March 10, 2009 1:15PM # Obama Intel Chief Sought National ID? By [Jim Harper](https://www.cato.org/people/jim-harper) --- SHARE While Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee have [written a letter](http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0309/Senate_Republicans_Freeman_pick_sends_wrong_message_on_intel.html) objecting to the experience level of National Intelligence Council Chairman Chas Freeman, Ashley Rindsberg at the *Huffington Post* [reveals](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ashley-rindsberg/obama-intel-chief-wants-n_b_172832.html) that Freeman advocated creating a national identity system in the US as a part of the “war on terror.” > During a 9/11 Commission interview, Freeman remarked that of three major changes the US government should make to effectively combat terror, one was that “the United States should implement a national identity system, so we better know who is who.” Seems Freeman lost track of why we have intelligence and security — to preserve our freedoms. We don’t abandon our freedoms to preserve our intelligence. [Not that a national ID would help](https://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-jh20070508.html) with that.… ##### Related Tags [Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy), [Technology and Privacy](https://www.cato.org/technology-privacy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).