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Administration Wants To Scale Back Real ID Law
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Jun 15, 2009 07:02 AM
from the square-root-of-minus-identity dept.
from the square-root-of-minus-identity dept.
The Washington Post is running a story on the Obama Administration's attempt to get a scaled-back version of Bush's Real ID program passed and implemented. We've been discussing the Real ID program from its earliest days up through the states' resistance to its "unfunded mandate." "Yielding to a rebellion by states that refused to pay for it, the Obama administration is moving to scale back a federal law passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that was designed to tighten security requirements for driver's licenses... Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wants to repeal and replace the controversial, $4 billion domestic security initiative known as Real ID... The new proposal, called Pass ID, would be cheaper, less rigorous, and partly funded by federal grants, according to draft legislation that Napolitano's Senate allies plan to introduce as early as tomorrow. ...the Bush administration struggled to implement the 2005 [Real ID] law, delaying the program repeatedly as states called it an unfunded mandate and privacy advocates warned it would create a de facto national ID."
Related Stories
[+]
Real-ID Passes U.S. Senate 100-0 1556 comments
jeffkjo1 writes "The U.S. Senate has passed the $82 billion Iraq Supplemental Spending Bill (approved by the House last week), which includes the Real ID act driver's license reform (previously reported here.) The National Governors Association has indicated at the possibility of a lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of the Real ID provisions, which would create national driver's license standards, and a federal database of information from all 50 states."
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REAL ID In Its Death Throes, Says ACLU 315 comments
Dr. Eggman points us to Ars Technica for an article on the ACLU's view of the latest loosening and deadline extensions for REAL ID act compliance by the Department of Homeland Security. The rights organization believes that REAL ID is doomed. "The ACLU, which opposes the plan on civil liberties grounds, says that the many changes made since the Act was passed [in 2005] nearly 'negate the original intent of the program.' 'DHS is essentially whittling Real ID down to nothing... all in the name of denying Real ID is a failure,' said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani. 'Real ID is in its death throes, and any signs of life are just last gasps.'"
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Hopefully It'll Just Go Away (Score:5, Insightful)
We go right back to where we were on Sept. 10, 2001. Maybe governors should have been in the Capitol when we knew a plane was on its way to Washington wanting to kill a few thousand more people.
You hear that? The lawmakers that take us to war were actually in danger of physical harm themselves! Imagine that! But their voice, urgency and argument are getting pretty pathetic now that it's been eight years and no such thing has reoccurred. The fear card isn't so strong these days. "You might lose your house and/or job" seems to worry people more than "the odds are 1:10,000,000 that a terrorist may kill you in an extremely contrived scenario!"
Remember any sort of compromise or rational thought is bad because Sensenbrenner says doing so instantly brings us back to pre-9/11 danger. Beware of this sort of mentality. Beware the men that play with your emotions and speak in absolutes for the world is shades of grey.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Will anyone please accept that maybe all of the money spent for Homeland Security has actually helped prevent post 9/11 homeland terrorism from occurring? Instead of shoving it all to the side as republican war profiteering?
Re:Hopefully It'll Just Go Away (Score:5, Insightful)
Will anyone please accept that maybe all of the money spent for Homeland Security has actually helped prevent post 9/11 homeland terrorism from occurring? Instead of shoving it all to the side as republican war profiteering?
You may very well be right. Nowhere in my post did I say that it didn't. What I said was that we have gotten along for 8 years just fine without a Real ID. However painful it is for me to say this, TSA & DHS are here to stay. If they or the NSA wiretapping or whatever encroachments on our rights and privacy condoned have prevented homeland terrorism then good for them. I don't like all of those things but I cannot say one way or the other that they haven't worked.
But that's not what this is about. This is about people trying to push it even further. Do you just write them a blank check in the name of security? Do you just offer up all your rights on the spot and roll over for them? Let me quote the article:
Supporters saw a slimmer measure as better than nothing. But critics said the changes gut the law, weakening tools to fight fraud and learn whether bad drivers, drug runners or counterfeiters have licenses in more than one state.
