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Maine Rejects Federally Mandated ID Cards
WebHostingGuy writes "The State of Maine rejected the federally mandated ID cards passed by Congress. In a non-partisan vote the legislature flatly stated that they would not force its citizens to use driver's licenses that comply with digital ID standards, which were established under the 2005 Real ID Act. It also asked Congress to repeal the law."
I thought we got rid of the Doctrine of Nullification after the civil war?
I didn't vote any of them in, but they did the right thing. For once.
The exponentially increasing transportation budget for side roads that get repaved with increasing frequency is another matter entirely. Oh and that whole laptop for children thing. Yes, I am a Maine resident. Like many young people, I'm out of here as soon as I graduate. Soon Maine will be come a state of elderly crotchety people, just like Florida, but without the beaches and spring break crowds.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
It amuses me that the link "non-partisan vote" in the OP goes to a page whose title is "The Maine Senate Democrats".
Seriously, someone explain to me what is wrong with a national ID standard... without saying "papers please".
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Requiring a National ID "to fight terrorism" is like punishing everyone for the offense of one. Many corporations are like that, the military is like that, and too many governments are adopting that practise. One person (or a small number) does something wrong, and suddenly there are procedures made that everyone must follow "to prevent the acts" of the few (look at the airports).
How about punishing those who commit the offenses in such a way as to eliminate the desire of those, who would follow them, to commit the offense?
In the USA, States need to fight for the States' Rights as Maine just did, and as Wisconsin did by outlawing mandatory chipping of people.
This "pervasive" form of governing, or ruling, seems to becoming more and more "invasive". Some would argue, "...if you have nothing to hide, then what are you afraid of?" , of which my argument is, "I am a good civilian, so leave me alone."
Of course, all of my comments are IMHO.
If Congress refuses to significantly change the Real ID Act, then rebellion is the way to make it fail. The Act is built on a flimsy deck of cards. If a few of the most populated states like CA, NY, IL, MI, TX decide to blow it off. The Federal Gov't would be in a bind. On one hand, if they enforce it, it will kill the airline industry. On the other hand, if they don't enforce it, they are disobeying the law that Congress passed.
It needs to be completely repealed. It was passed without discussion, without debate. It became law as a "rider" on a must-pass piece of legislation. With the Democrat Congress, its demise is more likely. We should contact Contact Congress and ask the law be repealed completely concerning the driver's license provisions.
it's like this..
28 guys want military spending
31 guys want tsunami relifer
only 2 guys want both.
that means, lump them together, get 57 votes
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Actually it is. Maine was the northern part of Massachusetts (which is a Commonwealth). Massachusetts doesn't recognize that Maine broke away and considers Portland and Kennebunkport to merely be suburbs of Boston.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
This Federal ID idea is definitely rediculous. I'm glad someone is actively opposing it. I suppose it is good they are trying to push states to actually have good ID cards. Some of them (West Virginia, New Jersey until recently) are rediculously easy to fake. Not that I, ahem, would know anything about that.
But let's not give them too much credit. This is obviously another step toward removing already eroding privacy rights in this country. And of course the convenient excuse "war on terror" will be stamped all over this.
Let's get a run-down of what this will actually mean to the average consumer.
~ By "common machine readable technology", I'm assuming they mean RFID, which we all know has its drawbacks.
~ I doubt this will end up being a substitute for a Driver's License. What if you lose driving privilages and have to turn in your ID? Do you have to get a new "non-driver" card just to go to the bank? Bull shit. Inevitably, this will have to be carried around in addition to a driver's license. Great, another unnecessary card to carry in my wallet. Why don't they just make us all wear collars around our necks. Not like nobody's ever thought of that before.
~ It will obviously be scanned at every point of use. I forsee an amendment in the near future extending this to train/bus travel as well.
~ Inevitably, this will be part of a big government database. We all know those are generally bad ideas. I wouldn't be surprised if they link this up to your EZ-Pass so they can see where your car is going too. Remember (FTA) this is an $83 billion project. It is going to be BIG. ~ What if you lose this thing? It's bad enough getting the state to replace an ID... who do I complain to now? The FBI? Dept of Homeland Security?
I don't even want to think about this anymore. Go Maine.
Partial Credit: The Engineer's Best friend
"Well, the bridge didn't fall all the way down!"
my daughter said something quite profound about a year ago: "Standing up to bullies is easy, you just stomp on their toes".
