{"id":14335,"date":"2020-01-24T00:09:15","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T05:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=14335"},"modified":"2020-01-24T00:25:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-24T05:25:00","slug":"washington-is-ramming-real-i-d-down-our-throats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/24\/washington-is-ramming-real-i-d-down-our-throats\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington is Ramming REAL I.D. Down Our Throats"},"content":{"rendered":"

American Conservative<\/h3>\n

How Washington Is Ramming REAL ID Down Our Throats<\/span><\/a><\/h1>\n
\n

For years both conservative and liberal states resisted it. But now it’s here and the punishments for non-compliance begin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

by James Bovard<\/div>\n
\n
\n

January 24, 2020|<\/span>12:01 am Jim Bovard <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Being a patriotic citizen and a former Boy Scout<\/a>, I recently answered the summons to my local Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) office to deliver a stash of documents to comply with the federal REAL ID Act.<\/p>\n

The state of Maryland claimed to be unsure who I was though they never hesitate to cash my property tax payments. Nor did my local government doubt my authenticity when they sent me a ticket from a red light camera<\/a> from an intersection where the yellow light was quicker than a cat\u2019s somersault.<\/p>\n

Even though I was aware of REAL ID perils, I showed up at a local MVA. at the appointed time. The MVA clerk quickly discovered that, while my driver\u2019s license and passport identify me as \u201cJames,\u201d the IRS Form 1099s I provided her identified me as \u201cJim\u201d\u2014a well-known ploy by terrorist groups. Luckily, I brought a heap of documents and found a few 1099s with \u201cJames.\u201d\u00a0 Otherwise, I might still be in Identity Purgatory.<\/p>\n

Actually, I probably would have ignored the summons except that Maryland is revoking thousands\u2014if not tens of thousands<\/a> \u2014of driver\u2019s licenses of people who fail to obey the MVA\u2019s latest document demands, notwithstanding the MVA employees\u2019 crime wave<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The REAL ID Act has been intensely controversial since its 2005 enactment in the wake of the 9\/11 attacks, and fiercely opposed by both conservatives and liberals. Twenty-five \u00a0states passed resolutions<\/a> objecting to the law or signaling that they would not comply. The Electronic Frontier Foundation declared in 2007,\u00a0 \u201cA federal law that aims to conscript the states into creating a national ID system<\/a>\u2026 is precisely the kind of scheme that the framers expected that federalism would guard against.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Department of Homeland Security has compelled submission by announcing that the Transportation Security Agency will prohibit Americans from flying<\/a> unless they have either a REAL ID Act-approved driver\u2019s license or a passport.\u00a0 The Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that the \u201c\u2018constitutional right to travel<\/a> from one State to another\u2019 is firmly embedded in our jurisprudence.\u201d But REAL ID Act policies have routinely scorned both the Bill of Rights and Supreme Court rulings.<\/p>\n

Most Americans do not possess passports<\/a>, so federally-approved state driver\u2019s licenses are becoming de facto internal passports. Almost a hundred million Americans do not have REAL ID-compliant<\/a> identification, according to the U.S. Travel Association. In Minnesota, 11 percent of drivers<\/a> still have licenses that will be rejected at TSA checkpoints starting on October 1. States and individuals are chaotically scrambling to meet the law\u2019s shifting demands. Twitter is echoing with howls of people who spend hours<\/a> at motor vehicle administration offices only to have their paperwork rejected because of picayune quibbles.<\/p>\n

But the REAL ID law poses perils far beyond the airport entrance. Maryland began issuing REAL ID driver\u2019s licenses in 2009. In 2017, the Department of Homeland Security notified the state that its REAL ID licenses were invalid<\/a> unless Maryland snared more documents for each driver. More than half a million drivers remain at risk for losing their licenses.<\/p>\n

The<\/em>Washington Post<\/i> reported in August that 8,000 Maryland licenses have been suspended.<\/a> Three months earlier, MVA announced that 66,300 people were<\/a> at risk of having their driver\u2019s license or identification cards revoked for failure to comply with MVA demands.\u00a0 As Maryland ramps up enforcement, the number of suspended licenses is probably far higher now but MVA spokespersons failed to respond to repeated press inquiries seeking the latest number. Maryland police are seizing the license<\/a> of any driver who they stop whose only offense was failure to hustle to show Maryland bureaucrats their birth certificate, passport, utility bills, Social Security card, or other proof of their identity.<\/p>\n

Since the 2005 enactment of the REAL ID Act, the federal government has helped bankroll the license plate scanner networks<\/a>\u00a0 that permit tracking any driver on the roads in many parts of the nation. If Maryland decides to target people who received cancellation notices, there are almost 500 license plate scanners deployed<\/a> in police cars and elsewhere in the state that compile almost half a billion scans of driver\u2019s per year. If the order is given to use the scanners, a thousand people a day could be stripped of their licenses and potentially arrested. MVA spokespersons failed to respond to inquiries about whether license plate scanners may be used for enforcing REAL ID compliance demands.<\/p>\n

