Throughout its history, the United States has rejected the idea of a national identification system. Yet, the Department of Homeland Security continues to push forward a system of identification that has been widely opposed. The REAL ID Act mandates that State driver's licenses and ID cards follow federal technical standards and verification procedures issued by Homeland Security. REAL ID also enables tracking, surveillance, and profiling of the American public.

On January 11, 2008, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued its final
regulations implementing the Real ID Act of 2005, the law that would federalize state
driver’s licenses and the motor vehicles departments that issue them and create the
nation’s first-ever de facto national identity card system.

To assist in the systematic evaluation of this complex issue, the ACLU has prepared this
scorecard listing all the potential problems that have been commonly identified with the

Bad Faith Peer Review

More than half a million people have died in a recent three year period as a result of
medical error and complications in the United States.1 The World Health Organization (WHO)
and others say that American health care ranks low among the nations – third-world care at twice
the cost, in effect. The RAND Corporation finds: “all adults ...are at risk for receiving poor
health care, no matter where they live; why, where and from whom they seek care; or what their