Footnote to the preceding, Now That You Know You Can Trust Us Div.

Updated In 2005 the "Real ID Act" was included in a bill covering military spending. In the name of security, efficiency, safety, protection from terrorists, a cure for the common cold, pudding for all, blah blah you know the routine, the law - passed with no review, no hearings, no debate - took us, the ACLU said at the time,

one step closer to a national ID, and a "show us your papers" society, by forcing states to link their databases - containing every licensed driver's personal information - with other states, with no guidelines as to who will have access to that information.

Such a claim may have seemed overly dramatic to some, but considering that when the law went fully into effect, that standardized ID would be required in order for a driver's license to be used for identification for any federal purpose, including obtaining federal benefits, getting on an airplane, and entering a federal courthouse, even then it should have been hard to consider that analysis anything less than reasonable. When the draft regulations were finally issued the beginning of this month, it should have become impossible. Wired magazine notes that among the regulations are these:

* Applicants must present a valid passport, certified birth certificate, green card or other valid visa documents to get a license and states must check all other states' databases to ensure the person doesn't have a license from another state.
* States must use a card stock that glows under ultraviolet light, and check digits, hologramlike images and secret markers.
* Identity documents must expire before eight years and must include legal name, date of birth, gender, digital photo, home address and a signature. ... There are no religious exemptions for veils or scarves for photos.
* States must keep copies of all documents, such as birth certificates, Social Security cards and utility bills, for seven to 10 years.

Wired, which accurately labeled the new cards "de facto internal passports," also mentioned that "many difficult questions," including how databases are to be linked and how homeless people can prove a home address, were unanswered.

But there's even more. Adding stupidity to this combination of aggrandizing bureaucracy and power-hunger, the New York Times noted that the newly mandated driver's licenses will contain a machine-readable strip with the holder's biographic data - and there is no requirement the information be encrypted! (Link for reference only; the article is now in a pay archive.) Which, as the ACLU pointed out, leaves people and the country less secure and serves only to multiply the risk of identity theft.

In fact, staff attorney Sophia Cope of the centrist Center for Democracy and Technology, says the rules mention privacy exactly once.

"[T]here are no privacy regulations related to exchange of personal information between the states, none about skimming of the data on the magnetic stripe, and no limits on use of information by the feds," Cope said.

And then, of course, there's the cost of this invasive inanity.

[U]ntil now, the Department of Homeland Security had not ... estimated the costs - about $14.6 billion to states and about $7.8 billion to individuals - of setting up the system ... over the next decade.

One reason for the high cost also promises to create a bureaucratic nightmare: Yet another requirement of Real ID is that beginning in May 2008 anyone wanting to obtain or renew a driver's license would have to show up at their state's registry office in person with the required documents. Stateline.org says that

[b]y curbing renewals by mail and online, Real ID will force DMVs to handle 686 million customer transactions face-to-face over five years, instead of the 295 million they would handle anyway, a study by the National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators concluded.

"When lines at the DMV are snaking around the block and the cost of a driver's license has doubled or tripled, the politicians holding the bag won't stay in office very long," predicts Lee Tien, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco consumer advocacy group that opposes national ID standards.

Apparently so, because states had already been clamoring for more time and more money to deal with the problems the law causes. Grandly, Michael Chertoff, Herr Direktor of der Department for the Protection of the Fatherland, said the May 2008 start date could be pushed back to the end of 2009 (while maintaining the requirement that the new IDs all be issued by 2013) and offered $100 million in federal grants to help with costs. That was not only no more than 10% of the first-year costs with no guarantee of future assistance, but would be paid for by an equal reduction in other "antiterrorism" funds already promised to states.

That was not only too little, it may well have been too late, as the combination of concerns over privacy and cost have many states in open rebellion against the law. In fact, even before the release of the regs, on January 25, in fact, Maine rejected the plan outright.

In so doing, it became the first state to refuse to take part in the program but it's already not the only. This past Thursday, Idaho became the second. Taking note of that, the ACLU added that this could be the start of something big*.

"Idaho and Maine are just the beginnings of the pending tidal wave of rebellion against Real ID," said Charlie Mitchell, Director of the ACLU State Legislative Department. "Across the nation, local lawmakers from both parties are rejecting the federal government’s demand to undermine their constituents’ privacy and civil liberties with a massive unfunded mandate. Congress must revisit the Real ID Act and fix this real mess." ...

[L]egislation [opposing Real ID] has been passed by one chamber in the legislatures of Arizona, Georgia, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, Vermont, Washington and Wyoming. Bills rejecting Real ID have also been introduced in Hawaii, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and West Virginia, with more expected in the coming weeks.

It's worth noting that this opposition, as you can likely tell from the list of states, does not come from just the left and often includes calls for Congress to repeal Real ID altogether. Personal privacy is an area where the left and the right often overlap, and the libertarian Cato Institute is also opposed to Real ID.

But give the last word to the ACLU in the person of attorney Tim Sparapani:

"Real ID creates the largest single database about U.S. people that has ever been created," Sparapani said. "This is the people who brought you long lines at the DMV marrying the people at DHS who brought us Katrina. It's a marriage we need to break up."

To coin a phrase, indeed.

*Footnote: I was going to include a link to the lyrics of "The Start of Something Big" by Steve Allen - but it appears they exist nowhere on the Web. Is my age showing that much?

Updated: My best friend found a link for me. :-) Here it is.