Oppose National Identification Cards - Essay Example

Ultimately, the Act was intended to prevent terrorism by creating rigorous and consistent standards with regard to state-issued IDs for all the states to follow. States are commissioned to renovate the drivers’ licenses and non-drivers’ identification cards such that uniform security features could be included in them across the whole country (PFAW Capitol Hill). The law repealed Section 7212 under Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, a regulation targeting the issue of national standards for drivers’ licenses and personal identification cards where minimum standards were set and certain information were disclosed in the identification cards left to each of the states’ discretion, thus sacrificing the consistency of the categories and criteria on who are eligible to obtain the drivers’ licenses across the whole country.

The new law as such reformed this by replacing each of all the states standards with a specific national one (Hann). Technically, states are not mandated to accept these federal standards. But, refusing to do so would mean that their residents would be refused employment, then denied having social security or disallowed air travel. In a sense, instead of imposing a direct order on the states, the federal government is threatening them into complying underhandedly. Combating terrorism is the primary reason behind all these.

But, proponents of these are actually forgetting that the criminals do not care about laws, not so much as to breaking them anyway. A terrorist would not so much bat an eyelash when he is not going to be dutifully able to obtain a federal ID card. People who disregarded the nation’s immigration laws would not care so much if they were to disrespect these ID requirements, especially when any card can be forged and any regulating agency could