This Tuesday, the US Senate is scheduled to vote on the implementation of a national ID card system. The Real ID Act is nothing less than a Real National ID Act. The only thing left to the individual states is to decide which pretty picture they will choose to put on the card: everything else will be controlled by Washington DC bureaucrats.
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UPDATE:
“The federalization of drivers’ licenses, and the culling of all information into massive databases, creates a system ripe for identity theft. New standards could place our most private information – including photographs, address and social security numbers – into the hands of identity thieves. Worse still, an independent commission is currently studying the issue of license security, and, if enacted, Real ID would undermine their efforts.”
The House sent the Real ID Act to the Senate as part of a “must pass” appropriations measure for the war in Iraq and tsunami relief. Despite objections from Senators that such sweeping changes should not happen without thorough review, House Republican leaders are pushing to keep Real ID in the final conference report. The ACLU noted that neither chamber has held hearings or held thorough discussions on the measure.
UPDATE 2:
REAL ID is expensive. It’s an unfunded mandate: the federal government is forcing the states to spend their own money to comply with the act. I’ve seen estimates that the cost to the states of complying with REAL ID will be $120 million. That’s $120 million that can’t be spent on actual security.
And the wackiest thing is that none of this is required. In October 2004, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 was signed into law. That law included stronger security measures for driver’s licenses, the security measures recommended by the 9/11 Commission Report. That’s already done. It’s already law.
REAL ID goes way beyond that. It’s a huge power-grab by the federal government over the states’ systems for issuing driver’s licenses.