Senator Chuck Schumer rounds out a trifecta of bloggable moments from the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law’s hearing this morning.

Ignoring the subject of the “mobile privacy” hearing, Schumer queried the witnesses from both Google and Apple on whether they will accede to his demand that they reject certain “apps” on Android phones and iPhones. The applications Senator Schumer dislikes alert people on their mobile phones to the locations of DUI checkpoints.

Senator Schumer says these apps “allow drunk drivers to evade police checkpoints,” but that statement fails to include other parties who might rightly wish to avoid police checkpoints—such as law-abiding citizens who wish to live free in this country, for example.

Recently, I landed at Harford’s Bradley International Airport late on a Friday night, heading to a Saturday morning meeting in Northampton, Massachusetts. From my shuttle bus to a remote rental car area, I saw a DUI checkpoint. After I completed the arrangements for my car, I asked the agent how I might leave so as to avoid the checkpoint. I wanted neither the delay nor the impingement on my sober liberty that a police checkpoint represents. He cheerfully directed me to a route I could freely travel.

Senator Schumer wants to prevent conversations like this from taking place on a mass scale, facilitated by advanced technologies. He stands a good chance of succeeding—RIM has already given in—because Google and Apple have repeat business before the federal government. Senator Schumer can raise their regulatory costs far higher than the value of allowing minor, but controversial apps on their systems.

If Senator Schumer succeeds, our right to freely and efficiently communicate about police activity will diminish in a way that is effectively insulated from First Amendment challenge. Privacy and freedom be damned. There are drunk drivers to catch.

Want Privacy? Nevermind. We Want to Censor! is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

A $600-million bill to enhance border enforcement has hit a temporary snag in the Senate, but it is almost inevitable, with an election only a few months away, that Congress and the president will spend yet more money trying to enforce our unworkable immigration laws.

“Getting control of the border” is the buzz phrase of the day for politicians in both parties, from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Never mind that apprehensions are down sharply along our Southwest border with Mexico, mostly I suspect because of the lack of robust job creation in the unstimulated Obama economy.

Meanwhile, since the early 1990s, spending on border enforcement has increased more than 700 percent, and the number of agents along the border has increased five-fold, from 3,500 to more than 17.000. (See pages 3-4 of a January 2010 report from the Center for American Progress and the Immigration Policy Center.) Yet the population of illegal immigrants in America tripled during that period. If this were a federal education program, conservatives would rightly accuse the big spenders of merely throwing more money at a problem without result.

To pay for this politically driven expenditure, Congress plans to nearly double fees charged for H1-B and L visas used by foreign high-tech firms to staff their operations in the United States. The increased visa tax will fall especially hard on companies such as the Indian high-tech leaders Wipro, Infosys, and Tata.

This all has the ring of election-year populism. Congress pretends to move us closer to solving the problem of illegal immigrants entering from Latin America by raising barriers to skilled professionals coming to the United States from India and elsewhere to help us maintain our edge in competitive global technology markets.

‘Border Enforcement’ Bill Driven by Election-Year Politics is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

This capsizing container ship in the Port of Mumbai strikes me as the perfect metaphor for U.S. trade policy, with Skipper Pelosi at the helm.   Just imagine how many jobs we can create by sending imports to the bottom of the sea.  Heck, think of all the jobs we could create by sinking our own exports and making them all over again.

Senator Schumer, I’m just kidding.

The U.S.S. Trade Policy? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Amid the hullaballoo about Facebook and privacy, it’s easy to forget the most powerful privacy setting.

In my 2004 Policy Analysis, “Understanding Privacy—and the Real Threats to It,” I wrote about the “privacy-protecting decisions that millions of consumers make in billions of daily actions, inactions, transactions, and refusals.”

Inactions and refusals. Declining to engage in activities that emit personal information protects privacy. Not broadcasting oneself on Facebook protects privacy. Not going online protects privacy.

The horror, some may think, of not having access to the wonders of the online world. Actually, many people live full and complete lives without it, enjoying the perfect online privacy default. The irony is a little too rich when avid users of Facebook—which is little more than a publicity tool—complain about its privacy problems.

Facebook does have some work to do on rationalizing and communicating the privacy protections its offers its publicity-seeking users. But people will always have the privacy protecting option of not using Facebook.

Not so for government-sponsored incursions on privacy, like the national ID system proposed by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Inaction and refusal of his national ID system would not be a practical option if Senator Schumer has his way. The irony isn’t just rich, it’s curdled and reeking when Senator Schumer leads the attack on Facebook for its privacy practices.

