From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 10:19:39 +0800
To: Tim May <cypherpunks@Algebra.COM
Subject: Re: "Secure in one's papers" is becoming meaningless
In-Reply-To: <199709101603.KAA23312@infowest.com>
Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19970910182955.006c2a98@popd.ix.netcom.com>
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At 10:27 AM 9/10/97 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>At 8:37 AM -0700 9/10/97, Attila T. Hun wrote:
>>    NYT lead article today indicates Clinton bowing to LEOs to:
>>        ...gain broad access to patients' medical records, with hardly
>>        any restrictions on use or redisclosure of the data.
...
>Just routine developments in the latter stages of the American Imperial New
>World Order. Government can tie in to the networks of medical data as an
>aid to tracking citizen-units, as a means of ferreting out pseudonyms, and
>as a means of gathering dossier data. J. Edgar Hoover would have loved it.

Wonderful.  Medical records are great for this, because the need to 
coordinate with Medicare has pushed any insurace companies that didn't
use SSNs as an almost-unique key to use them.  (And realistically,
aside from a few SSA screwups, most non-uniqueness is a result of
the otherwise-undocumented pirating or making up numbers,
so who cares if the politically-well-connected insurance companies
don't cover them.)  And besides, it's necessary for the
Legitimate Needs of Law Enforcement, because sometimes they've
got to use dental records to identify bodies, however obtained.

....
>This is a very important issue. The "secure in one's papers and
>possessions" language of the 4th is practically meaningless in today's
>world: most of one's important papers and records are not stored locally in
>one's home.

....
>Expect within 10 years to see hotel and other such services required to
>have proof of True Names, and with such records linked to government
>computers on a nightly (or even realtime) basis.

European and some Ex-Colonial-World countries have done this for years;
foreigners get their passports borrowed to register with the police.
I suspect a number of US states have requirements like this as well,
based on the near-universality of being asked for a name, address, and
license plate number when registering.

>The main protection for this is _cash_. But an increasing number of places
>will not take cash. (Let's not get off on a tangent about what "legal
>tender" is; if Alice says she will only take credit cards or checks, then
>Bob is bound by this.)

Car rental places are especially big on this.  I was at the rental counter
waiting in line one day, and a 25-something and his grandfather/uncle/whatever
were trying to rent a car which the younger guy was going to drive across
country.
They refused him, because _he_ didn't have a credit card, even though his
elder relative did.  ("If you get caught driving this car, the police will
impound it and throw you in jail, and it'll be a lot of paperwork for us")
And another guy was trying to pay cash when returning a car that he and his
girlfriend had rented on her credit card the previous day, and getting
refused.
Of course, they also want to see your license.  

And we've ranted about airports here before.