Privacy

Sorry, Daily Beast: E-Verify Will Be National ID

by David Bier on May 13, 2013 · 2 comments

in Features, Immigration, International, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Privacy, Regulation

Post image for Sorry, Daily Beast: E-Verify Will Be National ID

Daily Beast blogger Justin Green, who blogs on columnist David Frum’s Daily Beast blog, has responded to Wired’s recent article “Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform.” Green thinks that there is no reason for concern, writing that “fortunately, Wired’s assertion is false.” Unfortunately, he has been misled.

First, Green claims that biometric information is being collected, but “those affected are unauthorized aliens, not American citizens.” But this is incorrect. The E-Verify database will affect every single U.S. citizen who is a potential worker. Given the fact that the database will include photographs, it is biometric. Green responds by quoting an anonymous Senate aide telling him that photos aren’t “biometric” by any “reasonable definition.” This might just be semantics, but as identification expert Jim Harper notes in his book Identity Crisis:

Biometrics measures the distinct traits that people have on their bodies. Examples of physiological biometrics are all the things we think of most commonly as physical identifiers–hair color, eye color, sex, skin color, height, weight, and so on.

In other words, a picture contains a host of biometric information about you, not just one piece of biometric information. Is this an uncommon or “unreasonable” definition? Well, I think the standard for reasonable or common usage would be Wikipedia, which defines biometrics as “identifiers are the distinctive, measurable characteristics used to label and describe individuals.” Under this definition, photographs would also apply, and in an age of facial recognition software, it would certainly not be difficult to take a picture of an individual and use it to find them in such a database.

Never mind how experts or the general public use the word, the phrase biometric identification has a specific legal definition. Under 46 USC 70123, “the term “biometric identification” means use of fingerprint and digital photography images and facial and iris scan technology and any other technology considered applicable by the Department of Homeland Security.” In other words, the government itself defines photographs as biometric identification.

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Correcting Misconceptions about Autonomous Vehicles: Reason Magazine Edition

by Marc Scribner on May 10, 2013 · 4 comments

in Features, Mobility, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Privacy, Regulation

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In the June issue of Reason, one of my favorite publications, Greg Beato has an article discussing the public policy implications of autonomous vehicles, such as Google’s Self-Driving Car. While I appreciate libertarians (being one myself) taking this technology seriously, Beato makes a number of questionable assumptions and outright factual errors in the piece. Here’s my quick attempt to address some of them.

Beato begins with obligatory Google-bashing common among techies, who seem to either love Google or despise it. (This is probably too simplistic, but this is how it looks like to a Silicon Valley outsider.) The legal issues with respect to Google’s collection of unprotected Wi-Fi data are complicated from a libertarian perspective, those related to Google’s settlement with the FTC “for bypassing privacy settings in Apple’s Safari browser,” as Beato puts it, are not. No one’s privacy was ever violated. All Google was guilty of, as technology policy and privacy analysts here at CEI noted at the time, was

failing to realize a software tweak by Apple rendered one of Google’s help pages inaccurate. There is no evidence that any users were “taken in” or harmed by this inaccurate help page, nor does the FTC allege that Google knew or should’ve known that its help page was wrong. A four-commissioner FTC majority even admitted that Google’s alleged wrongdoing didn’t last very long or earn the company much money.

This is hardly the privacy-invading sin Beato implies it was, but he is obviously setting the stage for his arguments for additional public skepticism of autonomous vehicle technology.

But much of the beginning of the article focuses on the huge potential benefits of vehicle automation, which are large and which we at CEI have highlighted in the past. But at the halfway point, Beato drops this:

But is everyone really so eager to see the automobile, which stands as one of history’s great amplifiers of personal autonomy and liberty, evolve into a giant tracking device controlled by a $250 billion corporation that makes its money through an increasingly intimate and obtrusive knowledge of its customers?

Beato is correct that the automobile is one of the great technological liberators of mankind from the time-consuming drudgery that was previously associated with personal mobility. But the implication that Google is intent on destroying privacy protections by deploying a mobility-enhancing technology is over the top. Autonomous vehicle users in the future, just like users of any digital technology that transmits telemetric data, will be opting in. Google and other potential providers, in turn, will likely be responsive to privacy concerns. The real concern is the ability of law enforcement and other government bodies to access this private information.

But Beato instead makes questionable assumptions regarding technology that is not yet available to consumers, always a dangerous tack to take. For instance, Beato claims, “Even if it were possible to operate the car in some kind of ‘manual’ mode, you would likely still be sending information back to headquarters.” “Even if”? “Likely”? As far as the ability to operate a fully autonomous vehicle manually (i.e., not in autonomous mode), this will be standard. In fact, more than one of the four (not three, as Beato incorrectly states later in the article; they are Nevada, Florida, California, and Washington, D.C.) jurisdictions that recognize the legality of these vehicles (not where they are legalized – more on this in a moment) explicitly requires this feature.

