The new DHS national ID card program was officially rolled out this week in the state of Tennessee. From January 1st, 2012, ID cards are longer optional, they are the law. The new state law requires that all Tennessee citizens must present a federal or state-issued photo ID in order to vote at the polls. The law also requires the DHS to issue photo IDs for voting purposes – at no charge. Residents appear to have given in without any serious fight, giving a new dimension to the state’s lofty moniker as a “Volunteer State”.
Since its inception, the DHS has grown into one of the largest and most expensive federal bureaucracies on the planet, costing the country an estimated $57 billion. But the DHS isn’t like any of its other federal department or branch military forerunners. It is what one might describe as the “Haliburton’ of federal agencies, whose apparent role is to ‘reorganize’ federal and state emergency services, coordinate logistics, streamline interdepartmental communications and work out Critical Infrastructure Protection. All this has been orchestrated and paid for under the assumption that, before Sept 11th, all these federal responsibilities were not being looked after, highlighting the need for a new layer of federal bureaucracy and making a number of existing federal bodies – including the FBI, all but redundant.
For all intensive purposes, like any other 21st century federal security program, this brave new idea was purposefully constructed around a feeling of national fear and division – the same one that Obama was unknowingly(or knowingly) alluding to in that DHS budget address.
The police state and big brother implications of this type of state-sponsored ID roll-out are quite evident. Already, all new US passports issued after 2008 are fitted with an RFID chip inside, allowing authorities to track and trace the movements of any US citizen over borders and through transit depots. It would only be a matter of time before this same feature would be implemented in the DHS national ID card. No doubt also, that some right wing xenophobic tendencies towards illegals can be used by government officials and media in order to sell the benefits of a voter-friendly ID card.
Tying these mandatory ID cards to voting will ensure that the program sticks, but this latest divisive move in Tennessee should be viewed by citizens of the Volunteer State, and Americans elsewhere too, as a step backwards in terms of rights and liberty.
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