Your Government, Working for You

Looks like there is going to be new requirements for getting a passport:

The U.S. Department of State is proposing a new Biographical Questionnaire for some passport applicants: The proposed new  Form DS-5513 asks for all addresses since birth; lifetime employment history including employers’ and supervisors names, addresses, and telephone numbers; personal details of all siblings; mother’s address one year prior to your birth; any “religious ceremony” around the time of birth; and a variety of other information.  According to the proposed form, “failure to provide the information requested may result in … the denial of your U.S. passport application.”

Looks like I will be adding overseas travel onto the list. I’m already curtailing of airlines use, to the greatest extent I am able. I love flying and traveling, generally speaking. I just can’t stand what our oppressive government has turned it into. Tell me why I shouldn’t believe the terrorists have won?

Hat Tip to Cam Edwards

Related posts (automatically generated):

  1. Unintended (Or Perhaps Intended) Consequences of Terror Watch List
  2. American Airlines Issue
  3. Holder on Gun Policy

16 thoughts on “Your Government, Working for You”

  1. As I recall from doing both, that’s more information than you are required to provide to get a Secret clearance in the military or apply to join the FBI.

    Or to be President ;)

    It’s not only overly intrusive but it’s ridiculous.

  2. It is MUCH MUCH more than is required on an SF 86. That only requires you to go back 10 years….

  3. The hell?

    I couldn’t even tell you how many jobs or addresses I’ve had since I graduated high school, let alone give details about them…

  4. This change is obviously a preference for welfare recipients who live in public housing.

    They’re done in two lines.

  5. Let’s sum up their apparent goals, shall we?
    position agents at major public transportation points (airports complete, train and bus stations in progress)
    make gas so expensive nobody can afford to drive any long distances (in progress)
    require identification to use any of the aforesaid public transportation (upcoming)
    establish checkpoints at state borders (upcoming)
    make it impossibly difficult for us to leave their control the country (in progress, apparently)

    All done in the name of “protecting” us from terrorists. And for a bonus, at some point soon, the more they do this the more terrorists they will create to use as an excuse to “protect” us even more.

    Sadly, I no longer think this is a paranoid train of thought. Papiere, bitte seems to be getting closer and closer everyday.

  6. “Religious ceremony” around the time of my birth?

    I wonder if the ritual slaying of a fatted calf would count as a religious ceremony. Being as I’m a North Carolinian, I’m sure it would have been a fatted pig instead because as we all know BBQ is pork.

  7. Pingback: Papiere, bitte! « Curses! Foiled Again!

  8. Check the comments at that article you linked to, Sebastian. There’s an interesting one (two, actually) from an adoptee.

    Prior to this, many adoptees who hadn’t gotten their passports prior to 9/11 have been unable to get one (and sometimes even a driver’s license, depending on the state).

    [in his next comment]It’s actually illegal for me to know the information being requested. So if I answer the questions, I’m incriminating myself. If I don’t, I can’t get a passport.

    Grey’s Law is in play, here.

  9. To a well-to-do GS-whatever, who didn’t have a job until they interned with a Congressman while they were at Yale and was hired straight from there to their gig at State, and had only the two addresses growing up, plus their college dorm, plus their first apartment in DC and now their condo in Georgetown, this is a no-brainer. What’s so hard about remembering that?

  10. It would appear that they’re only asking for that information if you weren’t born in a hospital or nobody issued a birth certificate within a year of you being born.

    So, for most of us, this doesn’t change anything.

  11. First they came for the adoptees…

    ;)

    Regardless of the fact that the most egregious parts won’t affect most people, it is still asking for more info from those few people than a S/TS clearance or to serve in Federal law enforcement.

    Which casts reasonable doubt on the rationality or sincerity of its claim to be about “national security”.

    In order to add restrictions to fundamental rights (or P’s and I’s) of Americans the burden is on the restrictor to demonstrate the need and (should be) to prove that the restrictions have a factual relationship to the goal.

  12. Umm, why, exactly, do you need a passport? Can’t you just jump the Mexican border, fly out of Mexico City, and come back the same way? No customs inspections, no import duties, no security scans. Hell! I was trying to be sarcastic, but I can’t really think of a downside!

    I refuse to submit data to the Central Government beyond what I am required to submit to be POTUS. New Rule: If it doesn’t apply to Obama, it doesn’t apply to me.

  13. The first time I filled out a form-86 for the agency I was going to work for, the address list was a three-page single-spaced list. I had spent the past 20 years as a field engineer for a large defence contractor, heh, heh, heh. The last time I did a review, the now new e-form had grown to 102 pages.

  14. “In order to add restrictions to fundamental rights (or P’s and I’s) of Americans the burden is on the restrictor to demonstrate the need and (should be) to prove that the restrictions have a factual relationship to the goal.”

    Unfortunately you are wrong. Obama doesn’t need to prove anything to restrict our Fundamental rights. All he has to do is appoint one more Supreme Court justice and we are all screwed. From that point on the burden will be on us to prove why we need rights. Anyone who complains will be labeled a terrorist and won’t be able to get a passport anyway. Also, all your guns will be taken from you. All this for demanding your rights and questioning “The ONE”.

    Anyone who thinks that “Oathkeeprs” will save the day by refusing to follow illegal orders is deluded. The military and police will do ANYTHING they are ordered to do no matter how evil, immoral or unconstitutional as long as they receive a paycheck. That is the sad truth.

  15. Sorry for being such a downer with my last posting.

    I just read stories like this one and I get really depressed about our future. I was hopeful last November when the Republicans and Tea party won but they have proven themselves to be impotent and inept.

    The Federal Leviathan is getting bigger and more intrusive every day and I don’t see it going away easily.

  16. “I was hopeful last November when the Republicans…”

    The ones who gave us the freedom-lovin’ Kelo decision, PATRIOT act, and TSA?

    Yeah, great job they were doing. Better get them back in before Obama makes us all bow down and worship the ONE.

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