(a collaborated article by Kevin Tull and Larry Holland)

“Ways may someday be developed by which the government without removing papers from secret drawers can reproduce them in court and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home”. Supreme Court Justice William Brandeis, 1928

Brandeis’ dissenting opinion in Olmstead v. United States, a wiretapping case, is often cited as an early example of the idea that invasion of privacy, in the sense of the Constitutional ban against unreasonable searches and seizures, is not merely defined as someone physically rifling through desk drawers and file cabinets. Eighty years later, an ultimate technological government intrusion of privacy is on the horizon. The Real ID Act of 2005 when implemented would create a de facto national I.D. card by establishing federal standards for state drivers’ licenses, under the auspices of preventing terrorism and to prevent illegal immigrants from getting fake identification cards.

Currently, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is proposing to limit the official purposes of a Real ID license to those “listed by Congress in the law” (accessing federal facilities, boarding federally-regulated aircraft, and entering nuclear facilities). The passive Congress has not limited the DHS regarding the Real ID. Thus, DHS openly admits they “may consider expanding these official purposes through future rulemakings”. Since there are already federal requirements concerning identification to open a bank account, it is quite reasonable to speculate that DHS could require a real-ID compliant identification. Besides the proposed rules that would in effect require a national ID for DOMESTIC flights, it also is not far-fetched to imagine passports only being issued to those with Real-ID compliant licenses. There are just a couple of examples in hypothetically limitless expansion of “official purposes”. That inevitable expansion, coupled with the massive amounts of information that can be stored on the card (and therefore be in the system), raise concerns regarding privacy and ID theft.

As the official purposes and information are open-ended, so might be the availability of the data. Officially, the real ID would create a database that states could access without the permission of the state from which the information originated. By definition, the federal government (see DHS), in implementing the database, would have access to it. Add to this the fact that Real ID standards make information on the ID’s compatible with international biometric data-sharing standards, and that DHS has openly expressed a desire to share biometric data internationally, and you have cause for great concern.

While we understand that rigorous standards for identification can reduce the ability for illegal immigrants and terrorists to operate in this country, border security is the more direct solution. To the extent more rigorous identification standards help, we are certain that states can define and implement those standards, and indeed many have. States are also perfectly capable of cooperating with each other or with federal officials as necessary for particular criminal investigations. The temptations and security risks of a massive database of sensitive information about law-abiding Americans is simply unnecessary.

We commend one of the great national champions in this fight, Missouri state representative Jim Guest, whose “Legislators against Real ID” website was the source for much of this information.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 5:46 pm and is filed under Real ID. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.