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The NCIDP idlaw Subdirectory All Rights Reserved (See "Content Reservations and Permissions" page) ~ The National Council on Identity Policy:
More About the NCIDP & This Site: Identity Information Care & Control: A Brief History of Identity & Documents: Pertinent Fundamentals of Law:
Identity & Law - The Facts May Surprise You:
CASE STUDIES from Firewire News:
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The National Council on Identity Policy Overview of Identity The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP) was born of the struggles of one tenacious survivor of domestic violence and stalking. The NCIDP continues her work with the help of many. Read more about the NCIDP... ~ It is impossible to fully understand the power that you have over your own identity and identity information without first understanding the power that you have to change your identity, regardless of whether or not you ever have or ever will actually change your identity. What U.S. law, and earlier English Common law, recognizes is that you, as an autonomous individual, are the sole and exclusive authority on who you really are deep within yourself and that, therefore, only you can determine how that inner self is best represented to others and the world on a daily basis. Or, in sentiments oft repeated by the U.S. Supreme Court, "choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.” (here as written in: Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey (1992), borrowing from Entick v. Carrington and Three Other King's Messengers (1765); reiterated in Lawrence v. Texas (2003); et al.).
In 1765, the King's Bench, deciding the Jonson v. Greaves case, made clear that an individual was utterly free to change identities at will, and be known exclusively by such chosen identity in public and the conduct of business. A narrowly crafted exception to an individual's right in this regard was that such individual could not compel lifelong, close personal and intimate acquaintances to address them by such new chosen identity. (The apparent remedy left for resolving such issue with such perpy and disrespectful acquaintances was for the individual to discontinue that close personal acquaintanceship.) The exception did not extend to government, business, the public, or any other entity, or to any other person not intimately connected to the individual for a very long time.
In 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court, deciding the Christianson v. King County case, ratified the Jonson v. Greaves case as a Constitutionally protected right, holding it proper to conduct legal proceedings solely and exclusively using an identity chosen at will and without any ratification process by any other party (including the government), and giving such chosen identity the same regard 'as if it had been the individual's identity from birth'. Here, the courts left one exception, finding that if a person was found [convicted] to have adopted an identity expressly for the purpose of committing a crime of fraud, that identity change could be deemed fraudulent itself; and, meanwhile, notably omitting the previously found exception of the 1765 Greaves case.
A multitude of additional Federal Court cases have been decided since, and these decisions of 1765 and 1915 have been repeatedly upheld and elaborated. "Choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the state." (Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey (1992), borrowing from Entick v. Carrington and Three Other King's Messengers (1765) reasserted in Lawrence v. Texas (2003)); "Both the common law and the literal understandings of privacy encompass the individual's control of information concerning his or her person." (Department of Justice v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (S Ct., 1989)). In short, you are who you say you are. "No 'if's, and's, or but's,' about it", as one expression goes. You can literally wake up in the morning with an epiphany about yourself, a new understanding of who you are, and determine on the spot that you need to change your identity to better represent yourself in the world. The moment that you decide to indeed change your identity is the moment that you have completed a "legal" change of identity. A "legal" change of identity is your decision to change your identity. We cannot emphasize this Constitutionally protected fact of law enough. You legally change your identity upon making the decision to do so - no court proceeding may be required of you before it can be called a "legal" identity change. It is "legal" as of the moment of its conception.
Understanding, then, the right at law to change identity at will, it becomes clear that the only authoritative source or documentation of your identity that is ever possible is your own attestation to it. That is, no document or agency can dictate who you are to you or anyone else (as the Supreme Court has repeated numerously, and as in one such case is quoted above), and only your own personal statement can accurately satisfy anyone's desire to know your true identity. Other documents and agency records of your identity become, necessarily, purely historical footnotes immediately after their creation. At best, such records can only show what your identity was at the time of their creation, presuming that they were created based solely upon your own contemporaneous attestation of who you were (as the law requires). Moreover, if you do change identity, once you do so, such records or documents with your former identity information must be immediately corrected to exclusively reflect the new identity, and the former identity can no longer be retained, used, disclosed or exchanged, as this inherently violates your right to use and be known by your chosen identity "as if from birth" and your attendant right to privacy surrounding your former identity information. In short, primary documentation of identity is always and exclusively an individual's personal attestation of it. All other documentation of identity: is secondary documentation at best, if it is maintained as currently reflective of an individual's legal identity; or, is worthless if it isn't corrected to reflect a newly chosen identity upon demand of the individual. A birth certificate, for example, can only accurately serve as attestation of the place and era of your birth. It preserves no legally determinating information about your contemporaneous true identity or legal identity unless it is reissued promptly upon any change of identity that you undertake. Moreover, such document cannot Constitutionally be demanded for any purpose if it violates the 'right to be known by a chosen identity as if from birth'.
