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CNN Live At Daybreak

Sound Off: Is Idea of National ID Cards Good One or a Bad One?

Aired October 16, 2001 - 08:48   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: So is the idea of national ID cards a good one or a bad one? Well, Jake Tapper, Washington correspondent for salon.com is against the idea. An editorial writer for "The New York Post" Robert George you could say is I guess quasi for a national ID card. Both sound off on this issue this morning.

Good morning, gentlemen.

JAKE TAPPER, SALON.COM: Hi, Paula.

ROBERT GEORGE, "THE NEW YORK POST": Hi, Jake.

TAPPER: Hey, Robert.

ZAHN: Yes, you guys haven't seen each other forever, at least two days here.

All right, Jake, would you happily carry a national ID card?

TAPPER: I would. But I think it is a waste of time. I think it's a typical American attempt at a quick fix. You know the problems we have in this country with terrorism are not that we can't ID the 280 million Americans in this country legally. It's the fact that we have borders that are too porous. We have individuals who come over here who hate us, who want to kill us, who we can't track down when we need to, and that we have serious security problems still on airplanes, and those are the problems we need to focus on.

ZAHN: Jake, before you go any further, don't you think that if you are required to carry around national ID card, you might pick up more people at the border, particularly when we know that security at the borders, particularly the Canadian border, have been heavily fortified?

TAPPER: Well, we don't need ID cards for us. The American people don't need to know that Paula Zahn is Paula Zahn. What we need is we need to be able to better identify the terrorists, those are problems. You know, two of the 19 terrorists...

ZAHN: Yes, but maybe it will be harder to get in here, Robert.

GEORGE: Yes, I think I CNN, Paula, is a national ID card.

ZAHN: Thank you, Robert. GEORGE: But I am, as you said, quasi in favor of it, because you -- I think we're at a point now where you have to look at a whole host of ways that we can identify people, that we can actually track some of these people that Jake is talking about. I don't think we should just, you know, reflexively reject something like an ID card out of hand, even though I am concerned about some of the Big Brother implications that are around it.

ZAHN: All right, but, Robert, how easy it would be to fake their identification. Isn't it true, that if you get a national ID card, you could you falsify information to get the card?

GEORGE: That is true, but we are getting a whole lot more technology now that you know, that can track people by retina scans, fingerprints, things like that. I think there is a whole lot of possibilities that have to at least be explored.

ZAHN: But get to the point that Jake was making, that is not going to stop terrorists from coming in at porous borders.

GEORGE: Well you see, I agree with Jake, and that's why I think a national ID card is going to be part of immigration reform, national security reform, securing the borders and so forth. It's not going to be a silver bullet, but I think it's going to have to be part of more of a comprehensive approach.

ZAHN: Jake, why wouldn't it work, as just a small part of an overall broader approach?

TAPPER: It's not that it wouldn't work, it is that there are so many more important things we need to do before we start talking about giving Robert George and me and you national ID cards. We are not problems when it comes to terrorism. The problem are the individuals that we let into this country, and let them have free and unfettered use of anything they want in this country, and we don't track them. That is the problem. Mexican nationals do have ID cards, but the problem is on some of the borders, the INS doesn't yet have computers that allows them to register these cards. There is a lot of work that still needs to be done on focusing on the individuals coming into this country, not focusing on us.

TAPPER: As I say, Paula, I mean I was born in Trinidad, then moved to England, then came here. For the first several years, when I was in the United States, I had to register every single year, just to show my whereabouts and so forth, and I think, you know, those are some of the policies that we may have to go back to and make them a lot more stringent.

ZAHN: Do either one of you see erosion of civil liberties coming with this one? Jake, if it's in force, do you have to carry one around? I mean, after all, any of us who drives a car has to carry around a photo ID and our license.

TAPPER: It is an erosion of civil liberties. It's probably one -- according to polls, 70 percent of American people favor such a thing, although the Bush administration said that it is opposed to it. It is an erosion of civil liberties that people are willing to withstand. The question is not what happens with the card, but what comes after the card, as with all questions with civil liberties that we are being presented with these days.

ZAHN: And what are you the most concerned about after the card?

TAPPER: Well, who has access to this information, what kind of information is on the card. These are the questions that I think civil libertarians and conservatives would be very concerned about.

ZAHN: And, Robert, have you even acknowledged that you have some problems with that, but it is something you are willing to consider, because you say we've to start some place, right?

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: Let Robert respond, then fire back.

GEORGE: You know, that is exactly right, Paula. It is always,a balance, obviously, between civil liberties, how much information the government knows about you, and the general security of the populace, and you are going to definitely balance those things out. I think if we can find some limitations that kind of prevent say the IRS from, you know, from tracking you -- they can track you anyway -- but other agencies from illegally tracking you, I think that we definitely have to look at that.

ZAHN: Jake, even you say you are willing to live with this. You don't think that's going to make that big of a difference.

TAPPER: I'd have a monkey on my head if I thought it was going to prevent a future terrorist attack...

GEORGE: Let me see that Jake.

TAPPER: But I think that the resources that we devote need to be smartly done. Look, there are 30 million entrances in this country of nonimmigrants, people who are from other countries visiting. We only have 2,000 investigators in the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 2,000 for 30 million entrances. That's where this money needs to go not ID cards, so that Robert George, you know, could be identified on the street. We know who Robert is. He is safe. We don't worry about Robert. We need to worry about these people who are coming into this country who are fanatics and want to kill us. Those are the ones we have to worry about.

ZAHN: All right, Robert, you get the final word this morning.

GEORGE: Well, then, of course, the question is, you know, how do we identify those people from the normal law-abiding citizen right next to them. This may be something we have to take a look at.

ZAHN: You guys throw out very good questions, and you answer them well, too, even though you don't always agree on everything.

Robert George, Jake Tapper, thank you very much. TAPPER: Thanks, Paula.

GEORGE: Thanks, Paula.

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