Manila's faulty logic in issuing IDs

Philippine Daily Inquirer, Asia News Network, Manila

The Oct. 12 terrorist bombing in Bali breathed new life to the plan to adopt a national identification card. The National Security Council endorsed the ID system as a weapon to fight terrorism. It said the social security card would serve as the nucleus and database of the ID system.

The council is using the wrong reason -- counter-terrorism -- to push for the ID. This reason does not make a stronger case for the ID than reasons that had been previously put forward.

The tracking down of terrorists so far did not owe their success to the ID system. Thorough and intensive intelligence work, cutting across police and intelligence agencies in several countries, were responsible for the effective crackdown that followed the Sept. 11 attack in New York and Washington.

Police found that terrorists were able to board planes that they had planned to hijack as bombers because they used fake documents -- including passports -- to pass through immigration and security controls.

Previously it had been thought that bomb attacks would be directed at symbols of capitalism in the West and military installations and facilities linked to Western powers. Now, not only Indonesians but also Malaysians, Filipinos and Singaporeans are fair game in terrorist bombing.

With authorities in the region and experts on terrorism linking the Bali attack to al-Qaeda and a radical Indonesian terrorist group, there is clearly a need for closer cooperation among police and intelligence agencies of countries threatened by violent pan-Islamic movements.

This response may be aided by security tools, but the ID is hardly the most effective of these tools. Terrorists hijacking aircraft or cars as platforms for bombings have concealed their identities, and so, to justify the ID as a counter-terrorism measure is probably the worst argument to back the proposal.

The proposal had its heyday during the Ramos administration, which pushed it as a measure for national security and facilitating transactions between citizens and the government, as well as business transactions, but it encountered strong resistance inspired by fear that the ID could be used for prying into the lives of citizens, for political harassment and for curtailing political rights.

The Ramos project didn't go far after the Supreme Court struck it down on the grounds that such a measure should have been legislated rather than decreed by executive fiat.

The fact that there are already separate ID cards in operation -- including the Social Security Card and credit cards -- has been used to argue that the data from these systems are already intrusive into the lives of people. Their data, it is argued, can easily be collated and used as a source to check individuals by diligent law-enforcement authorities; hence, the argument goes, a national ID system is mere duplication and unnecessary and would give the state authorities an instrument for political harassment.

Unless proponents of the ID system can present more persuasive arguments than those already asserted -- including its use to fight terrorism -- the National Security Council's endorsement of the ID is insufficient to overcome resistance being encountered in Congress, which, after all, should be the source of legislative legitimacy of the proposal.