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Identity, this is usually accomplished with reams of documents and numbers that show people who we are. Some of the more popular documents and numbers that are used to identify us are Social Security numbers, driver's licenses and credit cards. How many times have you been asked for your driver's license when you tried to cash a check at the bank? I know that this happens to me quite often, even when bank tellers have seen me a million times. One thing I hate to use is my Social Security number, but how many times are we asked to supply at least the last four digits of it? Years ago things were so much simpler. You still might have used a driver's license as I. D., but there were no credit cards and NO ONE would have dared ask you for you Social Security number. If they were really desperate to identify you, they might ask you for a utility bill. Oh how things have changed. It seems that we are headed down the road that no one wants, but is almost inevitable and that is carrying a personal Identification Card.

In this day and age of identification documents it is hard to believe that some people have no identity at all. One of the main reasons for this is that some immigrants coming into this country, destroy all of their I. D. papers before entering the U.S. You would think that this would be enough to send them back wouldn't you? There are some places in this world where people can not prove who they are, because they have no identity papers of any kind. This is not because of any action on their part, it is because of the circumstances into which they were born. Abu Dhabi has set up booths for its citizens to register themselves. I guess that these people can call themselves anything that they want, who would ever know the difference? People could even sneak into the registration from other countries in the Arab world and claim to be from Abu Dhabi. This certainly defeats the spirit and purpose of having an identity.

When one talks about I. D. Cards they can't help but think of Great Britain. Great Britain is going to issue I. D. Cards and a lot of people are unhappy about it. The government has stated that carrying one will be voluntary. That sounds all well and good until you try and get some service and the only thing that will be accepted as proof of identity will be an I. D. Card for verification. There is also another problem that has some people worried. The British government had a study done and a paper was issued that calls for officials to be given the power to invade homes looking for I. D. Cards and fine people up to 2500 pounds if they don't have one. So much for being voluntary. One can only hope that this recommendation is never accepted, but as with the Bush presidency, many bad things were, such as the suspension of Habeas Corpus.

As we head toward toward individual identity cards, one can't help but think of what the next step might be. It could turn out that some electronic device might be implanted into us at birth that gives out a particular signal that identifies us. At that point I am sure that advertisers will take advantage of this. You will probably start to see bill boards that are automated and will call out your name when you get close. I can see it now, a bill board advertising Preparation H and asking someone a question like, “Hey Bill, got hemorrhoids” Try Preparation H it can help with all your rectal problems.” Yeah great, especially when others hear this. After awhile of full days of being bombarded with this kind of stuff, it may turn out that people might stay at home more. That might not solve their problem however. By then the televisions or whatever we are using to watch entertainment on might have the same ability to put our names into the commercials.

Identity is sort of a nebulous concept. In ancient times your word was accepted when you told someone who you were. All the schemers have ruined the concept of trust and poisoned our minds. I got an email from the producer of the show UFO Hunters. Being jaded by the constant barrage of fraudulent email I replied that I would have to check the validity of the email before talking to him. It turned out that the email was genuine and he asked me to phone him. Why was I so careful? You have to be, what was acceptable years ago on trust, is certainly no longer acceptable in the computer age. Every day I get hundreds, yes hundreds of emails that are frauds and a few even bear my own email addresses, as bizarre as that sounds. I have tried to stop this, but to no avail. I am only one person and when places like Chase Bank and Paypal can't stop people from making believe that they are them, how can I accomplish this?

As I have said before, there is really no way to completely guard against someone stealing your identity. Why is this you might ask? The facts are easy to explain. Banks are losing millions of sets of data on us, your medical data is everywhere and even government agencies are losing your data. The Veteran's Administration lost hundreds of thousand of records when they lost laptops. Some places that have sensitive personal data have been caught just tossing it into garbage cans when they were through with it. Heck, they didn't even bother to shred it. Why should they care, it wasn't their identities that were at risk? This is why you can't really protect your identity, because it is up to others who are careless, or don't care, to do it. Sure you can destroy the carbon paper between the slips of a deposit slip before throwing it out and that is a good thing because picking up carbon paper is one of the ways that I.Ds are stolen, but that is only a small part of the picture.

There are people in this country right now that have no identity what so ever. If they were ever arrested, there would be no way to know what their past deeds were, or where they came from. Identity is important to the social fabric and while we need to identify everyone, we don't want to get carried away doing it. Simple finger prints and eye scans could identify anyone if the need be, rather than having them carry cards on them that could be easily counterfeited anyway.