My GOD! Bad drivers are running free across state borders! Here's $50 million dollars of tax payer money. Get them! At all costs! What? You need me to carry a Real ID along with my other ID and birth certificate and registration? Ok, whatever you say!
I call for a halt to Real ID or Pass ID or whatever until we see a need for it.
Parent
Re:Hopefully It'll Just Go Away (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that a driving licence is supposed to be proof of your ability to drive, I would have thought that the more licences a person could obtain from different states, the less likely it would be for that person to be a bad driver.
Or doesn't the driving licence in your country require passing a driving test, as it does in mine?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Or doesn't the driving licence in your country require passing a driving test, as it does in mine?
LOL. Oh yeah, I had to take a driving test to get my TX license. It was a complete joke, literally in the sense that I would tell the story of it at parties for laughs. Which, as far as I can tell, was the purpose of it because it sure wasn't to make sure I was safe on the road. Part of a campaign to lighten the image of DPS, I would imagine.
First came the exam, which was sad in its own way. Given by a com
Re:Hopefully It'll Just Go Away (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
All this relaxed talk by Americans of "homeland" this and "papers" that as though it's just another day at the office makes me little sick btw.
Our great friend the US of A teetering on the edge of becoming the monster that it once so valiantly wrestled. Fortunately something, a single thread perhaps, keeps holding it back...but for how much longer?
Tune in over the next few years to find out.
Parent
Re:Hopefully It'll Just Go Away (Score:5, Funny)
Tune in over the next few years to find out.
Gah! I fucking hate these season finale cliffhangers. Maybe I'll just wait for it to come out on DVD.
Parent
Re:Hopefully It'll Just Go Away (Score:5, Insightful)
No I won't, because foreign terrorist attacks on mainland US were pretty much non-existent in the years leading up to 9/11 too. The way the Republicans talk, you'd think the US was a war-zone leading up to 9/11. Most of the "terrorism" we have encountered pre-911 has been rare, and against our military assets in Middle Eastern nations. And we shouldn't even have our military assets there in the first place.
Peddle your fear elsewhere. Your tiger repellent is just a plain rock.
Parent
Re:Hopefully It'll Just Go Away (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing is that security is no better now than it was before 9/11. People can still sneak things onto airplanes. In fact, the last two times I have flown, I have, entirely by accident, smuggled two knives onto an airplane. Note that these were simply a "multitool"-type knife that I use for taking computers apart when I have no other tools available, but they were still knives, still not allowed, and still, according the DHS, a security risk. Yet twice TSA screeners missed it. I myself didn't even realize it was stuck in my usual carry on (I won't say how or why it was missed because that information can be misused) -- I thought it was lost. But what if I had been a terrorist, fully aware of the knife?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
At worst, you might have killed a few passengers and made flying even more inconvenient for everybody else. If you chose your flight poorly, a marshal probably would have subdued you and you would be awaiting trial (I don't really have any sense of how quick they are to shoot...maybe you would be dead).
Re:Hopefully It'll Just Go Away (Score:4, Insightful)
At worst, you might have killed a few passengers and made flying even more inconvenient for everybody else. If you chose your flight poorly, a marshal probably would have subdued you and you would be awaiting trial (I don't really have any sense of how quick they are to shoot...maybe you would be dead).
Marshall, shmarshall. The other passengers would have whooped your ass, regardless of what sort of weapon you managed to smuggle on board. This is why 9/11 cannot happen again: the public is now aware that some hijackers may be suicidal terrorists, which means "sit down and shut up" may not be the best strategy to ensure survival. Flight 93 [wikipedia.org] marked the beginning of this change, but they figured it out too late to save the plane; any future hijacking attempts will be less successful.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hopefully It'll Just Go Away (Score:5, Interesting)
I have carried a one inch blade with me every time I've flown. It always passes without question, even though I put it in plain view in the X-ray bin. The I think the reason is it doesn't look like a knife so they miss it (human nature being what it is and they having to scan thousands of passengers a day). But then again, there was one time a screener picked it up, inspected it and put it back in the X-ray bin without a question. So maybe it's not that they just keep missing it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I have carried a one inch blade with me every time I've flown. It always passes without question, even though I put it in plain view in the X-ray bin.