It is profound for several reasons. You shouldn't fight the bully head on, they are bigger and (in this case) control the White house and the Army.
But you make it hurt, a lot (you "stomp"), but you do it below the vision of most people watching.
You stand right up to the bully, to their face and make them face you. Most bullies are craven and will crumble at the first sign of real resistance.
Bush Psychology -- http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011807J.shtml
This is just the first step in a long, painful road to recovery for this nation.
It'd be interesting to see a state respond by saying "OK, if the Federal government doesn't want to pay for it's Interstate highways, it can have them back. Oh, and it can also have back all responsibility for maintaining them, enforcing the laws on them, clearing snow off them in the winter, the lot. We wish them luck with it, and if anyone finds the conditions deteriorating they know where they can call the owners.".
Yea, I already have my nationally issued I.D. card... It's called my social security number! People ask me for it all the time when I do even the most basic of purchasing. Soooo, this would solve??? There will always be ways around it no matter what you do. Remember... those "sneaky terrorists" get more resourceful all the time!
Norway outlaws iTunes, and Maine outlaws RealID.
Now I can't decide WHERE to move! Can sombody outlaw something wicked in a place that doesn't have winter?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Why 21 is better drinking age than 18? As it is, at least here in Finland, almost everybody have drank alcohol long ago before turning to 18. In other parts of Europe young people also drink alcohol very young, and this haven't flushed the continent under the table. What I have heard, both from European exchange students visiting US and from Americans, is that young people instead of drinking alcohol, because it's so hard to get, blow pot. So one 'bad habit' is traded to another one.
On a note, when one turns to 18, he is adult, he usually moves to own his/her place, he can vote, he can be elected and he can/has to go to a army. So why not give all the rights to 18 year old at the same time when he/she comes fully liable on his/her own life?
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
Old protection racket scheme, you pay for protection or you will need it. The US tested this and found it to work "nicely" for the IRS. If you don't pay them what they decide you owe they will come take it from you. Where did the Mafia get it? Probably from some government or another, perhaps the Vatican. Plenty enough documentation in history that the church sold you salvation, from them. Interestingly enough governmental oppression via taxation and/or church control is what brought most of our predecessors to the US. UK tried to control and milk the colonies via taxation etc..
Originally the federal government was supposed to be funded only by the graces of the states and tariffs and the states' governments controlled who went to the senate and thus their senators would protect the sovereignity of the states from popular demands and federal power seizures. Changing senators to popular elections shifted the balance of power, unfortunately it has taken power not just from the states but from the people. Of course you can also argue that the people have abdicated their power and/or that corporations have bought it away from them. Both in many ways are all too true, just like the public school system was set up to train you to accept and tolerate this kind of behaviour from the government and from corporations. I for one am convinced the major reason entrepreneurship is more prevalent among people who move into the US then those who grew up in within the public school system.
Only way I can see this changing is for those who are able to re-educate themselves to do so and try to influence others to do the same. We need to establish more entrepreneurship, including the family farms and we could use some truth in the newspapers etc too. We need to either retake our political parties or form new ones, from the grass roots level up. Got an elected official on the take? Vote him/her out irregardless if its legal contributions to them or not if they selling their vote they are selling their vote and they need to be voted down. Above all else we need to remind people that we should not rely on the government for everything. The more we ask of government the more power we have to give them to do it and eventually they start to claim they already have the power to add more on.
Common Sense Thomas Paine
I would suggest everyone re-read Common S
Drivers licenses are not for identification, they are used for control and information gathering.
That should be reason enough for you. If you don't believe me, have your driver's license stolen (mine was), and try to get the stolen license invalidated. It's practicaly impossible to do, even if you have a police report in hand.
The problem is that everywhere a driver's license is used does not phone home to verify that the driver's license is in fact not stolen; so anyone who looks roughly like the picture on the front of the license (a biometric identification device intended to prevent fradulent use, BTW) can use the license to identify themselves as you, and there's no cross-check that they are in fact NOT you. This is roughly the same as if you did not do a reverse DNS check followed by a forward lookup on a contacting IP address to verify that the machine contacting you is in the domain which the claim to be from. Your SMTP server might as well be an open relay.
My personal experience ended up with them doing effectively nothing but charging me $25. I suggested that they place a sign on their desk that said "This Side Towards Enemy", since their processes were clearly not directed at the criminal(s) who stole my license.
