Privacy groups and the ACLU oppose a proposal to make biometric Social Security cards mandatory for U.S. citizens.

Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wrote in a March 19 Washington Post opinion piece that they will propose biometric cards as part of comprehensive immigration reform. Under their proposal, cards would gain a second factor of authentication such as fingerprints but that identifier would not be stored in a government database. Nor would the card contain private information, medical information or tracking devices, they wrote.

"The card would be a high-tech version of the Social Security card that citizens already have," the senators wrote.

But in an April 13 letter, a coalition groups including the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Electronic Privacy Information Center, said such cards would violate privacy, and would of course require a database.

"It would be impossible to create such a system without establishing a national database--a central electronic repository--of Americans' personal information. Every government identification system currently in existence requires a database," the letter states.

The groups also decry the cost of biometric identification cards. A Homeland Security Department program to issue biometric cards to a million maritime workers called the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) costs approximately $1.9 million, the letter states. Extrapolating to a legal U.S. workforce of 150 million people, the senators' proposed card would cost $285 billion.

"Adding insult to injury, this unaffordable scheme will probably never work," the letter writers added. Past proposals to create a national ID system have proven unpopular and quickly garner public comments that they are a "mark of the beast" or a sign of imminent apocalypse.

For more:
- read Sens. Schumer's and Graham's March 19 Washington Post opinion piece
- read the letter from the ACLU and other policy advocates opposing biometric cards

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