From the February 1999 Idaho Observer:

National ID Card Protest at Idaho Department of Fish & Game

Although you will undoubtedly find Mr. Hoover's tactics in the following story to be humorous, the issue that he is addressing is not at all funny. The interesting thing about science fiction is that the moment an imaginative writer commits his futuristic fantasies to paper, an engineer starts building them. We have all seen the movies which depict future societies where the people have their numbers tattooed to their foreheads or they can be identified by running their hand over a scanner. Well, welcome to the future because the future is almost here. ~DWH

by T. Allen Hoover

Recently, “The Answer Man” column told of a hunter at the Idaho Department of Fish & Game offices writing his Social Security Number (SSN) on his arm so people wouldn't overhear. In fact, this was a protest of the Idaho statute that submits to a federal regulation demanding SSNs be recorded on all licenses, drivers, occupational, professional, recreational and even marriage licenses.

These laws violate Section 7 of Public Law 93-579 (Privacy Act of 1974):

(a)(1) “It shall be unlawful for any Federal, State or local government agency to deny to any individual any right, benefit or privilege provided by law because of such individual's refusal to disclose his social security account number.”

National Identification Cards are control tools in totalitarian police states. Our laws, supposedly to find “deadbeat dads,” create a defacto National ID with this law. Will other freedom-restricting laws soon follow? Like roadblocks to check child car seats, or suspected failure to use seatbelts as probable cause to effect a car stop (and a search)?

As Mark Twain said, “The last refuge of a scoundrel is the children.”

As a clerk demanded my SSN in order to get elk tags (I had a license before this law), I put on a WWII-era, Jewish Star-of-David Armband from the Nazi Mauthausen concentration / death camp and wrote my SSN on my arm. This was my protest to being “numbered.” Despite a Channel 2 news crew videotaping this, and a Channel 7 news reporter present (mumbling “Black Helicopters...yeah right”), no mention of this protest made the evening news.

Ridiculing those who question our seduction into a police state is “Politically Correct” -- a phrase coined not by the liberal left, but by the late Chairman Mao Tse Tung of Communist China, whose tradition of executing political dissidents continues and whose money influences our elections.

There is no law requiring one to obtain a SSN, so why has the legislature passed statutes demanding them? Why are children, at birth, forced to have a SSN to be an exemption on income taxes? Elsewhere, police have, despite other ID's, arrested people who refuse to give a SSN upon demand. Before boarding an airplane a “Government Issued Photo ID” is demanded, even though this is not law, merely an FAA “recommendation.” You cannot travel without “papers.”

After WWII, Germans were asked how they had let it all happen, they answered, “We all had jobs and the trains ran on time.”

Possession of cash is “evidence” of possible drug dealing and frequently asked about, then confiscated during traffic stops as the Dateline NBC TV program discovered. Forfeiture laws permit police to confiscate cash as “it” may have committed a crime. With Y2K problems looming, people withdraw cash. Federal agencies propose “Know Your Customer” banking regulations, wherein your banker examines your “normal” transactions, reporting “irregularities” to the government. It should be the “Prove you are not a criminal” law.

Tacitus, the Roman General, from whence we get the word 'Tactics,' once said that, “The corruption of a society can be measured by the number of its laws.”

My old SSN card states “For Social Security and Tax purposes-Not for Identification.”

In my years of hunting, I would have reported poachers, yet lately there are hunters who tried to buy a license but refused to give a SSN, are they now poaching, or protesting?

Are Americans co-dependant to government's obsessive 'control issue' problem?

Support HR-220 IH, the 'Freedom and Privacy Restoration Act of 1999' in Congress, and State Representative Twila Hornbeck's bill to restore freedom in Idaho (RS08465).

I will, for I am NOT a Number, I am a Free Man!

Mr. Hoover is a Boise-area businessman who specializes in preparedness supplies. He is also an "armorer" who has been supplying the police and the public with body armor for several years.