Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter

Real ID? Just Say No

By Joan McCarter, 3-18-08

There’s a deadline looming for us, one that seems tedious and bureaucratic--something for our legislatures and governors to be dealing with and not bothering us. But a few governors, and a few legislatures, want us to start thinking about it. They’re right.

On March 31, all states are supposed to tell the government whether they are going to comply with Real ID, an unfunded mandate program that requires states to replace drivers licenses with what are essentially a national identification card. That card would have a chip including, at a minimum, name, birth date, sex, ID number, a digital photograph, address, and a “common machine-readable technology” that Homeland Security will decide on. That’s at a minimum. These cards will be required, at a minimum, for air travel and access to federal buildings, at least the ones that require ID.

All this information is supposed to end up being stored on a vast national database. Who all is going to use the card is as yet undetermined. While the states are required to comply, the federal agencies that are required to demand Real IDs isn’t explicit. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security gets to decide that.

The text of the law says that, starting May 11, “a federal agency may not accept, for any official purpose, a driver’s license or identification card issued by a state to any person unless the state is meeting the requirements of this section.” Official purpose is defined to include “any other purposes” that Homeland Security thinks is wise.

The potential list of “purposes” could be long. Real ID could in theory be required for traveling on Amtrak, collecting federal welfare benefits, signing up for Social Security, applying for student loans, interacting with the U.S. Postal Service, entering national parks, and so on.

This is all just a little too much for a handful of governors and state legislatures. Maine, South Carolina, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma have just said no. Washington and Idaho have given a tentative yes leading up to the March 31 deadline, but as a delaying tactic while the states determine whether or not to comply. Idaho is leaning toward a definite no--its House just unanimously passed a bill prohibiting the state’s transportation department from complying. Given the resounding sentiment in the House against this, it’s safe to expect the Senate and Gov. Otter to agree.

Meanwhile, the Montanans aren’t sneaking around the deadline. They’re flat out saying “no.” Governor Schweitzer has been thorn in the side of DHS director Chertoff, pointing out the obvious.

Schweitzer said Friday that the debate over a deadline borders on the absurd, because nearly all states have asked for an extension and the feds haven’t detailed what type of licenses will meet the requirements.

“There is nothing to comply to,” he said. “We already have one of the most secure driver’s licenses in the country. Is the threat that one of the most secure driver’s licenses in the country will no longer be accepted, and the less-secure ones will?”

Joining him, Montana Senators Baucus and Tester have written to Chertoff. They pointed out that a March 31, 2008 deadline is ridiculous given the fact that the DHS has delayed full implementation of the act until 2017.

More states should be offering up resistance to the feds on this--they’re the American people’s last line of defense in protecting what’s left of our civil liberties. That sounds ominous, but the Real ID debate has to be considered in light of the astounding revelations from a Wall Street Journal report last week:

Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans’ privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the data-sifting effort didn’t disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system....

Two former officials familiar with the data-sifting efforts said they work by starting with some sort of lead, like a phone number or Internet address. In partnership with the FBI, the systems then can track all domestic and foreign transactions of people associated with that item—and then the people who associated with them, and so on, casting a gradually wider net. An intelligence official described more of a rapid-response effect: If a person suspected of terrorist connections is believed to be in a U.S. city—for instance, Detroit, a community with a high concentration of Muslim Americans—the government’s spy systems may be directed to collect and analyze all electronic communications into and out of the city.

The haul can include records of phone calls, e-mail headers and destinations, data on financial transactions and records of Internet browsing. The system also would collect information about other people, including those in the U.S., who communicated with people in Detroit....

That’s right, in direct defiance of a Congressional ban, the NSA--which legally only has authority to monitor foreign intelligence--has implemented this program to track American citizens. Huge amounts of data--e-mail information (sender, recipient, subject line, time stamp), Internet searches (both conducted searches and sites visited), both wired and wireless phone calls (incoming and outgoing, as well as location and duration), financial records (credit card activity, wire transfers, bank account information), and tracking information from the TSA--are being swept up by the NSA and monitored for suspicious patterns.

There’s little question that the states’ database of Real ID information will be swept into the massive NSA database. Now plenty of people would say “I don’t have anything to hide, let them waste their time monitoring me.” That’s the key--the waste of time, and resources. This kind of massive data collection means that the nuggets of information that might actually help our intelligence agencies keep us safe are lost in the tsunami of data coming in.

But there’s far more at issue than whether or not the program is efficient--there’s the issue of whether it’s at all Constitutional. There’s the issue of whether we should be trusting a government with our most private information when that government clearly does not trust us.

Hopefully more governors and more legislatures will take a second look at what they’re about to agree to, and will just say “no.”

Editor’s note: Joan McCarter’s weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics’ “Diary of a Mad Voter” feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.

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