States Fighting Real ID

A small, but growing, number of states are stating to resist Real ID Act.

The Real ID Act was attached to a war appropriations measure in 2005. The Act required the following (from REAL ID And The Big Picture):

(1) The person's full legal name. (2) The person's date of birth.

(3) The person's gender.

(4) The person's driver's license or identification card number.

(5) A digital photograph of the person.

(6) The person's address of principle residence.

(7) The person's signature.

(8) Physical security features designed to prevent tampering, counterfeiting, or duplication of the document for fraudulent purposes.

(9) A common machine-readable technology, with defined minimum data elements.

The cards - which include both driver's license and identity cards - also have "other requirements" for biometric data. That other data is such things as facial recognition, retinal scan, etc.

The states have balked from the beginning about the Act which will require significant funds for them to implement. While James Sensenbrenner who led the charge for the REAL ID Act claimed that it would cost no more than $100 million to implement nationwide, the state of Maine (one of the resisting states) has argued that it will cost $185 million to implement in Maine alone (Lipton, NY Times, 2/05/07). Georgia, Massachusetts, Montana, New Mexico and Washington are other states who are resisting the implementation of the new license requirements (EPIC). The Department of Homeland Security was supposed to pass down the finalized requirements for drivers licenses and identity cards, but has yet to do so - even though implementation is supposed to begin in May 2008.

The goal is to have a nationwide interlinked database of all DMV license data. Yes - effectively a national database, and one of the partial implementations of the de-funded Total Information Awareness program. Another effort is to expansion of the MATRIX program through a "vast expansion of DNA sampling."

It is no wonder that the government is building a huge, underground data storage site in Colorado to store all their data in. The site is capable of storing the equivalent of the entire Library of Congress each day.

It is likely that more states will join the resistance to implementation of REAL ID for drivers licenses as an unfunded government mandate. Of course, schools were not successful taking that approach with No Child Left Behind.