I went to city hall today, but before I could visit any offices I was commanded by the security guard to give her my name.
It is absolutely appalling that to access city services people need to identify themselves and have this information recorded. What possible positive purpose could such a procedure serve? The guard said it was to stop terrorism. I can't imagine how.
I can however imagine how policies like these further undermine our liberty. When everyone's business can be known and recorded by any power able to compel its disclosure, it provides the fuel for that power to be sustained and expanded as it can now use that information against those it would rule.
But it was just a name, some might say. What's the harm in that? Well it was more than a name. It was who I was, where I was, and what I was up to. An enormous volume of information is provided when identifying oneself. And even if you think that it's still too small a datapoint to result in any real harm, remember that this data was recorded, and if combined with other similar teeny, tiny datapoints, like a Seurat masterpiece suddenly you can paint a very vibrant picture of an individual's heretofor private life.
I can't see how it is anyone else's business, much less the government's, to be able to know so much about the lives of its citizens. I further can't understand how this kind of tyrannous policy was able to take root in what's supposedly one of the most liberal places in the world: Berkeley.