Massachusetts Joins the Real ID Fight

In the battle against big government and the infamous Real ID, Massachusetts has hopped on board. In the words of State Senator Richard T. Moore, D-Uxbridge, "Historically, Americans have resisted the idea, which totalitarian governments have tended to do, of having a national ID. That's the broad philosophical issue. I don't think it's a good move and I would be reluctant to see why we are going to that step." And State Attorney General Martha Coakley thinks "it's a bad idea." Should be interesting to see how it gets voted.

Comments

Sadly...

[fyngyrz]

I have a nagging feeling that the real reason this is being resisted is because congress expected the states to bear the cost. If they ran it through again, 100% federally funded, I doubt there would be any significant resistance.

Re:Sadly...

[hsmith]

Actually it is two fold. They are making the states implement it, but the money they steal from the citizens in the form on national taxes are being used to blackmail the states into implementing the ID. So if the states don't go along with their fascist idea of a national ID, the fed keeps the money and spends it in other states. Thus, your freedom is being sold off for your own taxes.

God bless the government and legalized blackmail

Re:Sadly...

[lawpoop]

Yeah, its not like these "totalitarian governments" already have me [seven different items].

I like the national ID because it arguable can fold services 1, 2, 4, and 7 into one stupid card and cut the bureaucracy. The whole idea behind Totalitarianism is to get rid of the bureaucracy and centralize power so that when the dictator says "jump", everyone jumps. The United States was founded on the concept of separation of powers, so that no part of the government would become overly powerful and tyrannical.

Sure, everyone hates to see their tax dollars wasted on duplication and inefficiency. But the opposite is *much*, *much* worse -- a totally efficient, effective government, where one strong, charming person who comes into power could send millions to their death with the stroke of pen. When you have a powerful government with little bureaucracy to slow down the functioning of governments, a tyrant can easily increase his own powers without anything slowing him down. Layers of government, separation of powers, the insanity of various forms and departments, are the boring, mundane details that protect us from concentration camps.

National ID == license to exist

[dazedNconfuzed]

National IDs are basically a license to exist.
If you can't show one on demand, you are detained (to wit: your participation in society is suspended) until your license to exist or one is issued, or you are removed from society.

Not exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind when creating a free country.

Re:National ID == license to exist

[MightyMartian]

How often through history have the villainous and the thoughtless used temporary tragedies to institute permanent tyrannies. National IDs would not have prevented 9-11. Those people were in the US legally. What would have prevented 9-11 would have been the enormous "intelligence" bureaucracy doing its job, listening to its field agents, actually gathering intelligence and generally not sitting on its post-Cold War laurels. For goodness sakes, the US kept the Soviets at bay without need of National IDs.

Re:National ID == license to exist

[Chris Burke]

The Founding Fathers were living in a country that had never been attacked with weapons of mass destruction.

And what fucking country are you living in that has?!

Please don't tell me that 6 years of non-stop fearmongering has caused those planes to morph into nukes in peoples' easily manipulated memories! Please!

Re:National ID == license to exist

[Rakishi]

The founding fathers were criminals with respect to the British government. They as a result tried to make a system which neither trusts the government (too easily corrupted) or the people (too easily swayed) fully.

The Founding Fathers were living in a country that had never been attacked with weapons of mass destruction. Neither has the US ever been attacked by such weapons, unless you count every single explosive as a WMD since if properly placed it could kill thousands. Hell my fist could likely kill thousands at once in some situations, say if I took out the support of a rickety platform on which they were standing.

I think we can be relatively safe in utterly denying them any voice in 21st century security discussions. Their views are now more relevant than ever since technology has magnified the potential of what they feared a hundred fold.

Anonymity is just the right to take away rights from your neighbors. And lack of it is the right of the government to take away the rights of those that disagree with it.

Re:National ID == license to exist

[MightyMartian]

You know what irritates me about this claim, it's that people (and by this I think you mean all those Mexicans which Americans love to love and hate) have been coming across the border for a long time now. Like all ad hoc explanations for creating a national ID system, it ignores history.

