Real problems with REAL ID
Posted on Sunday, January 20, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/bcdr/Editorial/57898/
These days, one doesn’t need a case of Orwellian paranoia to fear the sharing and distribution of personal data by agencies of the federal government. All it takes is a healthy respect for the personal havoc that can be wreaked if such data falls into the wrong hands, and a lack of confidence in the government’s ability to effectively safeguard much of anything.
Many Americans already share both these points of view. As such, they can rapidly form a simple equation when faced with the prospect of an ongoing, governmentwide data swap. That equation might read something like this: Danger of Identity Theft + Katrinaesque Bungling = National Nightmare.
People whose concerns can be summed up with an equation like that comprise one group wary of new driver’s license requirements created by the controversial REAL ID Act.
There are also those who suffer from the aforementioned Orwellian paranoia who see in the act’s requirements the beginnings of a national ID system, complete with bar codes and microchips — a system that meshes all too easily with many of the Mark-of-the-Beast scenarios floating around.
But the most important group opposed to the REAL ID Act’s new licensing requirements is made up of 17 state governments — including Arkansas’ — that have resisted playing along, largely because of the cost involved. Those states now find themselves in the crosshairs of the Department of Homeland Security, which has given the states until May to get with the program.
If that doesn’t happen, it’s the states’ inhabitants who could pay the price.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced last week that resisting states have until May to seek a waiver expressing their willingness to eventually comply with the REAL ID Act’s requirements. After May, driver’s licenses issued by states that haven’t complied and haven’t been granted a waiver can no longer be used to board planes or enter federal buildings.
Of course, it’s the board-planes part that’s really problematic. Residents of states that don’t seek a waiver from Homeland Security would have to use passports or specific types of federal bordercrossing passes to get through airport security — either that, or submit to “ vigorous” secondary screening at airports, including the dreaded pat-down.
If it comes to that, Orwellian paranoia won’t the be the only negative emotion on the rise. Sheer outrage is likely to sweep the country as well.
Homeland Security’s stated intentions are sound enough. The REAL ID Act, created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D. C., is meant to make it more difficult for terrorists, illegal aliens and other criminals to obtain government-issued identification.
It’s the methods proposed that concern many Americans. Homeland Security officials maintain that the only way to ensure that an ID is secure is to check it against other forms of government-issued identification, things such as passports, birth certificates and Social Security cards.
Some critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union, fear the process would effectively create a clearing house of personal data that could be accessed and abused by criminals.
The document crosschecking is also what concerns many of the noncomplying states, though for somewhat different reasons. Critics have complained that while some forms of identification, such as Social Security cards and passports, are relatively easy to crosscheck and verify, others are not. For instance, birth certificates, which are issued by countless jurisdictions around the country, could present some unique problems.
And then there’s the rub of cost. While the federal government is requiring states to comply with these new standards, it isn’t providing any money to help fund the effort.
The stage is set for a showdown, but some think it won’t come to that. The ACLU is urging the resistant states to openly defy Chertoff’s waiver deadline. The ACLU’s reasoning is that Homeland Security is bluffing — that the department won’t dare risk the massive disruptions to air travel that would result from the penalties they’ve suggested.
There’s also the hope that the Bush administration will crack under pressure from the airlines, pushing the deadline back.
Whatever the case, it would be patently unfair for the federal government to penalize the traveling public as a way of bringing these 17 states to heel — and our guess is that’s the way travelers will see it as well. Their anger will be with Chertoff and his bosses in the administration, not with their own state lawmakers.
In this day and age of high-tech forgery and computer-related chicanery, the idea of creating a truly safe and secure national ID system seems folly to us. Can the process for obtaining driver’s licenses and other forms of identification be improved ? Sure it can.
The problem is, Homeland Security has yet to prove that the REAL ID Act is the right way to do that, and more than a third of the states have been so put off by the plan that they aren’t even willing to give it a try.
The May deadline should be rescinded. And the federal government — which seems to be overstepping its bounds in this case — should back off, at least until these concerns can be more fully addressed.