, we all know about Watergate, but you don't exactly enhance your credibility with this kind of demonic paranoia."

     "Well, I think if you look at history, we've already traveled much of the path, not in one fell swoop but in increments. Maybe all the precedent-setting increments of the past foreshadow all the precedent-setting increments to come. The driver's license is already being used as a state-issued ID, not just to verify that the holder passed the driver's test. And people must now use the Social Security Number for many more things than to collect Social Security checks. It seems very plausible to me that one day the feds will try to 'standardize' the cards being issued by the states, and thereby turn that state ID card into a national ID card, linked to databases about everything from credit card purchases to our latest traffic violation. The technology is going to be feasible, and then it's just a matter of how much citizens are willing to let their rulers get away with."

     "Yeah, whatever you say, weirdo."

     Roll back the tape another thirty or forty years, to the 1930s, to the inception of Social Security and the convenient little nine-digit number used to keep the accounts straight.

     "I don't know about this, I don't know about this," mutters Bill to his more level-headed friend Jeff. "Bad enough that the government is interfering in our retirement planning. They're also giving everybody an official identifying number? Don't know that I like being tagged like that. Seems to me it's just like a red cape in front of a bull. That number could be used for all sorts of things once the bureaucrats set their minds to it. That number is going to give people a special kind of trouble, I think."

     "Bill, you always were one to talk. First of all, not everybody is even eligible for the Social Security program. It's not even that big a program. You know dang well that only one percent of our income gets put into it. And only the people participating in the Social Security get the number. Who else they gonna give out the number to? Newborn babies? Use the brain the good Lord gave you."

     "Mm. Well..."

     "T'other thing is, you know dang well that because of all the people yapping about privacy and whatnot like yourself, the gummint has explicitly assured us that the Social Security Number will never be used for purposes of identification. It's just for collating the files for the Social Security payouts. Why, I understand that on the little cards they're handing out to participants in the program, it says as plain as could be, NOT TO BE USED FOR IDENTIFICATION. Black and white, plain as day. Now, you tell me you think the gummint is going to go back on a promise it's got right there in stark black type on little cards?"

     "Mm. Well..."

     "Tell ye what. Why don't you get back to me the day the gummint has removed that express stipulation from the little cards and is assigning Social Security Numbers to newborn babies and you can't legally open a bank account unless you give the bank officer your Social Security Number, which, heh heh, everybody has to have! Heh heh heh! Then we'll talk!"

     Fast forward, fast forward, I'll wait until you've had a chance to punch the little button on the DVD player...and we're back. 2005. People are no longer annoyed by one's fantastical and paranoid predictions of omni-ambitious governmental surveillance, they're annoyed by one's obtuse refusal to blandly accept the necessity and inevitability of it all. And, too, by one's fantastical and paranoid predictions, based on reading too many newspaper reports and history books, about what bureaucrats, hackers, cyber-terrorists and others could do with the info thus so conveniently aggregated and linked to that one card you will not be able to go anywhere without.

     False positives? What's that? Not something the clerk at the airport will ever have heard of. Freedom? Everybody will enjoy perfect freedom to conduct himself according to the dictates of those monitoring us.

     But I'm an optimist. I don't think that just because we've traveled a certain extent down a certain road, we can't veer off the road and go in another direction entirely. Granted, that may also make me a lousy driver.

Copyright 2005 by David M. Brown. Brown is a freelance writer and editor. To view previous installments of this column, click here.