I'll be blunt, I can't imagine anything that flies more in the face of the fundemental liberties as espoused by the Founding Fathers than having the Federal government forcing a national ID system upon its citizens. If it wasn't necessary to fight the British, the Mexicans, the Confederacy, the Spanish, the Axis Powers or the Soviets, and if it hasn't been deemed necessary for all the decades that Mexicans have been crossing the border, it's hard to justify it now. When you factor in that 9-11 was an intelligence failure, the national ID system seems to be pretty damn worthless, unless you start imagining that the real purpose is the Feds being able to better track US citizens.

Do you honestly believe that anything will prevent individuals sufficiently motivated to cause carnage? Repressive Nazi overlords and their willing servants in Occupied France couldn't stop bridges from being blown up. The military might of Napoleonic Spain couldn't stop the dehabilating and demoralizing actions of anti-French forces. The British intelligence community couldn't stop IRA operatives from blowing up people. As Churchill once said, when civilization as we know it really was on the brink, "All we have to fear is fear itself."

The Founding Fathers knew damn well what would happen when personal liberties were sacrificed, even in the name of some greater good. That's why they sought to limit the powers of government. The greater the power held by a relatively small number of individuals, the more likely it would corrupt them, that even as they might believe that what they did was for the greater good, they would poison the well of liberty.

Re:National ID == license to exist

[swillden]

What would have prevented 9-11 would have been the enormous "intelligence" bureaucracy doing its job, listening to its field agents, actually gathering intelligence and generally not sitting on its post-Cold War laurels.

Unlikely, and you shouldn't depend on it anyway.

People need to get it through their heads that *nothing* would have prevented 9/11. Nothing that is compatible with a free and open society, anyway. We often hear people say "Freedom isn't free" and nod our head, but we're thinking that the price is someone else's kid going over some ocean and getting hurt or killed to defend our freedom. Sometimes that is the price, but the fact is that sometimes the price is that bunch of innocent civilians die right here at home. Sometimes even kids.

A free society is always going to be at some level of risk from terrorists and other nutjobs who decide for whatever reason that they're more interested in hurting random strangers than in living. Actually, even the most restrictive police/nanny state is at some risk of such things because, fundamentally, the world is not a safe place. But free societies that allow people freedom of movement and association and the freedom to own and operate potentially dangerous tools are at more risk, and there is simply no way to avoid that without giving up a significant measure of freedom.

It's vaguely possible that the 9/11 terrorists could have been caught if the intelligence agencies had done a better job, but it's just as likely that if the intelligence agencies were more efficient, Al Qaeda would have been more careful and they still would have gotten away with it. You simply cannot defend against a small group of determined, inventive terrorists. Especially when they're smart and well-funded.

On the other hand, the actual damage that such a group can do is small. To a nation the size and strength of the US, 9/11 was a fleabite. More people die every month on our highways in auto accidents. More property damage is done every couple of years when a major hurricane rips across Florida, to say nothing of Katrina-scale disasters. The reason that terrorists choose terror tactics is because they don't have the ability to do real damage. If they could, they would. Terror is successful because of the response of the victim, not because of the actual damage it inflicts.

Even if they were able to inflict significant damage, however, the fact remains that if a low level of risk to ourselves and our families is the price of freedom, we should be willing to pay it. There is a limit, of course, but to my way of thinking the risk has to at *least* exceed the level of voluntary activities most of us willingly do every day, like driving an automobile, before we start reacting in extreme ways.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

-- Thomas Jefferson

And in the case of a war of terror, some of the patriots are simply ordinary citizens going about their lives with a quiet determination that they will not be terrorized. If more people understood this, terrorists would be forced to find another way to air their grievances.

Re:Queue up the "paper's please" post

[zappepcs]

The difference is that not everyone *HAS* to have a passport. Making a mandatory national ID is wrong. Passports are your ID internationally, not for use when buying cigarettes. A national ID would lead to ever more invasive tracking of citizen's activities. This is wrong.

Re:Passport?

[gstoddart]

Isn't a passport essentially the same as a national ID? It is physical proof of citizenship (and records where you've been, via stamps). Why not just issue everyone passports?

Cause you're not required to walk around with your passport to prove who you are at all times when you're within the country.

You're not supposed (at least according to that pesky Constitution) to be required to show ID everywhere you go within the US. But, that has largely been trampled upon since 9/11.

Cheers

Re:Privacy is already dead

[The Living Fractal]

I'm not against my STATE ID doing exactly what you said. I'm against a FEDERAL one though. If the Feds want to connect the states together, so be it. But screw them if they want to start blurring the line between State and Federal. We have states for a reason.

