Arizona to Feds: No “Enhanced” Drivers License
Last week, the governor of Arizona signed H.B. 2426, which bars the state from implementing the “enhanced” drivers license (EDL) program.
If the federal REAL ID revival bill (PASS ID) becomes law, it will give congressional approval to EDLs, which up to now have been simply a creation of the federal security and state driver licensing bureaucracies.
As governor of Arizona, the current Secretary of Homeland Security signed a memorandum of understanding with the DHS to implement EDLs, and she backs PASS ID even though she signed an anti-REAL ID bill as governor. As I said before, Secretary Napolitano seems to be taking the national ID tar baby in a loving embrace.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Fun With DHS Press Releases!
Let’s fisk a DHS press release! It’s the “Statement by DHS Press Secretary Sara Kuban on Markup of the Pass ID Bill by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.” Here goes:
On the same day that Secretary Napolitano highlighted the Department’s efforts to combat terrorism and keep our country safe during a speech in New York City,
This part is true: Secretary Napolitano was in New York speaking about terrorism.
Congress took a major step forward on the PASS ID secure identification legislation.
There was a markup of PASS ID in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. It’s a step — not sure how major.
PASS ID is critical national security legislation
People who have studied identity-based security know that knowing people’s identities doesn’t secure against serious threats, so this is exaggeration.
that will break a long-standing stalemate with state governments
Thirteen states have barred themselves by law from implementing REAL ID, the national ID law. DHS hopes that changing the name and offering them money will change their minds.
that has prevented the implementation of a critical 9/11 recommendation to establish national standards for driver’s licenses.
The 9/11 Commission devoted three-quarters of a page to identity security — out of 400+ substantive pages. That’s more of a throwaway recommendation or afterthought. False identification wasn’t a modus operandi in the 9/11 attacks, and the 9/11 Commission didn’t explain how identity would defeat future attacks. (Also, using “critical” twice in the same sentence is a stylistic no-no.)
As the 9/11 Commission report noted, fraudulent identification documents are dangerous weapons for terrorists,
No, it said “travel documents are as important as weapons.” It was talking about passports and visas, not drivers’ licenses. Oh — and it was exaggerating.
but progress has stalled towards securing identification documents under the top-down, proscriptive approach of the REAL ID Act
True, rather than following top-down prescription, states have set their own policies to increase driver’s license security. It’s not necessarily needed, but if they want to they can, and they don’t need federal conscription of their DMVs to do it.
– an approach that has led thirteen states to enact legislation prohibiting compliance with the Act.
“. . . which is why we’re trying to get it passed again with a different name!”
Rather than a continuing stalemate with the states,
Non-compliant states stared Secretary Chertoff down when he threatened to disrupt their residents’ air travel, and they can do the same to Secretary Napolitano.
PASS ID provides crucial security gains now by establishing common security standards for driver’s licenses
Weak security gains, possibly in five years. In computer science — to which identification and credentialing is akin — monoculture is regarded as a source of vulnerability.
and a path forward for ensuring that states can electronically verify source documents, including birth certificates.
We’re on the way to that cradle-to-grave biometric tracking system that will give government so much power over every single citizen and resident.
See? That was fun!
Filed under: Law and Civil Liberties; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Assessing the Claim that CDT Opposes a National ID
It was good of Ari Schwartz to respond last week to my recent post querying whether the Center for Democracy and Technology outright opposes a national ID or simply “does not support” one.
Ari says CDT does oppose a national ID, and I believe that he honestly believes that. But it’s worth taking a look at whether the group’s actions are consistent with opposition to a national ID. I believe CDT’s actions — most recently its support of the PASS ID Act — support the creation of a national ID.
(The title of his post and some of his commentary suggest I have engaged in rhetorical excess and mischaracterized his views. Please do judge for yourself whether I’m being shrill or unfair, which is not my intention.)
First I want to address an unusual claim of Ari’s — that we already have a national ID system. If that is true, his support for PASS ID is more sensible because it is an opportunity to inject federal privacy protections into the existing system (putting aside whether it is a federal responsibility to manage a state system or systems).
Filed under: Law and Civil Liberties; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Would PASS ID Really Save States Money?
The proposed PASS ID Act is a national ID just like REAL ID, and it threatens privacy just as much. Some argue that a national ID under PASS ID should be palatable, though, because it reduces costs to states.
But savings to states under PASS ID are not at all clear. Let’s take a look at the costs of creating a U.S. national ID.
The REAL ID Act, passed in May 2005, required states to begin implementing a national ID system within three years. In regulations it proposed in March 2007, the Department of Homeland Security extended that draconian deadline. States would have five years, starting in May 2008, to move all driver’s license and ID card holders into REAL ID-compliant cards.