The rules include a very difficult to parse list that says scissors with up to 4 inch blades are allowed, it is easy for someone to read it as all blades up to 4 inches are allowed.
Here, on Page 5 [gao.gov]
Description of Prohibited Items
Axes and hatchets; bows and arrows; ice axes/ice picks; knives of any length, except rounded-blade butter and plastic cutlery; meat cleavers; razor-type blades, such as box cutters, utility knives, and razor blades not in a cartridge, but excluding safety razors; sabers; scissors, metal with pointed tips and a blade length greater than 4 inches as measured from the fulcrum; swords; throwing stars (martial arts).
Re:Hopefully It'll Just Go Away (Score:5, Insightful)
You're buying into the security theater paradigm. Before 9/11, hijackings were kidnapping and ransom situations in the US. If you wanted to survive, you kept a low profile and didn't rock the boat, and odds were everything would be fine. Out of 200 people they might kill one or two, so your odds of being that one were low enough that resistance was not a good idea. 9/11 changed all that. Now the possibility that everyone might be killed is very very real, so terrorists are likely to see an overwhelming resistance if all they could get on board were knives or possibly even a couple small firearms.
I honestly think that a modest knife, say 3" or less, presents no substantial hijack threat.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ding! Someone with a clue. That was my entire point!
Except that you fell victim to the same groupthink when you made an issue of keeping the details of your special revelation a secret.
Because those cockpit doors can't be opened without the key, combination, whatever, right?
They can't even be opened with "the key" as there is no cabin accessible keyhole. They use dead-bolts and cross bars that are only accessible from within the cockpit.
There is a picture of the one in Delta jets in this article [usatoday.com] - normally it doesn't even have contact with the door, much less a cabin-accessible unlocking mechanism.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They can't even be opened with "the key" as there is no cabin accessible keyhole. They use dead-bolts and cross bars that are only accessible from within the cockpit.
The sad thing is how often I've seen the one fucking security enhancement that actually made sense and would actually prevent "another 9/11" not being used. Not very much these days, but that's what so sad -- in the year after 9/11 when I was flying a lot, I saw plenty of cockpit doors left wide open the entire flight. So we're all shitting o
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Translation: We know that for the past 8 years this has been pushed to prevent homeland terrorism but you know there hasn't really been any major events without it since 9/11. Also, we've got a lot of other shit to worry about that actually does affect your life more than having to present papers whenever you cross any political boundary inside the United States. You know, like the economy and jobs.
No, translation: The previous Administration wasn't able to get many states on board with this as it exists, so we're going to try watering it down a little. Once everybody's on board with this we can ramp it up to the real deal.
not dead yet? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Could god create an ID card so secure, that it was unforgeable [wikipedia.org]?
Re:not dead yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Heard of DNA?
Parent
Oh? (Score:5, Interesting)
law passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that was designed to tighten security requirements for driver's licenses...
The last eight years free of collapsing buildings seem to me a great indicator of its implicit uselessness. So why push it still?
Re:Oh? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's useless for preventing terrorist attacks, but highly useful for helping government officials track a citizen's movements. Now they can use that power for good (more promptly serving arrest warrants) or evil (harassing political opponents as just one example). Anti-terrorism is a smokescreen. What RealID proponents really want, and won't stop until they get, is the 24/7 tracking of every person in the country.
