While it is useful to have a means for accurately verifying identities, the creation of a large biometric database has serious implications for privacy and civil liberties and there is concern that it would be used for broader surveillance. The proposed biometric database could easily be used to correlate the activities and travel patterns of large sectors of the population regardless of whether they are suspected of committing any crime.

The problem with such widespread surveillance is that it causes fundamental changes in social interactions. People who know they are being continuously scrutinized will be unwilling to take part in activities that they feel may be controversial or appear subversive, regardless of the actual legality of their actions. Even if the system is not abused, and is used only as a means to track organized crime and terrorism, the mere knowledge of widespread surveillance would be sufficient to have a chilling effect on free speech.

It is important to recognize that people can commit criminal acts regardless of the validity of their identification. The ID database as proposed would have little impact on prevention of terrorism, since past history both in the U.S. and abroad has shown us that many terrorist acts are perpetrated by those who have no criminal record, and thus would likely not be under additional scrutiny.

What has often been overlooked in discussions of secure identification systems is the fact that an effective identification system can be created without verification against a large database. “Zero knowledge identification” systems are a well-established set of cryptographic algorithms which allow one party to determine whether the identity of another is valid without transferring any information other than the ID. By creating a standard zero knowledge ID system, we could produce extremely secure and difficult-to-counterfeit drivers’ licenses and passports while avoiding the privacy and civil liberties issues inherent in database-centric systems. By using modern cryptographic methods in conjunction with a zero knowledge system, it would be possible to verify not only that the ID itself was valid, but also that the information on it had not been changed or altered. Also, it would be possible to allow anyone to verify identities without data protection concerns, If all ID checks must be authenticated against a central database, any person or organization wishing to make use of ID authentication (bars, convenience stores selling cigarettes, and nightclubs, to name a few) would have to be given at least limited access to the database. Providing this type of access securely and reliably on a large scale would be expensive and challenging. However, the zero knowledge system would only require that these groups have access to a device for reading the ID card, and the software necessary to verify the ID. If future identification systems are implemented in this way, we can provide ID verification services effectively without destroying the freedoms on which this country was founded.