SAN JOSE, Calif. -- With apologies to the old American Express commercial, Who am I?
It's a cinch no one at the airport here knows. I have shown my driver's license at the ticket counter, the security checkpoint and once again before boarding the airplane. But while the picture is certainly of me, that does not mean that I am who I say I am. For that, I would need a more sophisticated identification of the sort used in some European countries.
But not only do I not have one -- no American does -- I can log on to a Web site and for $100 order a Social Security card or a driver's license. "Keep in mind that we offer IDs for all 50 U.S. States. Happy ordering," the site says.
Never mind the Web site. There was always a way to make a phony driver's license or Social Security card -- both relatively low-tech. What this country needs is something a bit more high tech -- a national identification card with a photo but also a fingerprint and some other piece of unique information, such as an iris or retinal scan. That way, you can prove you are who you say you are.
I am hardly an expert in such matters, but the man with whom I recently had lunch in nearby Santa Clara certainly is. He is Eric Benhamou, chairman of the 3Com Corp. and a member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee. He is a proponent of a national identification system, which, he says, could be implemented for very little money -- $100 for the card, about $10 million for the computer system to back it up.
The notion, I know, sounds scary, and before seeing Benhamou I checked with my friends at the American Civil Liberties Union. I use the word "friends" without irony, because I consider myself a civil libertarian, and to me there is something downright spooky about a national ID card.
But there is also something spooky about what happens now. In the first place, the Social Security number is already used as a sort of national ID number. Trouble is, it lacks sufficient digits to be really useful -- and to foil hackers. Once someone gets hold of it, there is no end to what he can find out. Check your credit report. You may find that someone has been impersonating you.
As for the other databases, they're all out there somewhere. My credit card companies know more about me than my mother ever did. My computer is always ready to snitch on me. Just remember how the government got hold of Monica Lewinsky's hard drive and revealed e-mails she had composed -- and in some cases not even sent. This is about as close as you can get to reading someone's mind, a breathtaking invasion of privacy. Bear in mind that Lewinsky committed no crime.
In fact, to hear Benhamou tell it, a national ID card would protect privacy. He uses the term "trusted" to describe databases that could not, under the law, be swapped. So what one agency of government knew, another might not -- and certainly the information would not be provided to private companies.
The ACLU is not unmindful of what is now happening. But it worries -- and so do I -- about what Nadine Strossen, its national president, calls "function creep"; give the feds an inch and they'll take the proverbial mile. The ID card could be used to compile all sorts of information so that when a cop stops you for speeding (you're innocent, of course) he'll know you're behind on your mortgage payments and just came back from a trip to the Middle East. Could be.
But laws -- strict, strict safeguards -- could limit the damage and at least make abuse of the system illegal. In the meantime, the damage done by the present system is hardly theoretical. Some of the Sept. 11 terrorists were already on one government watch list or another -- but the airlines did not know it. The terrorists showed their picture IDs and boarded.
A Web site offering fake IDs would be almost comical if the stakes were not so great. Under "Frequently Asked Questions," is this one: "Is this legal?" The answer, says this Stockholm-based outfit, is: "Yes, doing what we do is legal. What you do with your purchase defines legality." In other words, that's not the Web site's department.
So let me repeat my original question: Who am I?
Right now, anyone I want to be.