What I say to this is, if you're not doing anything wrong ... then where you are and what you're up to are none of the government's damned business. [findlaw.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Tracking? We're already tracked. The Feds have FULL ACCESS you EVERY STATE SYSTEM today, it;s just clunky and expensive. RealID offers no additional access, just a cheaper, more regulated, and more consistent ability to stop fakes. It also provides the ability to track drivers from state to state as not only the feds would get access to it, but each state could look up driver statuses, assign points from tickets, and perform insurance checks, regardless of the state of your issue and state you're stoppe
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
correlation is not causation.
"I've been snapping my fingers the last 8 yrs too; and so far, no lions have appeared. this stuff must really work!"
Tatoos are inexpensive and oh so vogue (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be curious are people here more apprehensive about the intrusive government or terrorists?
When can I have my America back?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably never. Most people don't care and a lot of people that do care don't take it any further than asking rhetorical questions.
(I'm not even suggesting some wacky revolution like a few fringies here do, I'm suggesting some higher level of civic engagement among people who want to live in a sane society, rather than the yell loudly about possibly scary things society that we have today)
Papers please (Score:3, Insightful)
Commissioners called for federal standards for driver's licenses and birth certificates, noting, "For terrorists, travel documents are as important as weapons." Eighteen of 19 terrorist hijackers obtained state IDs, some of them fraudulently, easing their movements inside the country.
Since when was a driver's license a "travel document"?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Alcohol consumption and the driver's license relationship is odd when it comes to punishment for underage consumption. Many states will try to revoke a driver's license for underage consumption even if there was no related driving offense.
Many alcohol and drug laws go too far to stop big offenses by making minor offenses into a big ones as well. For example, in my state, testing positive in a drug test is the same as possession and results in more jail time compared to other states. And don't get me started
Better (Score:4, Interesting)
On the one hand, I object to requiring a driver's license for any travel other than driving. General travel documents are one of the hallmarks of a police state.
On the other hand, I have no great objection to requiring the states to standardize the physical driver's license card so that law enforcement doesn't need to know about the designs of fifty plus different licenses.
To the extent that Pass ID does the latter, I'm in favor.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, I have no great objection to requiring the states to standardize the physical driver's license card so that law enforcement doesn't need to know about the designs of fifty plus different licenses.
Then they should pass a law saying "All states will issue driving licenses in accordance with the following design..... Existing licenses will remain valid until their expiry".
Quick, easy, relatively non-controversial and the entire damn law can be written in about 2 sentences.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as I'm aware the US Federal Government doesn't have the mandate or authority to "require" the states to do anything like that. Given that it was the states who created the Federal Government and gave it the power to exist to do a limited range of things involving common defense and keeping interstate trade regular in the first place it's not really ok for it to turn around and tell the states what to do.
But that may just be my naive reading of the highest law of your land, the law that actually allo
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Unlike say Soviet Russia who had a set of laws outlined in a similar document that stated what the central government could do, but completely ignored them and did whatever it liked."
No, that's pretty much how the US Federal government works too. But don't say it too loudly or the government will call you a radical right-wing militia terrorist.
It will not stop terrorism (Score:5, Insightful)
A National ID would not have stopped the American terrorist who recently murdered the Holocaust Museum guard nor the American terrorist who murdered that doctor who performed abortions.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As a fellow Holocaust Museum guard, or a doctor at an abortion clinic, would you not feel scared if these people were not caught?
How about if someone came and murdered one of your collegues for a reason linked to your job (importing foreign produce, employing immigrant labour, voting Red, voting Blue etc).
New Hampshire (Score:5, Informative)
The general court finds that the public policy established by Congress in the Real ID Act of 2005, Public Law 109-13, is contrary and repugnant to Articles 1 through 10 of the New Hampshire constitution as well as Amendments 4 though 10 of the Constitution for the United States of America. Therefore, the state of New Hampshire shall not participate in any driver's license program pursuant to the Real ID Act of 2005 or in any national identification card system that may follow therefrom.
Re:DMV (Score:5, Informative)
I just went into the DMV to renew my license and it was expensive and rigorous.
