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May. 8th, 2005 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usernamenumberSo, there's a story on BoingBoing entitled "Kill the national ID card: 48h remain!". It is basically a plug for http://www.unrealid.com, which is a site devoted to criticism of a bill called the Real ID Act that will supposedly go up for a vote on Tuesday[1]. The unrealid site paints this bill as tantamount to a "papers, please" style national id system and the people at boingboing seem to see it the same way. However, in looking over the text of the bill, it doesn't look like that to me at all. Title II seems to be the relevant part and all it seems to do is lay out minimum requirements as to what information State-issued licenses need to contain for them to be honored by the federal government. And the requirements aren't anything crazy either: photo, name, address, etc. I have issues with the address because I think that while an authority figure might well be entitled to know that I am who I say I am, there are significantly fewer circumstances under which they or anyone else would be entitled to know where I live. But that point's moot in this context anyway since the driver's licenses of every state that I've had one in have already contained this information.
I know that I have at least one (almost) lawyer who reads this lj occasionally, so I'd like to take the opportunity to ask: Am I missing something here? Is there something more devious that I'm not noticing, or are people just freaking out about the wrong thing here? Section 203 has a clause that gets my paranoia going about having states link their databases and share all information stored on state-licensed IDs, but even with this there are a number of mitigating factors. First, while eligibility for financial assistance to offset the costs of implementation is contingent upon database-sharing, states are not otherwise required to participate (as I read it, please correct me if I'm wrong). Second, and here is where my own naivete may be showing... isn't that already pretty-much done? I mean, I'd always assumed that if I got pulled over in Nevada they'd still be able to run the CA license. I guess that must not be correct, otherwise there wouldn't be such a stipulation in the bill, but does anyone have more information on the extent to which state's databases of eg driver's lisence data are already shared?
So, I guess my main reason for posting this (besides, I'll admit, to pat myself on the back for taking some time to research the issue) is to solicit perspectives. Does anybody know anything about this that I should be aware of? Am I missing something in thinking that this is not the big bad thing that unrealid makes it out to be? If I'm wrong I'd like to know in time to act. If I'm right, I'd like to share my observations lest anyone else be fooled. I must say that, either way, I'm a bit disapointed in boingboing for linking without question to unrealid.com. Any site that employs sarcasm and fearmongering so blatently and to such a great extent without ever actually linking to the text of the bill should immediately arouse suspicions and yet, looking at the comments that people have posted there, either I am severely misunderstanding something or.... hrmm. Help?
Thanks if anyone can shed some light and/or take some time and share an opinion here.
[1] Oh, and unrealid is also a bit out of date, I think. They say that the Real ID Act is being sneaked through the back door by tacking it onto another bill that provides funding to troops in Iraq. However, it seems that Real ID and a number of related riders were stripped from the funding bill in mid April and I haven't found any records of it's re-introduction (though I'm admittedly still an amature at this sort of thing). This reminds me that I'd especially like to hear from anyone who actually has experience navigating the http://thomas.loc.gov records. In particular, its list of actions made on the bill ends in February when it was referred to a committee even though the affore mentioned issues with it being attached to another bill and then removed supposedly happened in March and April respectively. Again, what gives?
I know that I have at least one (almost) lawyer who reads this lj occasionally, so I'd like to take the opportunity to ask: Am I missing something here? Is there something more devious that I'm not noticing, or are people just freaking out about the wrong thing here? Section 203 has a clause that gets my paranoia going about having states link their databases and share all information stored on state-licensed IDs, but even with this there are a number of mitigating factors. First, while eligibility for financial assistance to offset the costs of implementation is contingent upon database-sharing, states are not otherwise required to participate (as I read it, please correct me if I'm wrong). Second, and here is where my own naivete may be showing... isn't that already pretty-much done? I mean, I'd always assumed that if I got pulled over in Nevada they'd still be able to run the CA license. I guess that must not be correct, otherwise there wouldn't be such a stipulation in the bill, but does anyone have more information on the extent to which state's databases of eg driver's lisence data are already shared?
So, I guess my main reason for posting this (besides, I'll admit, to pat myself on the back for taking some time to research the issue) is to solicit perspectives. Does anybody know anything about this that I should be aware of? Am I missing something in thinking that this is not the big bad thing that unrealid makes it out to be? If I'm wrong I'd like to know in time to act. If I'm right, I'd like to share my observations lest anyone else be fooled. I must say that, either way, I'm a bit disapointed in boingboing for linking without question to unrealid.com. Any site that employs sarcasm and fearmongering so blatently and to such a great extent without ever actually linking to the text of the bill should immediately arouse suspicions and yet, looking at the comments that people have posted there, either I am severely misunderstanding something or.... hrmm. Help?
Thanks if anyone can shed some light and/or take some time and share an opinion here.
[1] Oh, and unrealid is also a bit out of date, I think. They say that the Real ID Act is being sneaked through the back door by tacking it onto another bill that provides funding to troops in Iraq. However, it seems that Real ID and a number of related riders were stripped from the funding bill in mid April and I haven't found any records of it's re-introduction (though I'm admittedly still an amature at this sort of thing). This reminds me that I'd especially like to hear from anyone who actually has experience navigating the http://thomas.loc.gov records. In particular, its list of actions made on the bill ends in February when it was referred to a committee even though the affore mentioned issues with it being attached to another bill and then removed supposedly happened in March and April respectively. Again, what gives?
