Liberty Reborn

It used to be in America that if you wanted to be a lawyer, a doctor or even a banker that you could be. However, if you were a lawyer who didn’t know the law and lost every case, were a doctor whose patients died more often than not or a banker that made poor investment choices, the market would take care of the problem and you would be liable for malpractice in the courts. We’ve come a long way from that sort of liberty.

Now we have the federal and state government issuing licenses for everything under the sun and even another requirement now according to this report:

Fingerprints are considered to be among the most personal of information, and fingerprint databases created and proposed in the name of national security have generated much debate. Recently, “Server in the Sky” — a proposed international database of the fingerprints of suspected criminals and terrorists to be shared among the U.S., U.K. and Canada — has ignited a firestorm of controversy. As have cavalier comments by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that fingerprints aren’t “personal data.”

Yet earlier this week, a measure creating a federal fingerprint registry totally unrelated to national security passed a U.S. Senate committee almost without notice. The legislation would require thousands of individuals working even tangentially in the mortgage and real estate industries — and not suspected of anything — to send their prints to the feds. The database and fingerprint mandates were tucked into housing and foreclosure assistance bills that on Tuesday passed the Senate Banking Committee by a vote of 19-2.

The measure the committee passed states that “an indvidual may not engage in the business of a loan originator without first … obtaining a unique identifier.” To obtain this “identifier,” an individual is requiredto “furnish” to the newly created Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry “information concerning the applicant’s identity, including fingerprints for submission” to the FBI and other government agencies.

The fingerprint provisions are contained in a “manager’s amendment” that was hammered out by committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn, and Ranking Member Richard Shelby, R-Ala., on Monday and attached the next day to a broader housing bailout bill that had been scheduled for a comittee vote. That bill, the “Federal Housing Finance Regulatory Reform Act of 2008,” expands the lending authority of the Federal Housing Administration and the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to refinance the mortgages of troubled borrowers and banks.

The amendment adopted the fingerprint provisions in a section called the “S.A.F.E. Mortgage Licensing Act.” The fingerprints will be part of what the amendment calls “a comprehensive licensing and supervisory database.”

Yes, that is correct. Give the government your fingerprint and submit to an unreasonable search and seizure or you cannot pursue your chosen profession. Your ability and talent are no longer the primary factor in whether or not you can work in the mortgage industry. Your willingness to submit to government control, however, now is.

Are you ready to take up arms and revolt yet? Nah, of course not … it’s still pretty cushy here in America despite the encroaching fascist state. So what’s the loss of a few more liberties right?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 7:50 am and is filed under J.J. Jackson's Daily Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.