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As to privacy, when they swipe your license in a reader to allow you to purchase cold medicine in most large drugstore chains these days, they are in technical violation of the Patriot Act Section 711, 21 USC 830(e)(1)(A)(iv)(I)(bb), in not taking a written signature for the log book, and they are in violation of HIPPA.
The HIPPA violation is collection of more information than they are authorized by law to collect (name, address, and amount purchased); instead, they collect the entire three stripes of the license, which includes all the information in the AMMVA mandated standard ANSI D320-2003, which also includes type of license, whether or not you are a senior citizen, your age, sex, birthdate, identification number, expiration date of the license, endorsements, hair color, eye color, height, weight, restictions (handicaps relevent to driving), and the issue date.
The HIPPA violation, depending on whether the information is controlled according to HIPPA standards, could also constitute a second violation of the Patriot Act, Section 711, 21 USC 830(e)(1)(C)(ii): "prohibit accessing, using, or sharing information in the logbooks for any purpose other than to ensure compliance with this title or to facilitate a product recall to protect public health and safety" -- in other words, they better be damn careful about their information systems attached to their cach registers.
Think about that the next time someone asks you about a national ID card, or you have a cold and consider buying Sudafed.
-- Terry
Speaking as someone who was an exchange student in the US (from the UK) the average american student gets to university, goes to a party, has large (for them) amounts of beer for the first time and cann't handle it.
The average brit on the other hand has probably been drinking beer since about the age of 12 (younger if you count shandy) the amounts will have increased over the years, they have probably been really ill once on holiday and after enduring their parents laughing at them and talking very loudly the next morning they tend to have a much better idea when to stop.
I remember one party where I drank 4 frat boys under the table - what was scarey was it was sequential not parallel!! But then the beer there is in 330ml cans and only 3 or 4 percent!! Me I'm a real ale person - 6-8% and in pints (yes it comes in pints) or yards...
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
As a European, you've probably grown up under an oppressive nanny-type government
Legal drugs, legal prostitution, legal abortion, legal porn, legal drinking age of 16 (and not much policing below it)... real oppressive and nanny-like, yeah. Fix yourselves first.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Don't forget the socialist healthcare, welfare middle class, and 50% income tax.
[*] before you mod me troll, that was what Sir Winston Churchill called a guy named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
1. Frequent shopper cards from grocery stores so that they get 25cents off a loaf of bread. In return they let their grocery shop+pharmacy uniquely brand them with a number and track all their purchases, from birth control pills to diapers.
2. Use credit cards even after they send them a year end profile of expenses, making it a no secret how much data they collect and retain
3. are least bothered by the extensive data collection by their banks and their "partners" who pelt them with "new and exciting products".
Come on guys. The private sector is a bigger threat to your privacy and well being than US Govt is. You have some semblance of control over US govt, whereas you have none over the private sector. The interests of US Govt coincides with the interests of people lot more than the interests of private sector overlapping the interests of people.
But if you want mod points and build your karma, you have to blast the govt.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Egads, I've been that American.. :)
;) (The first night of that trip consisted of 38 draft Labatt Blues, a shared 16 pack of Molson from the beer store, and two shared pitchers of something I don't remember anymore at another bar).
Back in the days of yore, when I was a wee lad of 18, a couple friends of mine had met some ladies from Canada on a MUSE (yeah, it was the days of yore). Naturally, we scheduled a road trip to Toronto to physically meet them. We arrived at the hotel, they showed up with some Molson XXX and neglected to mention that its alcohol content was twice what we were used to. Being the young strapping college lad that I was, I immediately embarked on a mission to down four as quickly as I could (i.e., in about 10 minutes).
Half an hour later I was in the bathroom trying to conceal the sounds of my sudden alcohol content revelation.
About 2 in the morning, one of my buddies starts shaking me awake. "I think I'm gonna be... BLARGH!!" All over my shirt.
I learned my lesson, though, and was much better prepared for my next trip.
SYS 64738
You unbelievable dipshit.
The reason why the 9/11 hijackers had legal IDs is because THEY WERE ENTITLED TO THEM! Each one was in the US legally, and each one legally obtained ID, using his own name. ID ensures nothing except a person's identity.
Having law enforcement figure out that an individual is planning some criminal activity before it takes place is what will prevent another 9/11. And it's quite clear that 9/11 took place in no small part because numerous agencies failed in that task.