<!--StartFragment --> As a legal aide in the Reagan administration in 1983, Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. declared that he would support creating a national identification card ...

Michael Ostrolenk explains the threat to gun ownership from the war against privacy 05-28-05.

Listen Save

Ideally, the debate about national ID cards should have happened before Congress approved them. But better late than never.

Letter to the editor, Washington Times, April 30

Real danger with Real ID

The article in Wednesday's edition about the so-called Real I.D. Act ("White House 'strongly' supports Real I.D.," Nation) missed the point on the chief objections privacy advocates have to the bill.

Real I.D. wouldn't just "set national standards" for state driver's licenses. The intelligence-reform bill signed into law in December already did that, and the Transportation Department's negotiated rule-making to set those standards is already under way.

Real I.D. would cancel that negotiated rule-making process, which includes state and local officials and privacy watchdogs, and would give the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security unilateral power to design state driver's licenses.

Additionally, and perhaps more ominously, Real I.D. calls for all states to link their license databases under a separate document called the Drivers License Agreement. States of Mexico and provinces of Canada also are eligible to join the DLA.

Databases full of sensitive identity information — which could include fingerprints and retina scans if the DHS secretary wishes — have no business being linked to Mexican departments of motor vehicles.

Under Real I.D., poor information-security practices and corrupt foreign officials would leave Americans more open to the threat of identity fraud than ever before. Such a situation surely would endanger our national security, despite what proponents of this trinational un-American ID-card scheme would have you believe.

JAMES PLUMMER
Alexandria

Stephen Lilienthal,
Policy Analyst
Free Congress Foundation; Coalition for Constitutional Liberties
slilienthal@freecongress.org

4.27.05

The United States Senate has essentially passed the REAL ID Act.

Now the legislation is in conference setting the stage for possible further modifications. In attaching the REAL ID Act to a supplemental appropriations bill covering expenses for the Iraq War and tsunami relief, the measure’s sponsors pulled a fast one because the REAL ID Act never had a hearing in the relevant House or Senate committees on its cost or its implications for privacy. The conference committee gives the Congress the chance to make a bad bill from the privacy and constitutional liberties standpoint better because the REAL ID Act moves us that much further to a national ID card. Here’s what the conference committee could do.