Re:Privacy is already dead

[Attila Dimedici]

Besides the privacy issues there is another reason to be afraid of ONE database that all identification is based on. Right now there are multiple ways that any individual can be idnetified. When one of those databases gets corrupted, it is possible to appeal to an alternate, independent database to provide information to correct the corrupted database. With one database (or several interdependent databases, which is ultimately what this system will become), if an individuals data becomes corrupted there is no place to get evidence that the data in the database is inaccurate. "I'm sorry, but John Doe is dead." "I'm John Doe and I'm standing right in front of you." "The database says John Doe is dead. You must be a criminal trying to steal John Doe's identity." There are a lot of other scenarios that could also happen, this is just a similar to things that have happened to people already. The system thought they were dead, they had to jump through hoops to prove that they were who they said they were and that they were still alive. What happens when the only system for proving who you are says that you aren't you?

Re:Privacy is already dead

[Chris Burke]

Unless you're suggesting that I'll be giving blood at the car rental place so they can run the dna analysis and prove who I am, I have a hard time understanding how this would make identity theft harder. Not having a bazillion cards in our wallet means there's only one document that needs be stolen.

Re:Sadder still

[fyngyrz]

National IDs really don't offer the powers that be any more control over your life than a drivers license etc which you need to show for many transactions etc.

That remains to be seen. One of the things that RealID has (legislatively) plugged into it is an as-yet unspecified standard for technologies such as RFID. This would provide a nationally uniform means to track individuals each and every time they came into range of an RFID reader, which in turn provides the incentive to create such a network. Once you're pegged as being located in any particular place, that same network could be used to deliver all manner of specific information about you (and database integration is also part of the legislation.) I find this both likely and unsettling; I think liberty requires privacy, freedom to travel, and some measure of limits upon the government - if you're not currently being hunted as a criminal, punished as a criminal, or under post-release, sentence-imposed limits as a criminal, I can't see that they have any right or need to know where you are, what you are doing, or why you are doing it.

You're joking, right?

[Kadin2048]

I like the national ID because it arguable can fold services 1, 2, 4, and 7 into one stupid card and cut the bureaucracy.

Hahahahahaha(snort)hahha ... ha. .. ha.

Okay, I'm done.

Seriously, do you really think that's going to happen? Have you ever worked with the government? What you'll end up with is one gigantic new Federal agency, which contains all the bureaucracy of the agencies it was supposed to replace, plus a lot of administrative overhead, plus the added cost of high-level management ... it'll be a total shitshow. That's what the government does. They don't "cut bureaucracy," they are bureaucracy.

And none of this ID crap would change the state drivers' license procedure, so you'd still have all the same crap at the state-level DMVs. No elimination there. And this ID wouldn't replace Passports, so you still have that separately, under the State Department -- that's not going away any time soon.

There's no "reduction" of anything happening here. All it's going to do is create a new layer of bureaucracy on top of what already exists in the form of your state drivers license.

It'll be a few hundred million dollars of taxpayer dollars down the drain, and the end result will be a whole lot of personal data siloed in some giant database run by a brand-new agency in Washington.*

* Probably not actually in Washington; it'll probably get an office somewhere out on the fringes somewhere.

Last Day to STOP REAL ID

[groschke]

I'm a lawyer at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. There are just about 24 hours left for the public to submit comments against REAL ID. A broad coalition is urging individuals to speak up. They have links to portals that accept comments online, and sample comments like:

"The plan will create a massive national identification system without adequate privacy and security safeguards. It will also make it more difficult for people to get driver's licenses. And it will make it too easy for identity thieves, stalkers, and corrupt government officials to get access to such personal information as a home address, age, and Social Security number."

Slashdotters should offer their perspective. REAL ID was approved without Congressional hearings, and this is the last 24 hours for the public to comment on this proposal!

Re:Privacy is already dead

[k1e0x]

Knowing who people are is the first step towards knowing how to truly protect people from fraud and invasion. Privacy as we knew it is dead. Get over it, and let's get ONE card that identifies us down to the DNA level so that we don't have to keep a bazillion cards in our wallet. Only luddites and con artists would be against this- as it would make identity MUCH harder to steal.... You bring up some points here and all of them are flat wrong.