The Most Powerful Privacy Setting is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

There is much to commend in the op-ed on immigration reform that Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) published in this morning’s Washington Post. Unfortunately, they lead with their worst idea: a biometric national ID card, mandatory for all American workers.

Here’s the good: “Americans overwhelmingly oppose illegal immigration and support legal immigration,” they say. “Throughout our history, immigrants have contributed to making this country more vibrant and economically dynamic.”

Their plan includes problem-solving proposals: “creating a process for admitting temporary workers” and “implementing a tough but fair path to legalization.” The latter would reduce the population of illegal aliens in the U.S.—good—and the former would reduce the need to enter illegally in the first place—also good.

Joined with the enhanced border security they propose, these ideas would address the immigration challenge as well as anyone knows how. (Details matter, and my colleagues will have more to say, I’m sure.)

But then there is their gratuitous national ID proposal for all American workers, and stepped up interior enforcement. “Interior enforcement” is a euphemism for “rounding up illegal workers” under some administrations and “raiding employers” under others.

This is the most specific Senator Schumer has ever been about his biometric national ID proposal, though he’s had it in mind since at least 2007. But it is hardly satisfactory, and the claim there will be no national ID database is almost certainly not true.

Here is the paragraph that captures the senators’ plan:

We would require all U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who want jobs to obtain a high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security card. Each card’s unique biometric identifier would be stored only on the card; no government database would house everyone’s information. The cards would not contain any private information, medical information, nor tracking devices. The card will be a high-tech version of the Social Security card that citizens already have.

I’ll parse the senators’ description of their national ID plan here. In a later post, I’ll examine how the Schumer-Graham biometric national ID stacks up in terms of privacy, cost, and other considerations. Of course, in the decade or two it will take to build this extravagant national identity system, we will learn much more than I can predict.

We would require all U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who want jobs to obtain a high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security card.

First, let there be no doubt that this is a national ID card. As I’ve written in past, a national ID has three characteristics: It is national—this is. It’s practically or legally required—this is. And it’s for identification—yep.

Students of card security will recognize one of the adjectives in the sentence as rather extravagant.  No, it’s not “high-tech”—that’s a throwaway. The extravagant claim is “fraud-proof.”

The senators may mean one of  three things, only one of which might be true. All three have to be true or their implication of a bullet-proof card system is false:

1) Impervious to fraud in issuance. Issuance is the weakest link in card security. Today at the hundreds and hundreds of DMVs across the country, ingenious young people (under 21—understand their motivation?) regularly submit identity documents falsely—siblings’ birth certificates or driver’s licenses, for example, or fake Social Security cards, utility bills, and such. Illegal aliens do too. Many DMV workers are gulls. Some can be made willing gulls for the right price. The same will be true of Social Security Administration workers. If the motivation is high enough, there is no practical way of making a national identity document fraud-proof in issuance.

2) Impervious to alteration. With various printing methods, secure card stocks, and encryption, card security is the easiest to do. It is possible to create a card that can’t be altered except at extraordinary expense.

3) Impervious to forgery. Odd though it may seem, technology does not govern whether a card can be forged—motivation does. Any card can can be forged if the price is right. Were a single card to provide entrée  to work in the United States, it’s virtually guaranteed that criminal enterprises would forge the physical card and defeat the digital systems they need to.

The idea of a “fraud-proof” card (in whatever sense the senators mean) sounds nice. But it doesn’t bear up under the stresses to be encountered by a national ID system that governs whether people can earn a living (and probably much more). During the decade or more that this system is being designed and implemented, new ways of attacking biometrics and encryption will emerge. A reasonably ”fraud-proof” card today is not still fraud-proof in 2020.

Each card’s unique biometric identifier would be stored only on the card; no government database would house everyone’s information.

It is possible to have a biometric card without a biometric database. The card would hold a digital description of the relevant biometric (such as fingerprint or iris scan). That algorithm would be compared by the card or by a reader to the person presenting it, determining wether it should be accepted as theirs.

The promise not to create a biometric database is a welcome one. The senators should require—in law—that the enrollment process and technology be fully open and transparent so that non-government technologists can ensure that the system does not secretly or mistakenly collect biometrics.

But the promise not to create a national identity database is almost certainly false.

Let’s review how an identity card is issued at a motor vehicle office today: People take the required documents to a DMV and hand them over. If the DMV accepts their documentation, the DMV creates a file about the person containing at least the material that will be printed on the card—including the person’s photograph. Then the DMV gives the person a card.

What would happen if DMVs didn’t keep this file? A couple of things—things that make the senators’ claim not to be creating a national identity database highly doubtful.