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Housing Nominee Watt Flunks Privacy And Transparency Tests

by John Berlau on May 1, 2013 · 1 comment

in Legal, Politics as Usual, Privacy

Two prerequisites for any nominee for government posts is dedication to transparency in government and a respect for the privacy of citizens. Before we get to any other issue about Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C.,  President Obama’s expected nominee to be director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees the government housing entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we must first get past his troubling record on two issues regarding these concerns in which he was on the opposite side of bipartisan good-government coalitions.

During the debate leading up to the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul in 2o10, Watt supported nearly all of the legislation’s costly mandates on the private sector. But he thought having the Federal Reserve go through a simple audit of its books by the Government Accountability Office, which nearly every other agency goes through, would place too much of a “burden” on this government entity. So Watt helped gut the provision supported by then-Rep Ron Paul, R-Texas, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and a huge left-right coalition that included the Competitive Enterprise Institute, to audit the Fed.

Then the next year Watt became a co-sponsor of the Stop Online Piracy Act. When privacy concerns were raised, again from the left and right (and again including CEI), Watt pooh-poohed what he called the “hyperbolic charges.” SOPA was soon dropped because of online activism based on legitimate privacy and innovation concerns.

More to come on Watt’s other troubling views.

Separate Security Cameras and State

by Ivan Osorio on April 22, 2013

in Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Privacy

In his column today, The Wall Street Journal‘s Gordon Crovitz notes the significant help that video footage played in helping police identify the Boston Marathon bombers. However, he seems to miss what the Boston police’s success actually implies — that government-run security cameras are unnecessary for protecting public safety.

Boston is one of the less-wired large cities when it comes to surveillance cameras, so authorities relied largely on footage from private parties, such as the Lord & Taylor department store near the scene. The most recent estimate, from 2010, is that Boston and surrounding towns have some 150 police surveillance cameras, plus 400 in the subway. This compares with more than 3,000 government and networked private cameras in New York City’s financial district alone, and some 400,000 cameras in London.

While Crovitz doesn’t explicitly say so, the seeming implication that  Boston being “one of the less-wired large cities” may be a shortcoming is troubling and misses the real lesson of the search for the bombers — the value of the public’s engagement in helping to protect their own city. The Washington Examiner‘s Tim Carney, on the other hand, gets it right.

So it turns out we already have plenty of cameras on the street. They’re not government cameras, but rather cameras owned and operated by private individuals and businesses. In a bout of public spiritedness, these pedestrians and businesses willingly shared their videos with law enforcement. Even if the crime had not been so notorious, the police could expect public cooperation — what merchant wouldn’t share his surveillance tapes to aid in a murder investigation?

Indeed, until private surveillance and recording of events prove inadequate — and there is no reason to believe that they will — the burden of proof should remain on government on the need to expand its surveillance capabilities.

UPDATE: In a related topic, David Henderson at Econlog explains the value of decentralized, citizen-driven information in ensuring public safety (h/t Iain Murray).

CEI Podcast For April 18, 2013: CISPA Is The Wrong Approach To Cybersecurity

by Ryan Young on April 18, 2013

in Personal Liberty, Podcast, Privacy, Regulation, Tech & Telecom

Have a listen here.

Today, the House passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2013 (CISPA). Associate Director of Technology Studies Ryan Radia opposes the bill because it would nullify existing contracts and eliminate the rule of law in certain areas.

Americans Reject Actual E-Verify System

by David Bier on April 9, 2013 · 4 comments

in Features, Immigration, International, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Privacy, Regulation

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Imagine there was a free program that could guarantee for employers a legal workforce and eliminate illegal immigration. Would you favor such a system? Yes or no? This is essentially how all polls attempt to gauge the popularity of E-Verify, the electronic national identification system included in many immigration reform proposals. Then, the system’s proponents exclaim, “Americans demand E-Verify!”

Last year, for example, when Rep. Lamar Smith proposed mandating E-Verify for all employers, the electronic national identification system used to catch unauthorized workers, he cited a Pulse Opinion Research poll that found that just 11 percent of Americans opposed a mandatory E-Verify system. Of course, most Americans do not know what E-Verify is, so how did this poll explain E-Verify?

There is a federal program known as E-Verify which allows employers to electronically verify the Social Security numbers of the people they hire to ensure that they are eligible to work in the U.S. Do you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose the use of an electronic system to verify that all workers hired in the United States are legally eligible to work here?

This poll is similar to a poll finding support for the president’s stimulus packages that asked, “Do you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose providing jobs for Americans during this time of economic uncertainty?” What person would oppose that? Similarly, how many Americans would oppose a system that quickly and inexpensively allows employers to “verify all workers hired in the United States are legally eligible to work here”? Not very many.