The Department of Homeland Security estimated the costs for this project at $17.2 billion dollars (net present value, 7% discount). Costs to individuals came it at nearly $6 billion – mostly in wasted time. Americans would spend more than 250 million hours filling out forms, finding birth certificates and Social Security cards, and waiting in line at the DMV.
The bulk of the costs fell on state governments, though: nearly $11 billion dollars. The top three expenditures were $5.25 billion for customer service at DMVs, $4 billion for card production, and $1.1 billion for data systems and IT. Getting hundreds of millions of people through DMVs and issuing them new cards in such a short time was the bulk of the cost.
To drive down the cost estimate, DHS pushed the implementation schedule way back. In its final rule of January 2008, it allowed states a deadline extension to December 31, 2009 just for the asking, and a second extension to May 2011 for meeting certain milestones. Then states would have until the end of 2017 to replace all cards with the national ID card. That’s just under ten years.
Then the DHS decided to assume that only 75% of people would actually get the national ID. (Never mind that whatever benefits from having a national ID drop to near zero if it is not actually “national.”)
The result was a total cost estimate of about $6.85 billion (net present value, 7% discount). Individual citizens would still spend $5.2 billion worth of their time (in undiscounted dollars) on paperwork and waiting at the DMV. But states would spend just $1.5 billion on data and interconnectivity systems; $970 million on customer service; and $953 million on card production and issuance—a total of about $2.4 billion. (All undiscounted—DHS didn’t publish estimates for the final rule the same way it published their estimates for the proposed rule.)
Maybe these cost estimates were still too high. Maybe they weren’t believable. Or maybe Americans’ love of privacy and hatred of a national ID explains it. But the lower cost estimate did not slow the “REAL ID Rebellion.” Given the costs, the complexity, the privacy consequences, and the dubious benefits, states rejected REAL ID.
Enter PASS ID, which supposedly alleviates the costs to states of REAL ID. But would it?
At a Senate hearing last week, not one, but two representatives of the National Governors Association testified in favor of PASS ID, citing their internal estimate that implementing PASS ID would cost states just $2 billion.
But there is reason to doubt that figure. PASS ID is a lot more like REAL ID – the original REAL ID – in the way that most affects costs: the implementation schedule.
Filed under: Law and Civil Liberties; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
PASS ID and National ID – Rejoinder to Schwartz
Ari Schwartz responded in characteristic even tones to my critique of his testimony in favor of the PASS ID Act, which would revive the moribund REAL ID law. It’s worth a rejoinder, and I’ll offer him the same again here if he wishes.
Ari clouds matters slightly by suggesting that my “strong biases” obscure certain facts. I readily admit having a strong bias in favor of liberty — it’s why I do what I do. Ari admits several biases, including one in favor of consensus-building, which was what I accused him of prioritizing over principle. Let’s put aside the question of bias.
It’s good to see Ari state that CDT does not support a national ID system. It would be better to see him state that CDT opposes having a national ID system. (I imagine this is just a matter of word choice, but it would be good to have clarity.)
Next, Ari says his testimony “makes it clear that we believe that PASS ID prevents the creation of a National ID system.” I don’t believe this is clear from his testimony. More importantly, this is not a sound assessment of what a national ID is or what PASS ID does.
We need some defined terms, so let’s tease out what he means by “national ID.” (He has told me that there is some distinction between a “national ID,” a “national ID system,” and perhaps a “national ID card,” but the distinction is lost on me. I believe a national ID card is part of a national ID system, both of which are commonly referred to in shorthand as a “national ID.”)
Twice in his testimony, he correctly calls REAL ID a national ID system. The factors that make it so appear to be “the very real possibility that individuals would not be able to function in American society without a REAL ID card” and “giving unfettered discretion to DHS to expand the ‘official purposes’ for which REAL ID cards could be required.”
Filed under: Law and Civil Liberties; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Review of the Big REAL ID Hearing
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing yesterday on the REAL ID Act and the REAL ID revival bill, known as PASS ID. I attended and want to share with you some highlights.
Good News!
Little good came from the hearing, as it was primarily focused on how to get the states and people to accept a national ID. But there is some good news.
First, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared REAL ID dead (much as I did in my testimony two-plus years ago). “DOA” is how she referred to it.
She also said that no state will be in compliance with REAL ID by the current December 31, 2009 deadline. This is important because a lot of people think that states doing anything about the security of drivers’ licenses and ID cards are complying with REAL ID.
Another highlight was the commentary of Senator Roland Burris (D-IL). He is a beleaguered outsider to the Senate and evidently wasn’t coached on the talking points around REAL ID and PASS ID. So he flat out asked why we shouldn’t just have “a national ID.”
