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From: Asma Chandani <asc2106@columbia.edu>
To : <cpc@emoglen.law.columbia.edu>
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 16:38:14 -0400
RE: "Real ID Act" About to Become Law
As long as there are things called as nation states with sovereignty
over their borders, isn't it perfectly reasonable to expect countries to
issue whatever sort of national ID card they want to, call it what you
will, and put what you will on it?
At this stage, it doesn't seem the card is capable of actively emitting
a signal of its own force, nor across long distances, so there's not
that same worry about interception. Assuming one day the cards, or a
chip embedded somewhere else, is capable of emitting signal, wouldn't
the traffic created by everyone's chips be impossible to navigate
through, i.e. standing as a barrier to such a system from emerging in
the first place?
I have a driver's license in my purse right now, and I'm not too sure
I'd be upset to know that 30 years from now my daughter's driver's
license card was more technically advanced than mine. As long as the
identity verification means used by the sovereign is external (something
you have, not something you are), then I'm still missing why people are
so up in arms about this.
I just hope the new tinfoil guarded wallets are made by designers too.
;) If not, Caitlin and I may just have found a product for our long-
contemplated-joint business venture!
~Asma
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-cpc@emoglen.law.columbia.edu
[mailto:owner-cpc@emoglen.law.columbia.edu] On Behalf Of Sverker K.
Hogberg
Sent: Friday, May 06, 2005 4:04 PM
To: CPC@emoglen.law.columbia.edu
Subject: "Real ID Act" About to Become Law
Here's an article about the "Real ID Act" (imposing uniform requirements
on state drivers licenses) that has been attached to an emergency
military spending bill that is expected to be signed into law very soon.
This seems like a particularly serious (but typical) abuse of
legislative riders to appropriations bills.
http://news.com.com/FAQ+How+Real+ID+will+affect+you/2100-1028_3-5697111.
html?tag=nefd.lede
"Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United
States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an
airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take
advantage of nearly any government service."
State licenses will have to store your name, birth date, sex, ID number,
digital photograph, and address, and perhaps biometric data like retinal
scans (TBD by homeland security dept). Since state licenses will have to
use "common machine-readable technology" (barcodes, etc) this
potentially allows for far better tracking/surveillance of individuals,
and far better economies of scale for deploying scanning and centralized
authentication systems, even outside of the context of government
services.
Imagine having your license scanned, centrally authenticated, and logged
for each and every one of the times you currently present photo ID (at
bars, when buying cigarettes, at security checkpoints in large manhattan
office buildings, at pharmacies, etc). That's a huge step in the
direction of a ubiquitous national ID card system w/o the
public/legislative scrutiny and vetting usually given to a stand-alone
bill.
Slashdot Coverage:
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/05/06/1516210.shtml?tid=158&tid=172&tid=2
19
Real ID Act (see Title II):
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c109:2:./temp/~c1098DBdTR::
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