Real ID Needs To Be Real Gone
Among the various stupid laws (and there are a whole bunch of them)passed in response to 9/11, the Real ID law which mandates a nationally uniform driver's license is one that states are finally beginning to resist. The primary reason for the state rejection is that Congress required the states to provide the new licenses with all the 'security' bells and whistles without providing any funding for them. From today's NY Times:
Maine legislators started off the rebellion late last month by passing a nonbinding resolution that rejected the law, called the Real ID Act, which Congress passed in 2005. They said that it would cost the state $185 million to put into place and that instead of making Maine’s residents more secure, it would leave them more vulnerable to identity theft.
Since then, legislatures in five states — Georgia, Montana, New Mexico, Washington and Wyoming — have voted in committee or on the floor of one chamber to move similar legislation ahead. The bill adopted in a 99-to-1 vote by the Montana House of Representatives would go furthest, ordering state officials there to ignore the federal law.
More than cost should be considered, however. The new licenses will contain a great deal of data about the holders, in effect making them national identification cards. Without the cards, Americans have no effective and nationally recognized means to prove their identity. A bonus to all of this is that the cards may very well make identity theft even easier than it is right now.
...Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union said the states were raising legitimate issues. The law sets a national standard for machine-readability, most likely using bar-code-like strips where information about the owner can be scanned. This may tempt merchants to collect the data and use it for marketing purposes, Mr. Steinhardt said. The linked national database of all licensing information will also be a target for identity theft, he said.
The 110th Congress needs to pay attention to the states' complaints and undo the 2005 law completely. We don't need 'papers' controlling where we can and cannot go. This was a bad idea to begin with, and it's only getting worse.
Maine legislators started off the rebellion late last month by passing a nonbinding resolution that rejected the law, called the Real ID Act, which Congress passed in 2005. They said that it would cost the state $185 million to put into place and that instead of making Maine’s residents more secure, it would leave them more vulnerable to identity theft.
Since then, legislatures in five states — Georgia, Montana, New Mexico, Washington and Wyoming — have voted in committee or on the floor of one chamber to move similar legislation ahead. The bill adopted in a 99-to-1 vote by the Montana House of Representatives would go furthest, ordering state officials there to ignore the federal law.
More than cost should be considered, however. The new licenses will contain a great deal of data about the holders, in effect making them national identification cards. Without the cards, Americans have no effective and nationally recognized means to prove their identity. A bonus to all of this is that the cards may very well make identity theft even easier than it is right now.
...Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union said the states were raising legitimate issues. The law sets a national standard for machine-readability, most likely using bar-code-like strips where information about the owner can be scanned. This may tempt merchants to collect the data and use it for marketing purposes, Mr. Steinhardt said. The linked national database of all licensing information will also be a target for identity theft, he said.
The 110th Congress needs to pay attention to the states' complaints and undo the 2005 law completely. We don't need 'papers' controlling where we can and cannot go. This was a bad idea to begin with, and it's only getting worse.
posted by Diane at 3:41 AM
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