Dear editor:

“War on terror” should not be an excuse to demand your ID while you are in public.

As the “global war on terror” goes on, the more threats to American freedoms present themselves. This is an inevitable byproduct of war. But one item that we can change, just by using common sense.

How do random I.D. checks by the police make us all safer?

According to our Constitution, Police are not permitted to randomly demand I.D.s from strangers on the street. Plenty of court cases have been thrown out for the charge of failure to show proper identification.

I would say that the major point must be to get citizens accustomed to being compliant when authority figures demand to “see your papers, please,” any time, any place, without a shred of suspicion or justification.

On the other hand when requested of identification on federal property, you are required to present a government-issued I.D.

It was – Bertolt Brecht who said “There are good people with bad papers; and bad people with good papers.” If an 18- year-old can get a fake ID to drink,(which bartenders actually look pretty close at your I.D. and can spot a “fake” fairly easily) why couldn’t a bad-person get one, too? It does not matter how sophisticated the security embedded into the ID. Wouldn’t a well-financed bad-person be able to falsify that, too?

The answer to both questions is obviously “yes.”

Good-people go to pro-life rallies. Good-people attend gun shows. Good-people protest the president of the United States. Good-people fly to political conventions.

What if those with the power decided that they didn’t like the reason for which you wanted to travel? Good-people wouldn’t be going anywhere.

It seems that in the current system of “state security” there is not an office qualified to keep our guardians from becoming our oppressors giving you and me an obedience test.



James Livings

Moultrie