* Invasion? How will your little card protect you from an invasion? An armed and well regulated militia does this best, or the national guard.

* Fraud? You want the government who is not liable for anything they do wrong to protect you from fraud? There is a private company LifeLock http://lifelock.com/ that already does this, better and cheaper than the feds could, if they screw up you can sue them, AND they can't throw you in jail if you loose your lifelock card.

* Security? ID is NOT security.. they are not the same thing. The 9/11 hijackers had ID, Timothy Mcvay ID, Cho Seung-Hui had ID. The Washington snipers had ID. What can we assume from this? ID makes us NO safer.

* Theft? How does they government tracking you physically and digitally help against theft? I can SILL steal your lawn mower if you don't lock it up and your little card does nothing. Maybe you mean ID theft.. see lifelock above.

*wallet? Right now you don't have to carry any card in your wallet if you so choose.. You can still get on air planes without ID. This is freedom. It's how it should be.

We can't secure our schools, we cant secure our shopping malls, hell... we cant even secure our prisons and that's about as secure as I can imagine. I'll have you know that I am a honest small business owner and I will not accept this card. I flat out refuse to do so even if they have to throw me in Jail.. is that fair? for me to go to jail because you want to *feel* secure in your Police state? This is my breaking point. I will not be traced and tracked and have every action purchase and message I send analyzed by the state.

Will you be willing to destroy my life because I don't want to be tracked? How many more like me are there? 100? 1,000? How about them? At what point does using force on others in your aims become ok?

Re:Passport?

[fyngyrz]

Ever try getting a Drivers License?

What you need to realize is this is a brand new set of circumstances that you are accepting as "normal." I am 50, and I have had many drivers licenses in many states and several countries. Only in the last couple of decades has it been standard procedure for them to worry about your identity details; they used to be primarily concerned with your ability to drive, as absurd as that may seem to you. They used to ask (ask, mind you, not, demand papers proving) your age, your name, test you, and issue you a license if you didn't scare a year off the examiner's life (or maybe sometimes if you did... I used to live in south Florida, and I swear, the one thing you really had to watch out for was a little grey fuzz just barely sticking up over the steering wheel in front of you... the entire concept of "right of way" instantly became a fiction.) Anyway, there was no photo on the license, the number was an arbitrary one issued by the D/L department or equivalent, the name and birth-date were issued as described, and that was it. The issue was "can you drive" and nothing else. That is reasonable. What you accept as normal is what we used to use to laugh and point our fingers at the Soviets over. There are other issues peripheral to this; you can even find old references to them in pop culture. Watch "Hunt for Red October" and ponder when the sub's second officer asks the captain if you can drive "state to state" without papers. RealID is an internal passport. Nothing less.

Re:Passport?

[PMuse]

You're not supposed (at least according to that pesky Constitution) to be required to show ID everywhere you go within the US. But, that has largely been trampled upon since 9/11.

The right to remain anonymous died in 2004 in the Supreme Court case, Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada. All we're haggling about now is what kind of ID they can force us to show.

Re:Sadder still

[fyngyrz]

Do you frequently use a credit card?

No. I have no debt and I am not interested in debt. I use money, and will continue to do so as long as it remains legal. "Credit" cards are badly misnamed: They are debt cards with the interesting ability to increase your debt position just by getting a day older.

Ever use your real name at a restaurant?

I've never had a restaurant ask me my name, only what I wanted to eat. If they ever did make such an inquiry, I would be quite happy to leave before answering in detail any greater than my first name.

RFID range from my understanding is not that large,

RFID range is sufficient to talk to the cash register when you make a purchase, to talk to the teller when you go to a bank, to talk to the terminal when you apply for federally or state issued anything, to talk to the booth when you go through a toll station. It is short, but that's because it doesn't need to be long.

...and frankly having a National ID program would mean that everytime I travel to other states they can't refuse to sell my alcohol because they don't like the fact that I have an out of state ID.

As for the alcohol thing, that's a different problem, a consequence of society's war on consensual and personal, informed, victimless choice. You should fight that battle on its own turf rather than trying to be accommodating. A line in the sand drawn by age is certain to make errors on both sides. Those lines, if they are to be drawn at all, must be drawn upon a metric that determines if you are informed or not. Otherwise it is a straightforward affront to liberty.