Good morning on this first Saturday of May. Several weeks ago I wrote about a proposed tamper-proof national biometric identity card. Details about the proposed I.D. card were released earlier this week. It would be a Social Security card containing a chip that all workers including American citizens would have to produce to an employer upon being hired. Every employer would have to have a new verification scanner to confirm the validity of each applicant's Social Security card. A national system would be created to register both births and deaths to prevent people from using a deceased person's I.D. The cross-referencing of an I.D. card with the birth and death list would supposedly prevent its fraudulent usage. The proposed card would contain an identification marker such as an individuals finger print and would be required to be carried by every worker in the nation within the next six years. The national I.D. program would be named BELIEVE system, an acronym for Biometric Enrollment Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment. A digital encryption key would have to match employment databases. This proposal by the senate leadership now presented in detail has moved the issue to a new level. The overt threat of terrorism, porous borders, and immigration fraud have made the acceptance of a proposed national I.D. card more amenable to a host of Americans. We'll be carefully following these developments in the days ahead.
Tomorrow's message is entitled, Learning To Communicate Using Christ's Communication Techniques. Also, tomorrow's service will include communion.
I hope you'll be there.
Mel Brown