NH Signs Bill That Rejects Federal Real ID 231
jcatcw writes "New Hampshire is part of a trend to oppose the federal Real ID act. The governor this week signed a bill that forbids state agencies from complying with the controversial federal regulation. The Real ID law, first passed by Congress in 2005, currently requires that all state driver's licenses and other identification cards include a digital photograph and a bar code that can be scanned by electronic readers. Such a federally approved ID card or document would be required for people entering a federal building, nuclear power plant and commercial airplane. The New Hampshire bill, which labeled the Real ID Act as "contrary and repugnant" to the New Hampshire and U.S. Constitutions, was passed in the state Senate by a 24-0 vote in late May."
Frist Post... (Score:3, Interesting)
What's going on here? (Score:3, Interesting)
In Canada (Score:1, Interesting)
Provincial driver's licenses have been like that for quite a few years now in Canada. It has had no effect whatsoever on my freedom or privacy.
Owning a car is another matter altogether however, there is no end to the ways that the state and its corrupt law enforcement officers can harass you if you own a car.
This is good and all.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if that's something that can be done administratively, or has to be legislated into existence.
Re:Frist Post... (Score:1, Interesting)
It seems like we had that argument in the 1800s, and it didnt turn out to well for a group of states.
Re:What's going on here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Frist Post... (Score:3, Interesting)
That is also limited by the fact that the money all comes from the citizens of the states to begin with. If a state would enact a law that withholds all taxes of every kind collected from its citizens, especially income tax, there is nothing the Feds could do short of taking over that state's government by military force or other draconian measures. That might be pretty tough for a big important state, such as California. The whole idea of how far the interstate commerce clause can be stretched might have to be revisited by the SCOTUS.
The Feds rightfully regulate commerce and the ID requirements for airplane passengers is lawful. Since a passport is already part of my traveling kit anyway, I simply use that even when traveling within the country. I have never shown any airport guard my license to drive a car. Why not simply forget forcing the states into issuing "approved" IDs and just require a passport for anyone who wants to fly between states? It is now needed to go to Canada or Mexico. Driver's licenses are just that, for driving motor vehicles, not for identification.
The politicians in Washington obviously have not thought this ID thing through very well. Of course many, if not most countries have some sort of uniform ID card system, so maybe a passport or some variation thereof can serve that officially. This real ID thing is a tempest in a teapot.
Canadian Government != U.S. Government (Score:5, Interesting)
Obviously, this database thing does not go over well with a lot of people. The Federal government has a piss-poor history of IT and information security. The whole place, at least on the civilan/unclassified side, leaks like a sieve and loses computers and data at a terrifying rate. The last thing most people want is to be put into a national 'one stop shop' for stalking, ID theft, unwanted "investigation," data mining, etc.
Second: Although Canada and the U.S. are alike in many ways, they're not the same. Attitudes, particularly in regards to government, are quite different. What people find acceptable in Canada -- and what may actually work in Canada -- are not necessarily the same things that will work in the U.S. If you, as a Canadian, say that you have a similar Giant Central Database, and your government uses it responsibly and the whole thing doesn't devolve into a Brazil [imdb.com]ian bureaucratic nightmare, I'll take your word for it. However, that gives me no faith at all that a similar system wouldn't be an absolute terror, were it implemented here. Maybe you have more responsible leaders. Maybe we're paranoid. Maybe the water in D.C. is contaiminated with Brain Slug larvae. Who knows; but I don't trust my government further than I can throw it, and nothing I've seen recently has encouraged me to re-evaluate that decision.
Re:This is good and all.. (Score:3, Interesting)
But at what point will the Federal Government try to link federal funds & REAL ID complaince?
Like they link seat belt law compliance and federal highway funding?
New Hampshire doesn't care. Apparently they are the only state that has refused to pass a law telling adults they have to buckle up so that they can get their share of the federal money.
Re:give me a break (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Frist Post... (Score:5, Interesting)
Right to travel:
In U.S. v Guest 383 U.S. 745 (1966): "It is a right that has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized." Shapiro v Thompson 394 U.S. 618 (1969), Justice Stewart: "it is a right broadly assertable(sic) against private interference as well as governmental action. Like the right of association, ... it is a virtually unconditional personal right, guaranteed by the Constitution to us all."(*) The Articles of Confederation defined a right to travel; It may be that the right was presumed to be inherent; if so, the authors of the constitution could also have thought it redundant to make it explicit.