If there were no file and a card were lost or stolen, for example, the person would have to return to the card issuer again—with all the documents—and run through the entire process again. Because they have databases, DMVs today can produce a new ID and mail it to the address of record based on a phone call or Internet visit. (They each have their own databases—much better than a single database or databases networked together.)

If no file exists, multiple people could use the very same documents to create ID card after ID card after ID card in the same name but with different biometrics. Workers in the card issuing office could accept bribes with near impunity because there would be no documents proving that they had issued cards wrongly. Criminal use of the system would swamp it.

So that they can provide customer service, and for security reasons, state DMVs keep information about license holders, including a biometric of a sort—a photograph. Senators Schumer and Graham may think that they are designing a database-free biometric identity system—such a thing can exist—but the realities they confront will drive it to become a full-scale biometric national identity database.

The cards would not contain any private information, medical information, nor tracking devices.

This is a welcome pledge, and to fulfill it, they should bar—in law—the use of writeable chips or RFID chips. And there is no way to prevent the card itself from acting as a tracking device. It will be a pointer to private medical information, financial information, and much more.

Understand that the Social Security number is an identifier. It is already used in government, throughout the financial services system, and in much of health care to administer services and benefits, and to perform surveillance (both for good or for bad).

With a uniform biometric Social Security card in the hands of every worker, the card would be demanded at more and more points in society. Americans would have to present their national ID when they use credit cards, when they check into hotels, at bars, in airports, pharmacies, doctors’ offices, and so on.

A card may contain only a biometric algorithm and a Social Security number—unlikely though that may be. It will still act as a tracking device when it integrates with the card readers and databases that grow up around it.

The card will be a high-tech version of the Social Security card that citizens already have.

This claim—to be making a simple, sensible change to the Social Security card—is wrong. The biometric national identification scheme Senators Schumer and Graham propose is much, much more than a “high-tech” Social Security card. It’s the biggest, most difficult identity system ever proposed. It will take decades and tens or hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to build.

About the only similarity between today’s Social Security card and the biometric national ID card these senators propose is that they’re both rectangular.

In an earlier post, I called Senator Graham’s support of Schumer’s national ID plan inexplicable (before taking a stab at explaining it). Seeing the outline of their entire proposal, which would alleviate various pressures and begin a welcome transition back toward the rule of law in the immigration area, I am truly at a loss to understand why they would attach this grauitous and punitive plan to force law-abiding American citizens into a biometric national ID system.

Senators, why not do it without the national ID?

Schumer and Graham on Immigration Reform: Why Not Do it Without the Biometric National ID? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Compromise is catnip in Washington, D.C. That’s my best guess at why Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) would endorse New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s (D) widely reviled plan to create a mandatory biometric national ID system.

Schumer’s national ID plans have no more definition today than when he wrote about them in his 2007 campaign manifesto Postitively American. Among the thin gruel of that book is a two-page lump displaying more ignorance than understanding of how identity systems work and fail. Schumer doesn’t know the difference between an identifier—a characteristic used to distinguish or group people—and an identification card or system, which does the entire task of proving a person’s previously fixed identity. (My thin gruel on the topic is the book Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood.)

“All the national employment ID card will do is make forgery harder,” says Schumer.

No, that’s not all it would do: It would also subject every employment decision to the federal government’s approval. It would make surveillance of law-abiding citizens easier. It would allow the government to control access to health care. It would facilitate gun control. It would cost $100 billion dollars or more. It would draw bribery and corruption into the Social Security Administration. It would promote the development of sophisticated biometric identity fraud. How long should I go on?

Senator Graham’s take is equally simple: “We’ve all got Social Security cards,” he said to the Wall Street Journal. “They’re just easily tampered with. Make them tamper-proof. That’s all I’m saying.”

No, Senator, that’s not all you’re saying. You’re saying that native-born American citizens should be herded into Social Security Administration offices by the millions so they can have their biometrics collected in federal government databases. You’re saying that you’d like a system where working, traveling, going to the doctor, and using a credit card all depend on whether you can show your national ID. You’re saying that bigger government is the solution, not smaller government.

The point for these senators, of course, is not the substance. It’s the thrill they experience as nominal ideological opponents finding that they can agree on something, securing a potential breakthrough on the difficult immigration issue.

They’re only ”nominal” ideological opponents, though. Chuck Schumer has always been a big government guy—and long a supporter of having a national ID, despite the lessons of history. Lindsey Graham is not really his ideological opponent. Typical of politicians with years in Washington D.C., Graham is steadily migrating toward the big-government ideology that unites federal politicians and bureaucrats against the people.

