By Jim Harper

With biometrics, identity management, and similar concepts taking center stage in the privacy discussion, it’s more important than ever to get a handle on identity issues. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, demands for identification in the name of security have increased and stronger identity systems have been proposed. A successful identity system holds out the promise of much greater remote commerce, conducted more securely.

But the advance of identification technology — machine biometrics, identity cards, surveillance, personal-information databases — can threaten privacy and civil liberties, enable identity fraud, and subject people to unwanted surveillance.

In his book, Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood, Cato Institute scholar Jim Harper takes on all these problems. He builds the foundation for understanding identity and identification by methodically reviewing the pieces of the identification puzzle. He analyzes the techniques individuals and organizations use to identify one another efficiently — they often make themselves sure enough to go forward with a transaction rather than requiring bullet-proof ID.

Harper analyzes the good purposes that are served by identification, and he looks at the costs of identification — to personal and political freedom, for example. Efficient, uniform identification systems are also efficient for criminal use, he points out. Identity fraud has its foundation in the poorly designed identity system that has grown up around the Social Security Number, never intended to serve as a uniform national identifier.

Importantly, Harper’s analysis shows that a national identification card is false security against terrorist attacks. While identification is important for investigation of crime after it has happened, it has little effect against terrorism, which relies on surprise, not anonymity, for its effectiveness. Justin Oberman, the former head of credentialing and identity programs for the Transportation Security Administration, says that “Identity Crisis does the best job I’ve seen of addressing the real weaknesses in current identification systems and how they correlate directly with further impingements on our privacy and civil liberties. I would have used this book every day to help structure programs and develop policies if I’d had it at TSA.”

Rather than uniform national ID systems, Harper calls for a competitive, responsive identification and credentialing industry that meets the mix of consumer demands for privacy, security, accountability, and convenience. Identity Crisis demystifies identity and shows the way forward.

About the author:

As director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, Jim Harper focuses on the difficult problems of adapting law and policy to the unique problems of the information age. Harper is a member of the Department of Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. His work has been cited by USA Today, the Associated Press, and Reuters. He has appeared on Fox News Channel, CBS, and MSNBC, and other media. His scholarly articles have appeared in the Administrative Law Review, the Minnesota Law Review, and the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly. Harper is the editor of Privacilla.org, a Web-based think tank devoted exclusively to privacy, and he maintains online federal spending resource WashingtonWatch.com. He holds a J.D. from Hastings College of the Law.

 

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