Pardon My Politics
Politics From The Left, The Right & Somewhere in BetweenReal ID Really Hurts
In reaction to 9/11, our modern Pearl Harbor, the Federal Government has gone far beyond taking measures to prevent terrorism. They’ve taken measures to prevent the freedom of US citizens. In the hurricane of post 9/11 legislation sweeping through Congress, a suspicious little addendum to a military appropriations and tsunami relief bill (HR1268), the Real ID Act of 2005(HR418), handed to the Federal Government all control over our state-issued driver’s license.
Not only did this completely ignore the tenth amendment which states that all powers not enumerated to the federal government in the constitution are reserved to the people or the states, it gave the power to the Department of Homeland Security which has absolutely zero checks or balances. The DHS may also decide what ‘features’ are required on a Real ID with no input from the states or anyone what so ever. In effect, the DHS has instituted an internal passport required first for entering federal buildings and air travel, then for every other purpose which your driver’s license currently fulfills.
Despite the authoritarian implications that such a system imposes, there are numerous other troublesome characteristics that widen the damage coming to our local and state governments not to mention ourselves.
With the implementation of Real ID, local and state driver’s license databases will be required to be shared between every other state, the federal government, Canada, and Mexico. Every state has set up its DMV in whatever manner chosen by the state. Databases are on different platforms, different operating systems, and different software architectures. Connecting the multitude of varying database applications together with one another AND with all of the varying applications in the federal government proves to be not only wildly difficult, but also tremendously expensive. It is projected that it would take over $9 billion to perform this feat. This financial burden will fall on the states. There is no federal apportionment of funds in the Real ID Act, and there are penalties for non-complying states. The connectivity and cost are only the beginning of the issues. Once interconnected, the systems will have to be secure. Widely dispersed networks are difficult to secure as they stand now. Setting up a multi-national inter-related system spanning the entire North American continent would be practically if not completely impossible.
What does this mean to you and me? Identity theft on a cataclysmic scale. Hackers can do some amazing things. With a system this broadly dispersed and managed by government, who never quite does anything well, it would be a matter of months before data held about anyone and everyone in the US would be at the finger tips of the most devious computer criminals in the world. Also, corrupt insiders at all levels of government would have access to multitudes of information that they could steal and sell.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, the Real ID requires biometrics. What’s that? It’s it digital scan of your face that can be uploaded and examined with facial recognition software and a digital thumb print. It would be quite difficult to defend yourself against identity theft if the perpetrators know more about you than you do and can use reproductions of your face and fingerprints to commit crimes.
An example of how the preparatory stages of Real ID have already effected people is Bill Cattorini. Bill Cattorini retired from the Chicago fire department a local hero who served his community well. Now, his community will not issue him a new driver’s license. Why? Because the Social Security Administration does not have the same birth date on record as his expired driver’s license. This points out the numerous points of failure in the system in a data management sense as well. Hundreds of people per year will have to deal with such issues and be without a license in the interim. The costs in both time and money to obtain a new ID will grow drastically. The worst part is this, anyone who can get a fake ID now will be able to get a fake Real ID. It does nothing to hinder illegal immigration nor fight terrorism. It serves ONLY to monitor US citizens for the sole purpose of claiming power over the citizenry.
To add insult to the already injurious scope of Real ID, the ‘common machine readable’ clause is interpreted by the DHS alone. RFID chips, which already exist in all newly issued passports, will soon be required in your driver’s license as well. RFID is readable at a distance. You could be scanned without knowledge and without cause. This is an invasion of privacy and a violation of several amendments in the Bill of Rights not to mention a one stop shop for identity thieves that can build a remote reader for $8 on eBay.
It violates the fourth amendment by allowing illegal search and seizure of personal information without probable cause. It violates the fifth amendment by depriving us of property without due process (our identities, bodies, and papers are our property). It violates the tenth amendment by imbuing the federal government with an unenumerated power reserved by the state thus threatening the sovereignty of every state.
Thankfully, Real ID has met immense resistance from many states. Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Washington have all passed statutes prohibiting Real ID. Most other states have at least introduced legislation against it. However, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, and Vermont have done nothing. In fact, Kentucky licenses already have bar coded personal info on the back.
The deadline for compliance with Real ID was May 11, 2008. This has come and gone, but the specter still haunts us. The DHS offered to allow the states to apply for an extension for compliance. All states without legislation against Real ID have applied for extension. All states that have forbidden Real ID have been given extensions without their request. So now we wait for December 31, 2010. There exists one more extension after this which will expire in the summer of 2013, and this will be the time when, if the act is not repealed, we will see how far the states and the people will let the federal government push them.
About the author: Patrick Bowling is a political activist patriot confirming the freedoms of man as outlined by the Constitution. He also distributes Republic Magazine.
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