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National ID Battle Continues
Wired News | May 12 2005
Legislation supporting a standardized national driver's license may have won unanimous approval in the Senate on Tuesday, but the bill's apparently smooth passage left some jagged edges in its wake.
The Real ID Act appeared in take-it-or-leave-it spending legislation, which effectively forced lawmakers to sign on to the whole measure even if they disagreed with a portion of it. Several Republican and Democrat senators who cast favorable votes for the bill simultaneously railed against the provision authorizing the new driver's license rules.
They're not the only ones refusing to accept the bill peacefully. The National Governors Association is threatening lawsuits to fight the legislation. And some states are threatening to ignore the legislation because they say it will cost up to $700 million for states to comply and will place a heavy burden on Department of Motor Vehicles workers.
A spokeswoman for the governors' association did not return calls for comment. But Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, told the Associated Press this week that "if more than half of the governors agree we're not going down without a fight on this, Congress will have to consider changing" the rules.
In the meantime, mobilization against the legislation is also occurring on the citizen front. Civil liberties activist Bill Scannell, who launched a website this week to protest the legislation, said that visitors to his site sent more than 20,000 faxes to senators within 24 hours.
"One by one (senators) got up and said, 'This is a real stinker but you've got a gun to our heads so we've got to vote for it,'" Scannell said. "This is an incredibly sleazy way to push something that pushes the very nature and foundations of our democracy."
The act passed in the Senate with a 100-0 vote Tuesday and passed through the House twice -- first as a stand-alone bill in February and again last week as part of a larger spending bill. But several senators, such as Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) and Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), said the legislation would have unintended consequences and likely wouldn't improve national security.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said more than 600 organizations -- including state legislation associations, civil liberties groups and pro-immigrant advocates -- opposed the bill. And he said organizers will gather next week to discuss plans to press Congress to revisit its decision.
"This is one of the biggest mistakes Congress has ever made," Rotenberg said. "This is not over by any means."
Supporters of the bill say it would prevent terrorists and undocumented immigrants from obtaining legitimate documents that would help them move freely through the country. Last year, the 9/11 Commission called for tightening control over government-issued IDs because 18 of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks used U.S. IDs to pass through airport security.
But opponents of the bill say it would create a national ID card and a de facto national database -- a concept that Congress rejected when it was first proposed several years ago.
The act would force states to produce standardized, tamper-resistant driver's licenses that would include machine-readable, encoded data. States wouldn't be required to comply. But those that don't comply would create hardship for residents, who wouldn't be able to use their licenses as official identification to travel on airplanes, collect federal benefits or gain access to federal buildings.
All drivers, including current license holders, would have to provide multiple documents to verify their identity before they could obtain a license or renew one. Drivers would have to provide several types of documentation, such as a photo ID, birth certificate, proof that their Social Security number is legitimate and something that verifies the applicant's full home address.
Some critics call the legislation anti-immigration because it would prohibit undocumented immigrants from obtaining a driver's license.
The law would compel DMV workers to verify the documents against federal databases and store the documents and a digital photo of the card holder in a database. Critics say the mandates would result in higher costs and longer lines at the DMV.
"It's a controversial measure and a controversial manner in which to pass it," Rotenberg said. "We want them to know that in passing (the Real ID Act), Congress mandated the collection of sensitive personal information by state DMVs at the same time that the state DMVs have become the target of attacks."
Since March, there have been at least three reported incidents of personal data being stolen for the sake of identity theft from DMV offices in Nevada, Florida and Maryland.
Senators opposing the act reluctantly passed it because it was slipped into a larger spending appropriations bill that authorized emergency funding for the Iraq war and tsunami victim relief.
National ID Battle Continues
Wired News | May 12 2005
Legislation supporting a standardized national driver's license may have won unanimous approval in the Senate on Tuesday, but the bill's apparently smooth passage left some jagged edges in its wake.
The Real ID Act appeared in take-it-or-leave-it spending legislation, which effectively forced lawmakers to sign on to the whole measure even if they disagreed with a portion of it. Several Republican and Democrat senators who cast favorable votes for the bill simultaneously railed against the provision authorizing the new driver's license rules.
They're not the only ones refusing to accept the bill peacefully. The National Governors Association is threatening lawsuits to fight the legislation. And some states are threatening to ignore the legislation because they say it will cost up to $700 million for states to comply and will place a heavy burden on Department of Motor Vehicles workers.
A spokeswoman for the governors' association did not return calls for comment. But Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, told the Associated Press this week that "if more than half of the governors agree we're not going down without a fight on this, Congress will have to consider changing" the rules.
In the meantime, mobilization against the legislation is also occurring on the citizen front. Civil liberties activist Bill Scannell, who launched a website this week to protest the legislation, said that visitors to his site sent more than 20,000 faxes to senators within 24 hours.
"One by one (senators) got up and said, 'This is a real stinker but you've got a gun to our heads so we've got to vote for it,'" Scannell said. "This is an incredibly sleazy way to push something that pushes the very nature and foundations of our democracy."
The act passed in the Senate with a 100-0 vote Tuesday and passed through the House twice -- first as a stand-alone bill in February and again last week as part of a larger spending bill. But several senators, such as Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) and Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), said the legislation would have unintended consequences and likely wouldn't improve national security.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said more than 600 organizations -- including state legislation associations, civil liberties groups and pro-immigrant advocates -- opposed the bill. And he said organizers will gather next week to discuss plans to press Congress to revisit its decision.
"This is one of the biggest mistakes Congress has ever made," Rotenberg said. "This is not over by any means."
Supporters of the bill say it would prevent terrorists and undocumented immigrants from obtaining legitimate documents that would help them move freely through the country. Last year, the 9/11 Commission called for tightening control over government-issued IDs because 18 of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks used U.S. IDs to pass through airport security.
But opponents of the bill say it would create a national ID card and a de facto national database -- a concept that Congress rejected when it was first proposed several years ago.
The act would force states to produce standardized, tamper-resistant driver's licenses that would include machine-readable, encoded data. States wouldn't be required to comply. But those that don't comply would create hardship for residents, who wouldn't be able to use their licenses as official identification to travel on airplanes, collect federal benefits or gain access to federal buildings.
All drivers, including current license holders, would have to provide multiple documents to verify their identity before they could obtain a license or renew one. Drivers would have to provide several types of documentation, such as a photo ID, birth certificate, proof that their Social Security number is legitimate and something that verifies the applicant's full home address.
Some critics call the legislation anti-immigration because it would prohibit undocumented immigrants from obtaining a driver's license.
The law would compel DMV workers to verify the documents against federal databases and store the documents and a digital photo of the card holder in a database. Critics say the mandates would result in higher costs and longer lines at the DMV.
"It's a controversial measure and a controversial manner in which to pass it," Rotenberg said. "We want them to know that in passing (the Real ID Act), Congress mandated the collection of sensitive personal information by state DMVs at the same time that the state DMVs have become the target of attacks."
Since March, there have been at least three reported incidents of personal data being stolen for the sake of identity theft from DMV offices in Nevada, Florida and Maryland.
Senators opposing the act reluctantly passed it because it was slipped into a larger spending appropriations bill that authorized emergency funding for the Iraq war and tsunami victim relief.
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