Never mind that E-Verify does not actually do this, that it fails to catch unauthorized workers 54 percent of the time, that it would initially deem ineligible hundreds of thousands of authorized workers, and that it requires employers to hire, train, and pay unauthorized workers during appeals, but even if it did all those things with perfect accuracy, Americans would still oppose it if only they were aware of the costs.

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Labor’s Loss: Secret Ballot Protection Advances In Virginia

by Matt Patterson on March 21, 2013

in Labor, Privacy, Regulation

This week Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell struck a little heralded — but much needed — blow for privacy rights in the Old Dominion by signing two key bills: House Bill 1385, the “Secret Ballot Protection Act,” and House Bill 1931, the “KEEP Secure Act: Keep Employees Emails and Phones Secure Act.”

The “Secret Ballot Protection Act” will provide, according to legislation summary, that:

[I]n any procedure providing for the designation, selection, or authorization of a labor organization to represent employees, the right of an individual employee to vote by secret ballot is a fundamental right that shall be guaranteed from infringement.

A secret ballot is, of course, a cornerstone of the democratic process, and absolutely vital to ensuring elections free of intimidation and coercion — which explains why organized labor has so bitterly opposed secret ballot provisions, preferring insetad so-called “card check” laws whereby, as we put it in a previous OpenMarket post, “new unions can be formed with signatures from only a majority of a company’s employees on a card which union officials kindly bring right to your door.”

Unions will equally loathe the “KEEP Secure Act,”which will ensure that employers cannot be forced to share private information about current or former employees to “a third party…unless required by federal law, state law, court order, warrant issued by a judicial officer, subpoena, or discovery.” This, too, will make it harder for labor leaders to intimidate workers into joining a union.

Both bills had been championed by spearheaded by Delegate Barbara Comstock, who said in a statement:

The signing of the Governor of these bills is a victory for the rights of workers and for protecting employees in the workplace.

Indeed. Kudos to Comstock for her tireless efforts on behalf of worker freedom, and kudos to the governor for joining her in the fight.

CEI In The Wall Street Journal: E-Verify Is A Threat To Liberty

by David Bier on February 8, 2013

in Employment, Immigration, Personal Liberty, Privacy

CEI founder Fred Smith co-authored an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal today on E-Verify — the electronic employment verification system that will likely become mandatory as part of any immigration reform. Proponents argue E-Verify is the only way to eliminate illegal immigration, but as the piece points out, “the only proven way to address illegal immigration [is] an efficient and effective legal pathway for immigrants to enter and work in the U.S.”

E-Verify not only is unnecessary under a free-market immigration system — it is harmful. Here are six major problems with mandatory E-Verify.

  1. This is the most extensive regulation possible. E-Verify would place burdensome requirements not just on every American employer, but every American employee. The procedures, if violated, can lead to fines and prison sentences. According to a 2011 Bloomberg Government study, compliance will cost small businesses $2.6 billion in training, staff time and equipment every year. But this actually underestimates the problem. Under E-Verify, employers would have to train and pay unauthorized immigrants wages and benefits, even if the system rejects them, if they claim that it was a database error and appeal. This means they could work for months legally and get paid.
  2. Regulatory costs and threats of penalties lower wages for Americans. When Congress first criminalized employment of unauthorized immigrants in 1986, economists studied the effects on wages for workers. “As a result of the increased costs and risks,” noted University of Pennsylvania economist Douglas Massey in 2002, “some employers lowered the wages of their employees, thus compensating themselves for their added paper work costs and new perceived risks.” As noted above, the added costs from E-Verify will worsen the problem.
  3. It’s not free to government, either. As the op-ed notes, the Department of Homeland Security estimates E-Verify will cost $765 million over four years, and the Social Security Administration estimates $281 million over five years. But what the piece doesn’t mention is the GAO found DHS’s estimate to be “minimally credible” since it “did not perform an independent cost estimate on E-Verify” or “identify the risks associated with changes in the projected number of E-Verify cases or SSA’s E-Verify workload.”
  4. It has major errors that cannot be rectified. E-Verify has improved its accuracy in recent years, but even still, a 0.28-percent error rate, like the one currently found among the mainly voluntary participants (which excludes large numbers of at-risk groups), would cause almost a half-million errors each year that would send American workers to Social Security offices — the new DMVs of employment — to prove their right to work. This number actually underestimates the issue since E-Verify can be used to screen out applicants by businesses that do not want to pay to train unauthorized workers only to fire them, and the government has no way to stop them.
  5. We know E-Verify’s errors will create a discriminatory impact. First, the system’s errors are not random. They primarily affect young workers, those new to the workforce, married women who change their name, Hispanics with multiple surnames, legal immigrants and naturalized citizens. According to the government’s audit of the program, naturalized citizens, for example, are 30 times more likely to receive erroneous initial nonconfirmations. Second, because these errors cost employers time and money to resolve (not to mention the fear cited above that they actually are undocumented and they’d be force to pay them for months), employers can use the program to prescreen, see if they are immediately authorized, and then never hire the person if they receive an initial rejection. The GAO has found the government is “generally not in the position to determine whether employers” discriminate.
  6. E-Verify will encourage identity theft. It does so in two ways: First, it makes legal employment dependent on being a legal resident, which drives up demand for stolen identities. In fact, the federal audit of E-Verify found that 54 percent of unauthorized workers found employment, mainly from identity theft. Second, the E-Verify database can be accessed by any identity thief to see if a stolen Social Security number is valid and attaches to a given name.

