Reply #6: Here's a take on this [View All]

[alcibiades_mystery]

Do you really want to live in a country where your law enforcement officials can ask you to “show your papers”? If the answer is yes, then the National Identification card may be your style. However, I prefer not to HAVE to carry papers as a requirement of citizenship. Insert paragraph break - As it stands, you do not have an introductory paragraph. You simply have a quick intro that starts in on the argument. Break the first paragraph here, then add a thesis after the previous sentence. If you will rememberStrange formulation: what do you mean "If you will remember?" Who is supposed to remember? Who is your audience for this piece?, when Social Security was instituted, it was promised to the American people that the Social Security number would NOT be used for any other purpose than those warranted for Social Security. Its primary purpose was to be used only to administer the Social Security program, but it has become the de facto “national identification card”. Everyone uses this as a form of identification, which was never its intentiondelete this part: repetitive.

In 1935, the Social Security Number (SSN) was created solely for the purpose of tracking contributions to the social security fund. But as soon as 1943, President Roosevelt issued an Executive Order encouraging other federal agencies to use the SSN when establishing a "one system of permanent account numbers pertaining to an individual's person.citation, please" In 1961, the Civil Service Commission began using the number to identify all federal employees. The next year the IRS required the number on all individual tax returns. And, by the mid-1960s, the use of the SSN exploded in both the public and private sector as the introduction of the computer coincided with the expansion of government assistance programs.good evidence, but not really for your claim: this evidence basically says to me that the number was used almost from its inception for a number of reasons, and thus seems to contradict your thesis that its purpose was always meant to be limited

If you look at the way that the Social Security number has been abused, multiply that many times over and you will find the way that a National Identification card will be abused.argument from similarity, to be sure, but you haven't really shown how the SS # has been abused...all the uses listed above seem fairly mundane, and hardly abusive. This paragraph should appear AFTER your paragraphs on abuse, which appear below

If you have been paying attention over the last few years, you will see that the misuse of the Social Security card has been the reason that identification theft has been made so easy. It is used on driver’s licenses in some states, as student identification numbers, employee identification numbers, etc. and now we have a nationwide epidemic on our hands. A national ID card would be heavily relied on by commerce, employers, etc, and if counterfeited would present the same security problems, but those problems would be harder to recover from.
With a Social Security number, it is mainly limited to credit purchases. However, if someone actually was able to steal your IDENTITY card, the ramifications would be astronomical and much harder to recover from. It would be easier to recover from having your credit ruined to having your entire life ruinednow you're off in the world of sheer speculation, and with very little support. In the college writing business, we call this, well, bullshit.;-). Also of concern is if you were asked to show your identification to the government and were unable to show it because of theft, would you automatically be put in a detention center until you could prove who you were? If the national identification card was the only accepted form of identification—which is the goal—how would you be able to do that?argument from consequence, but you haven't shown that any of these consequences are reasonably to be expected. Simply raising them as questions doesn't present a forcible argument, and may even weaken your argument if the reader can easily come up with answers. Try again

To fully understand the reasoning, you must first understand what a national identification card is and how invasive it is to your privacy. A national ID card system would have four components. First, there would be a physical card that contains information about the person: name, address, photograph, maybe a thumbprint, etc. To be effective as a multi-purpose ID, of course, the card might also include place of employment, birth date, perhaps religion, perhaps names of children and spouse, and health-insurance coverage. The information might be in text on the card and might be contained on a magnetic strip, a bar code, or a chip. The card would also contain some sort of anti-counterfeiting measures: holograms, special chips, etc. Second, there would be a database somewhere of card numbers and identities. This database would be accessible by people needing to verify the card in some circumstances, just as a state's driver-license database is today. Third, there would be a system for checking the card data against the database. And fourth, there would be some sort of registration procedure that verifies the identity of the applicant and the personal information, puts it into the database, and issues the card.where are you getting all this? speculation? more importantly, shouldn't a full definition of a national ID card come much earlier in the paper so that the rest of your arguments make sense? Arrangemnt problem: reorganize

In this country, there isn't a government database that hasn't been misused by the very people entrusted with keeping that information safe. IRS employees have perused the tax records of celebrities and their friends. State employees have sold driving records to private investigatorsneither of these seem as severe as your previous arguments intimate...kinda a let down on "abuse" - also unsourced. Bank credit card databases have been stolen. Sometimes the communications mechanism between the user terminal -- maybe a radio in a police car, or a card reader in a shop -- has been targeted and personal information stolen that way.