The REAL ID Act\u00a0 specifies a \u201cmandatory facial image capture<\/a>\u201d for every applicant for a driver\u2019s license which must be \u201cretained in electronic storage in a transferable format.\u201d As Techdirt<\/i> recently reported<\/a>, \u201cFederal investigators have turned state Department of Motor Vehicles databases into the bedrock of an unprecedented surveillance infrastructure.\u201d The FBI is regularly tapping into databases with more than 600 million facial photos. But citizens have nothing to fear because, as the FBI\u2019s Kimberly Del Greco recently testified<\/a> to Congress, facial recognition technology is critical \u2018\u2018to preserve our nation\u2019s freedoms, ensure our liberties are protected, and preserve our security.\u2019\u2019 Ms. Del Greco did not invoke China\u2019s example<\/a> to appease apprehensions on potential abuses of facial recognition regimes.<\/p>\n

National ID cards will do far more to control than to protect Americans. The REAL ID Act could enable the feds to demand far more information\u00a0 in the future. If Maryland or other states have the prerogative to cancel driver\u2019s licenses because of federal demands for people to show up with their passports or birth certificates, there is nothing to prevent future cancellations of licenses for people who balk at providing DNA samples or submitting to retina scans. The Justice Department just proposed to begin collecting<\/a> DNA from anyone (including U.S. citizens) detained at the U.S. border\u2014an estimated 740,000 people a year.\u00a0 If another major terrorist attack occurred within the U.S., politicians would likely again stampede to grant any demands made by the FBI, DHS, and other federal agencies.<\/p>\n

The biggest folly would be to presume that data roundups spurred by REAL ID and other federal policies will somehow keep Americans safe.\u00a0 Centralizing personal data in vast databases increases the profits and risks of identity theft \u2014as plenty of MVA employees can testify. Federal prosecutors snared a guilty plea in August involving a scheme involving two MVA employees who got kickbacks to create fraudulent<\/a> licenses for illegal aliens. In 2015, a former long-term MVA employee was sentenced to prison after<\/a> she was caught issuing fraudulent driver\u2019s licenses bearing the photos of her co-conspirators and \u201cthe names of real people, including victims who were citizens of Colombia and Puerto Rico,\u201d according to the U.S. Justice Department.<\/p>\n

In 2012, a former MVA employee pled guilty to conspiring to fraudulently produce and sell Maryland<\/a> driver\u2019s licenses for illegal aliens.\u00a0 In 2011, a former MVA senior document examiner w<\/a>as sentenced to two years in prison for conspiring to produce and transfer fraudulent driver\u2019s licenses. Also in 2011, two former MVA employees were sentenced to prison<\/a> for their role in unlawfully producing and transferring Maryland driver\u2019s licenses, primarily to illegal aliens.<\/p>\n

In 2009, a former MVA employee pleaded guilty to taking payments for illegally producing and<\/a> transferring Maryland driver\u2019s licenses. Also in 2009, a former MVA employee pled guilty to a scheme creating fraudulent licenses which included \u201cinventing false driver\u2019s license information from other states<\/a>.\u201d In 2008, a former MVA employee was sentenced to two years in prison for his \u201cconspiracy to produce and transfer over 100<\/a> unlawfully produced [MVA] identification documents. In 2007, an MVA employee pled guilty for her role in<\/a>selling over fake<\/a> driver\u2019s licenses. (To be fair, most MVA employees have never been indicted by federal grand juries.)<\/p>\n

Massive databases of personal data will do nothing to boost the candor of the FBI<\/a> or the competence of the TSA (which misses up to 80 percent of the weapons and mock bombs<\/a> testers take through checkpoints).\u00a0 TSA agents are so lunkheaded that they routinely hassle people with driver\u2019s licenses<\/a> from the District of Columbia\u2014as if that was a foreign country.<\/p>\n

There is no reason to presume that the REAL ID regime will not produce the same type of identity thefts that have long afflicted over federal personal data<\/a> systems.\u00a0 REAL ID compliance debacles later this year will be followed by security breaches that bureaucrats and politicians claim they could never have anticipated. The biggest REAL ID fraud is that Americans will be more secure after the feds again decimated their privacy.<\/p>\n

James Bovard is the author of\u00a0<\/i>Lost Rights<\/a>,\u00a0<\/i>Attention Deficit Democracy<\/a>, and\u00a0<\/i>Public Policy Hooligan<\/a>. He is also a\u00a0<\/i>USA Today\u00a0columnist. Follow him on Twitter\u00a0<\/i>@JimBovard<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American Conservative How Washington Is Ramming REAL ID Down Our Throats For years both conservative and liberal states resisted it. But now it’s here and the punishments for non-compliance begin. by James Bovard January 24, 2020|12:01 am Jim Bovard Being a patriotic citizen and a former Boy Scout, I recently answered the summons to my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[709,2233,2238,2234,2232,2237,203,2235,2236,2231,30],"class_list":["post-14335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-709","tag-biometric","tag-bribery","tag-dna","tag-drivers-licenses","tag-facial-images","tag-maryland","tag-motor-vehicle-administration","tag-passports","tag-real-i-d-act","tag-surveillance"],"yoast_head":"\nWashington is Ramming REAL I.D. 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