February 23, 2006

By Kathleen Taylor and Doug Klunder
Contributing Writers

Picture having to carry a government-issued document to prove your citizenship inside your own country. With this document, the government — or even a private business — could track you as you shop, apply for work, or receive a traffic ticket. If it falls in the wrong hands, you would spend time and money to recover your identity and rescue your finances.

Sound far-fetched? It’s not at all. By May 2008, all states in the Union will have to issue such a document, the new standardized driver’s license required by the federal REAL ID Act.

Congress passed the REAL ID Act last May, wedging it into a larger bill to fund the war in Iraq. Without debate or public testimony, our representatives created a de facto national identity card. Like many other laws restricting freedom, it was promoted as a safety measure: to make driver’s licenses more secure and prevent terrorists from gaining access to them.

The new standardized licenses will be the only recognized state-issued ID to be allowed to fly in an airplane, enter a federal building, and access many other opportunities. And you must prove more than your ability to drive -— a person must provide proof of citizenship status. For most people, that will require a birth certificate.

Many U.S. citizens will find it very difficult to meet the identity requirements. If you don’t have a copy of your birth certificate, start praying that the hospital where you were born still has its records. If you weren’t born in a hospital, lost your birth certificate, or don’t know the hospital where you were born, you may be in trouble. And a foreign birth certificate doesn’t count; the only foreign document accepted is a passport, even though many refugees and some immigrants live here legally without a passport. For countless people, it will be difficult to drive legally, open a bank account, or do what they need to lead their lives in a modern society.

And what about the 96 million people in the United States who don’t currently have or don’t need driver’s licenses? Whether they are children or the elderly, they will not have the same access to services and other opportunities that driver’s license holders will have.

But perhaps worse than the difficulty of obtaining a REAL ID license are the problems once you have one. REAL ID licenses may be more vulnerable to identity theft and misuse. Since the previously separate state licensing databases will be linked, if a computer hacker breaks into a database in West Virginia, he or she could steal information from people in Washington. Because the cards will be readable by machine, businesses and other organizations will find ways to capture and store the information. The end result is that private, personal identity information will be widely available, allowing government and businesses to track people and create profiles even more so than they do now.

Then there is the bureaucratic nightmare. The Act forces states to follow federal standards and take directions from the Department of Homeland Security. But no federal funds are provided to pay for the costs, estimated nationally between $9.1 billion and $12.8 billion. Officials at the Washington Department of Licensing estimate REAL ID will cost $250 million over five years to implement. The costs include new equipment and software, more employees and office space, and employee training to recognize, verify and store the many types of documents needed to prove identity.

The state plans to charge $25 for new licenses, which does not cover all the costs. Other state funds may be tapped.

And how likely is it that the new driver’s licenses will prevent terrorists from infiltrating the United States? An ID cannot screen out bad intentions -— all the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 attack entered the country legally and had valid driver’s licenses. Even the most secure forms of identification can be falsified or unlawfully obtained.

Fears and concerns about REAL ID come from a wide range of groups across the political spectrum, including the American Bar Association, the American Conservative Union, Gun Owners of America, the National Governors Association, the National Taxpayers Union, and the ACLU.

The chorus of opposition, the risks to privacy and fairness, and the overwhelming costs of implementation show that the REAL ID Act is a bad idea, poorly executed. It is time for Congress to fix this error and repeal the Act. n

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For more information about the problems of REAL ID, visit

www.realnightmare.org.