It cannot be taken for granted that the public will automatically support the ID card concept. The Australian public took almost two years to protest against the card proposal. Within two months of the New Zealand announcement, hundreds of people were protesting in public. The reaction cannot be predicted. The government of Ireland recently abandoned plans to establish a national numbering system and ID card. The Data Protection Commissioner for Ireland, Donal Linehan, objected vehemently to the proposal. While acknowledging the importance of controlling fraud, the Commissioner observed that the proposal posed "very serious privacy implications for everybody."the point of this paragraph seems to be an argument from parallel cases: in three other places where a similar idea was proposed, there has been government and public opposition: stick with this point and forget the business about "prediction." This also seems misplaced, since previous and following paragraphs deal with fraud. Shouldn't you move this separate argument to a different place in the paper?

As pointed out by Katie Corrigan, Legislative Counsel of the ACLU, “Under a national ID system, employee mistake, database error rates, and common fraud would not simply affect individuals in one area of life. Instead, problems with the ID system or card could take away an individual's ability to move freely from place to place or even make someone unemployable until the file got straightened out.” this should be folded into the fraud and id theft arguments as support, rather than fiven its own paragraph

Alan M. Dershowitz is all for having a national identification card. His argument is based solely on his ability to trade his personal convenience for his personal freedoms, but then again Dershowitz also advocates using torture on detaineesridiculous ad hominem to start this section...how can anyone trust your reading of Dershowitz when you are being so obviously unfair to his argument. Bad credibility move: your credibility is shot on this reading. His misguided attempts to justify that we already use different forms of identification, why not institute one that will benefit convenience are practical, yet fail to address the reasons we have a Constitution in the first place. His argument is that's not his entire argument...when you represent it as if it is, you come off as partisan and unfair to his posiion...your point can't be taken seriously because you are presenting yourself as an unfair sniper here“Finally there is a question of anonymity. I don’t believe we can afford to recognize such a right in this age of terrorism. No such right is hinted at in the Constitution. And though the Supreme Court has identified a right to privacy, privacy and anonymity are not the same.”

Mr. Dershowitz and I disagree here, as we do on most subjectswho cares about most subjects. stick to this one. The end does NOT always justify the means. Just like his views on torture, inserting electrical prods in a detainees rectum to make him tell secrets is NOT okay, and taking away our right of privacy so that we can get through an airport expeditiously is NOT okay.oy gevalt...you can't beat him on this argument, so you try this transparent emotional appeal on the torture points, possibly misrepresenting both his arguments...that's weak

Bin Laden attacked our country because he wanted knee-jerk reactions. What better way to let the terrorists win than for our OWN government to finish the job that the terrorists began and take away our most precious of rights…the right to privacy. William Safire bases his argument against a national identification card in part of the fact the “U.S. citizens protected by The Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution reads, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
We cannot let our identity be seized by the government. The framers of the Constitution were deliberate in laying down the rights of the American citizen. If we allow this administration, which has repeatedly shown lapses of good judgment at the detriment of the American people, to institute this act of privacy invasion, then not only will we lose the War on Terror, we will concede it to the terrorists can you say this in a way that is not an hysterical cliche?.

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OK: THis may come off as mean, but this is a straight up draft workshop. The paper needs serious work on organization and tone. As it stands, the arguments are slapdash and poorly organized, and the tone, especially towards the end, is simply inappropriate for anything but the most committed partisan audience. You'll need to do the following:

1) Figure out your argument groupings. Arrange like with like. You'll want to improve your introduction with an actual thesis stament, an not start off with the social security bit in the first paragraph. That's a separate argument and should gets its own pale in the body.

2) Consider folding the named positions (Dershowitz, Safire) in with the research on specific points. As it stands, you seem to be using these in a "refutation" section. I'm not sure this is the right place for them. In any case, when you present those argument, present them fairly, instead of sniping in with sarcastic asides and other unfair commentary. Give it to them straight. That way, you can actually refute the arguments with other arguments rather than pretending that they've been refuted with your asides and ad hominems.

Current grade: C- You've done some research, and you've assembled a set of arguments, but they need to be better organized. Your credibility is definitely hurt by the tone towards the end.