I went last month - it cost $24 to renew my license. I had to wait around 20 minutes before it was my turn, and getting my identification in order was a snap since I already had a Passport..
Hardly expensive or rigorous.
Parent
Me too. (Score:4, Insightful)
My license had been expired for six months. Renewal, pay a late fee and they hand it over. Easy. It's funny but on that day I heard on the radio some
Republican senator saying: "If we have national health insurance, we will have healthcare like the DMV."
Now I'm a right wing kind of guy, but I couldn't help but immediately think:
"I wish my health care was as good as my DMV". I would say Republicans should shy away from DMV arguments, because right now health care is so screwed up that
making it like the DMV would be an improvement. Imagine an emergency room where they had different lines for different ailments, actually gave out numbers like the DMV does, had friendly people and a nice building... and only cost $50.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now I'm a right wing kind of guy, but I couldn't help but immediately think:
"I wish my health care was as good as my DMV". I would say Republicans should shy away from DMV arguments, because right now health care is so screwed up that making it like the
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DMV (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting. Mine was done two weeks ago through an online form [mass.gov] that didn't require me leaving my chair and used only the minimum amount of personally identifying information.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I need a photo, so I'm going to have to visit the DMV for a new license soon. It can also be a PITA in California, but mostly because you have to wait. If you have the old one, getting a new one is easy, otherwise you need a genuine BC (no photocopies naturally) and maybe a social card too.
Re:DMV (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem with ID issuance in the United States is everything -- everything, including a passport -- goes back to a birth certificate, and not all difficult to obtain a phony birth certificate. I'm not sure this problem really has a short term solution.
Parent
Re:DMV (Score:4, Informative)
A hospitol birth certificate isn't hard to obtain, but an authorized state certificate, which keep in mind is also back-ended and validated by information maintained by the SSA and serveral other databases, is nearly impossible to obtain.
My wife lost hers and we needed it to go on our honeymoon to get a passport. It was a nasty process as they wanted to validate things like the name of the hospital she was born in just to get a COPY of her birth certificate. When I went to get a replacement SS card a couple of years ago and I brough my original certificate, it wasn't a current certified state version, and they made a dozen phone calls to validate my certificate was in fact valid, and then suggested in the future I might want to get an updated certified copy and keep the original for posterity...
Making a fake is not hard at all, but as soon as they might try to enter that information in their system, if the record in the computer can't be found or is inaccurate, you have to go through an appeals process and several ID validations before they'll issue a licences. They do NOT take for granted what's on the piece of paper you hand them. This isn't the 70's.
Geting a valid ID created using phony information is very hard... VERY hard. Not to mention the mathing SS card, valid SS record, validated proof of address from utility companies, proof of insurance in that fake name, vehicle registration, and more....
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In this state, SC, you do, as well as in both NY and CT when i lived there. NC also does.
Re:DMV (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does there have to be a solution?
More efficient commerce isn't an acceptable answer.
A free people don't have to verify themselves to their government and the government has no intrinsic right to demand that of a person.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Sure they do, they need to make sure you're not some sort of psycho child molester who is walking the streets. Clearly you don't advocate keeping such criminally insane people like child molesters off the street, don't you? I mean, think of the children.
Re:How scarry is a National ID ? (Score:5, Insightful)
"it doesn't make our government track our every move or anything."
And you know that how?
Because in my country at least getting government departments to tell us what they do and don't talk to each other about and what info they are and aren't mining about the citizens is like pulling teeth and requires costly court battles.
I assume you just implicitly trust your public servants to do the moral thing in the course of their duties?
I've worked in our federal government, if the data is there and there isn't a specific law banning the use of it, at best there's a pilot project or little dodgey in house app to play with the data a million different ways. I know this because I wrote one and though it was pretty benign to start with, the potential that it created and the hunger for information on everyone displayed by the various deparments I worked with I'm sure it's not benign (or even legal) anymore.
The thing is, who's going to stop them from doing things like that? You?
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