Senator Graham’s Inexplicable National ID Support is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

So reports the Wall Street Journal:

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

It’s the natural evolution of the policy called “internal enforcement” of immigration law, as I wrote in my paper, “Franz Kafka’s Solution to Illegal Immigration.”

Once in place, watch for this national ID to regulate access to financial services, housing, medical care and prescriptions—and, of course, serve as an internal passport.

Sen. Schumer’s Immigration Reform Is a National ID is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Snowstorm notwithstanding, Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Chris Van Hollen introduced legislation in response to the Citizens United decision. A summary of their effort can be found here.

Some parts of the proposal are simply pandering to anti-foreign bias (corporations with shareholding by foreigners are prohibited from funding speech) and anger about bailouts (firms receiving TARP money are banned from funding speech). Government contractors are also prohibited from independent spending to support speech. We shall see whether these prohibitions hold up in court. The censorship of government contractors and TARP recipients will likely prove to be an unconstitutional condition upon receiving government benefits.

Despite Citizens United, Congress will try to suppress speech by other organizations.  Schumer-Van Hollen relies on aggressive disclosure requirements to deter speech they do not like. CEOs of corporations who fund ads will be required to say they “approve of the message” on camera at the end of the ad.

Citizens United upheld disclosure requirements, but it also vindicated freedom of speech. The two commitments may prove incompatible if Schumer-Van Hollen is enacted. This law uses aggressive mandated disclosure to discourage speech. We know that members of Congress believe this tactic could work. Sen. John McCain said during the debate over McCain-Feingold that forcing disclosure of who funded an ad will mean fewer such ads will appear. In other words: more disclosure, less speech. Just after Citizens United, law professor Laurence Tribe called for mandating aggressive disclosure requirements in order to “cut down to size” the impact of disfavored speech.

During the next few months the critics of Citizens United may well show beyond all doubt that the purpose of its disclosure requirements are to silence political speech. In evaluating the constitutionality of Shumer-Van Hollen, the Court could hardly overlook such professions of the purpose behind its disclosure requirements.

One other part of Schumer-Van Hollen is probably unconstitutional. They would require any broadcaster that runs ads funded by corporations to sell cheap airtime to candidates and parties. Several similar attempts to equalize speech through subsidies have recently been struck down by the Court. This effort would share a similar fate.

All in all, Schumer-Van Hollen is a predictable effort to deter speech by disfavored groups. Congress is reduced to attacking foreigners and bailout recipients while hoping that mandated disclosure will discourage speech.  The proposal law suggests a comforting conclusion. For most Americans, Citizens United deprived Congress of its broadest and most effective tools of censoring political speech.

Congress Goes After Citizens United is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Chuck Schumer is perhaps my favorite U.S. Senator because of his endless capacity to make me laugh.  He often reminds me of Inspector Clouseau, the earnest but bumbling detective from the Pink Panther movies.

Through an excellent post by Scott Lincome today, I learned not only that official NBA jerseys (those worn by the players) are made for Adidas in upstate New York, but that Senator Schumer is attempting to thwart the company’s decision to move production to Thailand. 

I share Scott’s assessment of the absurdity of Schumer’s efforts, but more importantly, I wanted to share this humorous footage of Schumer’s awkward nativist appeal that basketball is an American-centric game….conducted in front of German-born NBA Star Dirk Nowitski’s jersey. 

Classic!

Schumer Fouls Out is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

On Meet the Press last Sunday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said

Those on the hard right say, “Cut government spending, let’s go back to the old Reagan days.” Well, the last president who did this when we were in this type of situation was Herbert Hoover.  Herbert Hoover said the government should do nothing when we were in a recession, not a depression.  We did nothing and it related [sic] to a depression.

Reality check: Did President Hoover cut federal spending during the recession that became a depression? Not by a long shot.

Source: OMB

Federal spending was $3.1 billion (those were the days!) in 1929, the year Hoover took office and the stock market crashed. It rose modestly for two years, then shot up in 1932. It dropped a bit in nominal terms in 1933, though deflation meant that the real budget increased. Then, presumably reflecting Roosevelt’s policies, it shot up again in 1934. In real terms, the federal budget was almost twice as high after Hoover’s four years as it was when he took office.

President Bush, President Obama, and Senator Schumer are all supporting Herbert Hoover’s failed policy of increasing spending to fight recession. Let’s hope they don’t have the same results and turn a recession into a Great Depression.

Cato adjunct scholar Ilya Somin dissects the “Herbert Hoover did nothing” fallacy at Volokh.com.

Chuck Schumer Endorses Hoover Plan is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog