Well, okay, there is more good news

South Carolina has now done it. Montana, Washington, Oklahoma, and Maine already have. New Hampshire is expected to become the sixth on Friday.

Done what? Rejected outright the federal Real ID act. That act, passed in 2005 as part of a military appropriations and tsunami relief act with little debate and no hearings, demands that states in effect collude with the federal government to create a de facto national ID card by requiring them to issue driver's licenses that comply with strict federal guidelines - otherwise they could not be used as identification for federal purposes such as getting on a plane, entering a federal building, opening a bank account, collecting Social Security, or applying for federal benefits.

And it's not just those six: 11 more states have passed bills or resolutions opposing Real ID, nine more have seen such legislation pass one chamber of the state legislature, and in 12 more states, bills have been introduced and are awaiting action. Altogether, 38 of the 50 states.

The reasons are not hard to see: Real ID's requirements place enormous, expensive burdens on the states while simultaneously placing enormous, dangerous burdens on privacy. Under Real ID, states could not issue a driver's license unless it first verified by use of a federal database the applicant's full name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, and citizenship or immigration status - and, usually was presented with a photo ID.

The license itself must include the person's full name, address, gender, date of birth, signature, digital photograph, and an identification number. It must contain security measures designed to prevent tampering or duplication, and use a "common machine-readable technology, with defined minimum data elements." All that information, likewise, becomes part of that federal database - the information in which would be available to states, law enforcement agencies, and perhaps private companies.

On the purely practical level, states are also angry about the costs imposed. For example,

[Massachusetts] Attorney General Martha Coakley plans to argue before the Legislature's Joint Committee on Veterans and Federal Affairs that the two-year-old Real ID Act would unduly burden Massachusetts. ...

In a letter sent last month to the Department of Homeland Security, [Registrar of Motor Vehicles Director Anne] Collins said the stricter federal regulations would cost the Registry an extra $100 million in the first year and $40 million each year after that, three times the current funding level. The Registry of Vital Records and Statistics would have to find an additional $19 million in the first year and $360,000 above its usual budget every year thereafter. That would be more than five times the current funds commanded by the agency.

That $40 million extra the program would cost per year, by the way, is equal to the entire amount the Real ID Act provides to aid states in making the switchover.

Fortunately, just at the states' rebellion is spreading, so are peoples' doubts about any such program. According to a recent poll commissioned by the ACLU, people are doubtful of such a government database, against private use of the information in it, and don't see the need for a license like that described in Real ID to "fight terrorism."

None of which, of course, matters to the führers at the Department for the Protection of the Fatherland.

Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said residents will be at a disadvantage if Massachusetts fails to adhere to the law.

"Citizens from those states who don't comply with the Real ID Act are going to be dissatisfied with their leadership when it comes time for implementation," he said. "There are going to be practical impacts on their daily lives."

And those impacts are liable to increase. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reports that the immigration bills include provisions

broadening the uses of REAL ID cards and licenses, which do not exist. Both bills create a national employment eligibility verification system, which would use REAL ID cards for identification and eligibility verification. The Senate bill forbids the use of non-REAL ID cards in the verfication system after 2013. Both bills permit the DHS Secretary to prohibit the use of certain documents for employment verification. This would give the DHS Secretary the power to mandate the use of a national ID card, such as the REAL ID card, as the sole acceptable document for employment eligibility verification in the United States.

In a phrase, without this card, you couldn't get a job. (Or, recall, get federal benefits.) This is bad for states, bad for people, bad for privacy, bad for limits on government power. It's just bad.

I'll give the last word to Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, who signed Montana's law rejecting participation in Real ID in April:

Montanans don’t want the federal agents listening to their phone conversations, rifling through their papers, checking on what books they read and monitoring where they go and when. We think they ought to mind their own business.

Footnote: For more information, you might check RealNightmare.org, an ACLU project on the issue, and the Privacy Coalition's page on it. I've previously posted on Real ID on March 12 and April 6.