(*) Despite this assertion, the constitution says very little about the right to travel, other than to ensure that federal legislators have a right to go legislate as per article 1, section 6.
Once the government starts saying "You can travel only if you meet the following conditions" (passport, ID, money in pocket, good reputation, etc.), they have set up a coercive situation where equality has been sundered. This is one of the key arguments against the underlying premise of RealID, as well as the no-fly list and similar non-judicial restrictions on travel and modes of travel. What you propose, the limitation of travel from state to state requiring a passport (in your concept, just by plane, but generally in any case), is a severe limitation upon the ability to travel.
And I would sadly note that as recently as just a few decades ago, the very idea was unthinkable; it is even encoded into the art of the day. In Tom Clancy's "Hunt for Red October", the first officer, bent upon defecting to the US, asks the captain if one could travel "state to state" without papers in the US; the captain assures him that is the case, and the first officer, a product of the Soviet government's implementation of just such restrictions, reacts in pleased wonder.
It seems that almost any war showing conditions in Europe will offer a tension-laced scene where someone's papers are demanded — people used to be quick to recognize this as an abuse of power wielded for the sake of establishing and maintaining that power, and for no other reason. Orwell wrote (in 1984): "The purpose of power... is power" — he was cautionary.
Now we see travel limitations proposed sincerely in the previous post, as if this actually was a good idea. I find this more than a little depressing, and frightening.
Re:They're right twice (Score:4, Interesting)
The optimum locations for physically carried ID were worked out some time ago. Either the forehead (see The NT's "Revelations" section, Hindu "caste" marks, etc), or the left chest (see Germany, ca. 1940's, and the "ID" the Jews had to carry.)
However, the RealID legislation has murky verbiage that allows for unspecified technology to be used to carry the ID electronically. Odds strongly favor this being RFID or something similar. So no need for it to be on your body, per se; it could be in your body just as easily as it could be on it, or on a card or similar external carrier. And of course, this negates the need to "present" your ID; it'll be read when you're within X distance of any client that wants to know anything in particular about you.
Federal Employees and flights (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Frist Post... (Score:3, Interesting)
The most far-reaching agreement made at the Constitutional Convention was that the federal government must have the power to collect taxes - direct taxes on individuals.
That is the fundamental root of Lincoln's belief that the federal union is not a voluntary union of states but a bond between between its people as a whole.
The federal government made it abundantly clear in the Whisky Rebellion of 1791 that it would use force to establish maintain its authority --- by a short rope and a long drop if necessary..
It would do so again in 1860.
When directly challenged, Eisenhower did not hesitate to send troops into Little Rock in 1957.
___ The feds can bring enormous financial leverage against a state. Social Security. Medicaid. Transfer payments of every sort. It could freeze assets and credits. It could with a single executive order bankrupt every Californian city over-night.
Re:Taxes paid by NE Benefits Received by NE (Score:5, Interesting)
Declaration of Independece and slavery (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, Justice Thomas of the US Supreme Court alone believes that the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution should basically the force of law, although nearly everyone else thinks the words are merely aspirational. I tend to agree with Justice Thomas on this; there is just something powerful and basic about "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."
In his first drafts of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the DOI, wrote that everybody including slaves and women had the same rights. He had to remove these parts though because other signatories were against them. Many believed in slavery and were slave owners and some thought of females as property as well. Thomas Jefferson himself was a contradiction, he both owned slaves and was against slavery. He also believed women had the same rights but he thought they should stay "in thier place".
FalconRe:Frist Post... (Score:3, Interesting)
Not really. Only if you want to get on an airplane flying from state to state. What's so different about that than requiring a drivers license if you want to drive a car either within a state o from one to another? We've had those for years. In either case the government wants to know who you are. My teenage son had to bring his birth certificate and social security card to the DMV in order to get a driver's learning permit.
That is still a long ways from having to get explicit permission, Soviet style, to travel from A to B.