Senator Susan Collins’ (R-ME) nervous smile was particularly noticeable when Burris asked why the emperor had no clothes. No one was supposed to talk about national IDs at this hearing! But that’s what PASS ID is.
REAL ID and PASS ID are two versions of the same national ID system, and nobody is denying it. That’s good news because the effort to rebrand REAL ID through PASS ID has failed.
Does the PASS ID Act Protect Privacy?
I’ve written about PASS ID here a couple of times before – first on whether or not it’s a national ID and, second, on the politics of this REAL ID revival bill. Now I’ll take a look at whether it fixes the privacy issues with REAL ID. Privacy is complicated. Buckle up.
The day the bill was introduced, the Center for Democracy and Technology issued a press release giving it a privacy stamp of approval.
“The PASS ID Act addresses most of the major privacy and security concerns with REAL ID,” said Ari Schwartz, Vice-President of CDT. The release cited four ways that PASS ID was an improvement over the bill it’s modeled on, REAL ID.
Interstate Data Sharing?
First, CDT said, PASS ID “[r]emoves the requirement that states ‘provide electronic access’ allowing every other state to search their motor vehicles records.” It’s technically true: The language from REAL ID directly requiring states to share information among themselves came out of PASS ID. But the requirements of the law will cause that information sharing to happen all the same.
Like REAL ID did, PASS ID would require states to confirm that “a person submitting an application for a driver’s license or identification card is terminating or has terminated any driver’s license or identification card” issued by another state.
How do you do that? You check the driver license databases of every other state. Maybe you do this by directly accessing other states’ databases; maybe you do this indirectly, through a “pointer system” or “hub.” But to confirm that you’re talking about the right person, you don’t just compare names. You compare names, addresses, pictures, and other biometrics.
UK Home Secretary Abandons National ID
The UK has been operating in parallel to the United States on the national ID question, and rumors about the collapse of the UK national ID have been circulating for a couple of years.
Now comes word that Home Secretary Alan Johnson will scrap the national ID card system, making it voluntary. When volunteers fail to materialize, it is easy to anticipate that it will disappear entirely.
This is another thing U.S. Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano might want to note as she struggles with with national ID issue here.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Calling Secretary Napolitano: Arizona to Reject EDLs
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been all over the map on national ID issues. As governor of Arizona, she signed a memorandum of understanding with the Bush DHS to implement “enhanced driver’s licenses” in her state. These are licenses with long-range RFID chips built into them. But then she turned around and signed legislation barring implementation of the REAL ID Act in Arizona.
Now, having taken federal office, she again favors REAL ID — or at least under its new name: PASS ID. (Her efforts to put distance between REAL ID and PASS ID have not borne fruit.)
In some respects, PASS ID is worse than REAL ID. It would give congressional approval to the “enhanced driver’s license” program — invented by DHS and State Department bureaucrats to do long-range (and potentially surreptitious) identification of people holding this type of card. Back home, the Arizona legislature has just passed a bill to prohibit the state from implementing EDLs.
So the former governor of Arizona, who has both supported and rejected national ID programs, now supports a bill to approve the national ID program her home state rejects. Napolitano seems to be taking the national ID tar baby in a loving embrace.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Cyber Security “Facts”
National Journal’s “Expert Blog” on National Security asked me late last week to comment on the question, “How Can Cyberspace Be Defended?” My comment and others went up yesterday.
My response was a fun jaunt through issues on which there are no experts. But the highlight is the response I drew out of Michael Jackson, the former #2 man at the Department of Homeland Security.
It does little to promote serious discourse about the truly grave topic of cyber security threats to begin by ridiculing DHS and DOD as “grasping for power” or to suggest that President Obama has somehow been duped into basing his sensible cyber strategy on “a lame and corny threat model called ‘weapons of mass disruption.’” It shows ignorance of the facts to deny that cyber vulnerabilities do indeed present the possibility of “paralyzing results.”
Jackson neglects to link to a source proving the factual existence of “paralyzing” threats to the Internet — he’d have to defeat the Internet’s basic resilient design to do it. (Or he has collapsed the Internet, the specific way of networking I was talking about, with “cyber” — a meaningless referent to everything.) But the need for tight argument or proof is almost always forgiven in homeland security and cyber security, where the Washington, D.C. echo-chamber relentlessly conjures problems that only an elite bureaucracy can solve.
In another comment — not taking umbrage at mine, but culturally similar to Jackson’s — Ron Marks, Senior Vice President for Government Relations at Oxford-Analytica, says, “Cyberterrorism is here to stay and will grow bigger.” The same can be said of the bogeyman, but the bogeyman isn’t real either.
