Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

ACLU Opposes National Database

I received an email “Action Notification” from the ACLU today and I’m not quite sure how I feel about this one.

According to the email, “Now, several Members of Congress are pushing legislation that would compile your most personal information, such as your name, address, social security number and perhaps even your DNA, into a national database. This giant network would then be accessible by numerous government officials and shared with Mexican and Canadian bureaucracies, dramatically increasing the risk of your personal information being stolen and abused. This proposed legislation would create a national system to store your personal contact information and personal biometric information, which could include your fingerprints, DNA or retinal scans. It would drastically alter who has access to your personal information. Thousands of government employees across North America would have access to these personal details, and hackers, thieves, terrorists and organized criminals would have a single one-shop destination for identity theft.”

The ACLU refers to these data as “personal information” but I think it’s more appropriately called “identifying information” — and I think there’s an important difference.

My “personal information” is information about what I think. If this database contained my voting record, a list of the organizations to which I belong, a list of the books I check out from the library or buy from Amazon, and a list of the television shows I watch, then I’d be alarmed. (Perhaps there are already government-owned databases with such information, though, so it’s probably not even an issue. Hello Patriot Act!)

What’s being proposed, though, is a database of identifying information. It seems to me that, considering the very real problem of identity theft, maybe a national database of identifying information is a GOOD idea, particularly if it includes biometric information. Certainly, as with any database containing potentially valuable information, there’s good reason to worry about the data being stolen.

I think the ACLU is getting mixed up about what the real problem is here, though. It’s not that the information is unnecessarily personal. It’s not really a civil liberties issue at all!