This list could be much longer. For those interested in the privacy issues associated with E-Verify, see my last two posts on the threat of E-Verify as a national identification system.

National ID Proponents’ Bad Arguments

by David Bier on February 7, 2013

in Employment, Features, Immigration, Personal Liberty, Privacy, Regulation

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America’s new national identification system is coming. President Obama and a bipartisan group of senators want to enact a national identification card that would link to a database containing your name, Social Security number and biometric information such as pictures and fingerprints. The Washington Post editorial board wants one too.

Two points are central to their argument: 1) this identification system is a necessary, effective and appropriate way to control illegal immigration, and 2) it will be used strictly for employment purposes. Both claims lack any credibility.

Is it necessary?

The Post claims there are only two ways to end illegal immigration: border security or a national ID. But that’s not true. If we simply created an accessible legal avenue for entry, such as we had during the early 1960s, illegal immigration could be eliminated. The same amount of border enforcement with hundreds of thousands of fewer border crossers would secure the border and end illegal immigration.

Is it effective?

“If illegal immigrants can’t get jobs, they won’t come to this country,” The Post editors reason. That’s largely true, but a national ID mandate does not eliminate work — it simply makes legal work contingent on having a card. Immigrants could still work in the black market, as nearly half already do.

The Post’s solution? “Prosecute employers.” The president wants to “crack down” on them. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wants to “throw the book at them.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., wants them “punished.” All this animus against employers plays better politically than an anti-immigrant rant but is no more sensible. There are two problems with this logic.

First, are we really going to prosecute every American who hires someone without an ID? When was the last time you checked your gardener or plumber’s identification? Second, criminalizing an activity doesn’t eliminate it — it just increases its cost. Research has shown that employers simply transfer this added cost, the risk of penalties, onto unauthorized employees, which lowers their wages but doesn’t end their job (Massey, p. 120).

Thus, illegal employment will continue, but the proposal would not even eliminate legal employment either for them either. It just makes it contingent on showing ID. But the last 27 years have shown that this requirement only creates huge markets for fraudulent documents. In other words, we’re building black markets on top of black markets.

The president claims this card will be “fraud-resistant” and “tamper-resistant.” But this is nonsense. No one knows what “fraud-resistant” will mean next year, let alone next decade. In April 1998, for example, immigrants were issued “fraud-resistant” green cards that contained holograms and photos. By August 1999, fakes were already in use in Los Angeles.

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The New National Identification System Is Coming

by David Bier on February 1, 2013 · 14 comments

in Features, Immigration, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Privacy, Regulation, Zeitgeist

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“Maybe we should just brand all the babies.” With this joke, Ronald Reagan swatted down a national identification card — or an enhanced Social Security card — proposed by his attorney general in 1981. For more than three decades since, attempts to implement the proposal have all met with failure, but now national ID is back, and it’s worse than ever.

As in 1981, immigration restrictions have provided the justification. In the name of stopping illegal employment, proposals floated by a bipartisan group of senators would create both a physical national ID — an “enhanced” Social Security card — and even more menacingly an Internet-based, electronic ID that could be accessed anywhere to confirm identity.

After the election, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is leading the Democrats immigration push, told NBC News that one of his top priorities was to “make sure that there is a non-forgeable document” for all employees. After years of pushing for one, Sen. Schumer may have broken through GOP opposition. “We’re going to have to come up with something, but the principle we all agree on,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said this week.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told Politico that he was for “a super Social Security card that would have some sort of biometric things like a fingerprint in it.” Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.)—also, a longtime supporter of national ID — agrees. “You’ll have documents that can’t be faked,” he told CBS News after the election.

This path was the inevitable consequence of America’s broken immigration system. First, Congress made it prohibitively difficult to come. Then, unable to enforce that, they conscripted businessmen to police their workforce for them. Now that document fraud has ruined this scheme, the government wants even more surveillance.

But national ID is more than just a card with a name and number — it is a system. It must contain data collected by the government on every legal worker that compares that name and number to you. This means the federal government must start collecting biometric information: pictures, fingerprints, retina scans, DNA, and whatever else is needed to make the system work.

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