Oh, no. This won’t set off conservative and libertarian alarm bells at all.

**Posted by Phineas

"The State watches over you"
“The State watches over you”

I mean, what’s so threatening aboutΒ a biometric database of all adult AmericansΒ being in the immigration bill, citizen?

The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

Buried in the more thanΒ 800 pages of the bipartisan legislationΒ (.pdf)Β  is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named β€œphoto tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security andΒ containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.

This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.

Emphasis added.

Nah, there are no 4th Amendment illegal search and privacy concerns here. Nothing to see, carry on. After all, wingnuts, you demanded greater security in the immigration bill and, well, here ya go! The government will make sure only bona fide Americans get jobsΒ by keeping track of each and every one of us. And if they should find other uses for the information, well, that will be for the public good, too.

And you thoughtΒ Person of InterestΒ was just fiction.

If this Wired story is true, this provision is reason enough to kill the bill.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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