The very recent and novel efforts of some individual renegade bureaucrats to demand documentation of identity other than any individual's personal attestation is not legally proper (but merely a fraudulent vestige of the neo-fascist movement spearheaded so rabidly and vehemently by one individual, who was probably clinically paranoid, that an entire era and neo-fascist ideology is named after him, known as McCarthyism). If a person makes a legal change of identity at will, any record subsequently made that includes former identity information of any kind is a falsification of that record. It is a perpetration of felony crimes (18 U.S.C. § 241; et al.), a violent assault (Keeble v. Hickeringill (QB, 1707)), and a profound offense against every principle of a democratic rule of law (Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940); U.S. Dept. of State). You really must remember that requests for any form of personal documentation, whether birth certificate or something else, is an unprecedented and extraordinarily novel activity within the U.S., arising mostly within the past few decades without actual legal merit and mostly conducted contrary to long established and well settled law.
The above facts coupled with the following fact: You OWN our own identity - it is your own 'most valuable, most intimate, most personal of possessions', and your private intellectual and intimate property.
In short, your identity is yours to choose and dictate to the world around you entirely and only as you see fit - that is your Constitutionally protected human right and civil right. No other person, agency or entity of any kind has any inherent entitlement to your personal identity information. You are who you say you are, and any record or document contradicting that is of no legal merit whatsoever. Public entities have a duty to maintain proper and current, legally accurate, records. That is, it is their duty to keep up with you as you transform yourself throughout your lifetime, so long as you continue to do business or interact with them. Public entities with whom you do not choose to conduct or continue business or other interactions have no inherent entitlement to any of your identity information, past or present, in any form.
Finally, here is an example of how identity law must apply to new legislation (Public Law): The "Real ID Act" mandates a slew of requirements upon states issuing 'identity documents', specifically those typically issued by state motor vehicle departments, like driver's licenses. It requires that such state agencies solicit "proper documentation" (quoting the Act) of the identity of recipients of such ID. As we've already discussed and under Constitutionally settled law, that can only mean the individual's personal attestation. Separately, however, the Real ID Act requires that those agencies obtain a birth certificate attesting to the date and place of birth of the individual. Again, as we've discussed, the right of identity is the right to be known "as if from birth" by any identity chosen at will. Consequently, this clause effectively forces every state (and the State Department, for overseas births) to issue, upon demand, replacement birth certificates without documentary link to any certificate record containing former identity information, to any individual who does elect to make such change of identity, so that such individual can then obtain "Real ID" without illegally and unConstitutionally having former identity information extorted by such state agencies issuing that so-called "Real ID". A record, any record that does not reflect an individual's legal identity as that individual declares it to be is a falsified record. If the states and State Department fail to implement such birth certificate reissuances, the states can never comply with the Real ID Act within the totality of the Rule of Law. The states cannot Constitutionally use former identity information, and cannot force an individual to disclose such fact of such former identity's mere existence, let alone nature - for then it ceases to appear to be an identity held "as if from birth", as required by the Constitution [in decided case law], and invades the private sphere of privacy, as prohibited by the Constitution [in decided case law]. As the Supreme Court has already decided it numerously, and here eloquently quoted from Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940), "A statute authorizing previous restraint upon the exercise of the guaranteed freedom by judicial decision after trial is as obnoxious to the Constitution as one providing for like restraint by administrative action." In other cases, they add, "'Nor can we accept the theory that an expressed purpose to prevent possible frauds is enough to justify legislation which really interferes' with the rights of individual." (Breard v. Alexandria (S Ct. 1951) quoting Shafer v. Farmers Grain Co. (S Ct., 1925)).
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