(To all interlocutors: Claiming secrecy will be taken as confessing you have no evidence.)
Jackson’s close is the tour de force though: “Good people are working hard on these matters, and they deserve our unwavering financial and personal support. For now and for the long-term.”
A permanent tap on America’s wallets, and respect on command? Sounds like “grasping for power” to me.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
And Your Freedom to Travel Takes Another Step Back
Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would begin a further attempt to implement the Western Hemisphere Travel (Restriction) Initiative.
WHTI is a congressionally mandated program to increase the documentation required for travel to and from neighboring countries. It’s a classic example of self-injurious overreaction to terrorism. The costs we incur for this program vastly outstrip the harms it averts. I have blogged about it here before. In a turn of phrase Orwell would love, a DHS blog post on the topic characterized the goings-on as “Boosting Border Security and Efficiency.”
In January 2008, I wrote about the border bedlam that would ensue when the DHS implemented WHTI as it had threatened to do, but the DHS was bluffing. A post on the Identity Project has a bevy of links and information, and an interesting take on things. It’s called “Today We’re All Prisoners in the USA.”
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy; Trade and Immigration
Questions for Heritage: REAL ID
The Heritage Foundation’s “The Foundry” blog has a post up called “Questions for Secretary Napolitano: Real ID.”
Honest advocates on two sides of an issue can come to almost perfectly opposite views, and this provides an example, because I find the post confused, wrong, or misleading in nearly every respect.
Let’s give it a brief fisking. Below, the language from the post is in italics, and my comments are in roman text:
Filed under: Telecom, Internet & Information Policy; Trade and Immigration
“. . . and Replace It with REAL ID”
CNN wrote an exciting headline on Wednesday: “Homeland Security Chief Seeks to Repeal Real ID Act.” What they left out was that the replacement would be . . . the REAL ID Act.
Intentionally or not, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has created the impression that the national ID law might go away. But simply renaming the Department of Homeland Security’s national ID program is not a repeal of REAL ID.
The REAL ID revival bill that has been circulating is the same national identification and tracking system with a few of the sharpest corners taken off and the hope of federal money held out to up-to-now recalcitrant states. The REAL ID revival bill would corral every American citizen into the national ID system to try and attack illegal immigrants.
Bills to repeal REAL ID were introduced in the previous Congress, but they did not move because the Bush administration and Chertoff DHS would have eagerly demagogued the issue. Those political conditions no longer hold. And just 10 months ago, Secretary Chertoff delayed the implementation of REAL ID without bringing any political repercussions to the Bush administration whatsoever. Secretary Napolitano can do the same if Congress fails to truly repeal REAL ID, as it should.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy; Trade and Immigration
Mike German on ‘Intelligence’ Reports
On the ACLU blog (”because freedom can’t blog itself”), Mike German has a great write-up that captures the depth of error in recent DHS “intelligence” reports on ideological groups.
German shows that any ideology can be targeted if the national security bureaucracy comes to use activism as a proxy or precursor for crime and terrorism:
A Texas fusion center warned about a terrorist threat from “the international far Left,” the Department of Homeland Security and a Missouri fusion center warned of threats posed by right-wing ideologues, and a Virginia fusion center saw threats from across the political spectrum and called certain colleges and religious groups “nodes of radicalization.” These are all examples of domestic security gone wrong.
“Gone wrong” means weak in theory, threatening to liberty, and not helpful to law enforcement:
If these “intelligence” reports described recent crimes and the people who perpetrated them, there would be little problem from a civil rights perspective, and it could actually be helpful to the average police officer. Instead, they have followed a “radicalization” theory popularized by the NYPD (PDF). That theory postulates that there is a “path” to terrorism that includes the adoption of certain beliefs, and political, religious, or social activism is viewed as another step toward violence. Actual empirical studies of terrorism conducted in the Netherlands and Britain refute this theory, but the idea that hard-to-find terrorists can be caught by spying on easy-to-find activists appears too hard to resist to U.S. law enforcement.
The takeaway: “Threat reports that focus on ideology instead of criminal activity are threatening to civil liberties and a wholly ineffective use of federal security resources.”
Mike German was a participant in our January conference on counterterrorism strategy.
Filed under: Cato Publications; Foreign Policy and National Security; Law and Civil Liberties
Dust Off Your Tinfoil Hats
It’s official. Everyone supportive of federalism and/or upset about taxes, etc., is now considered a potentially dangerous “rightwing extremist” by Homeland Security.
A footnote attached to the report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines “rightwing extremism in the United States” as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.
Filed under: Government and Politics; Political Philosophy
NYCLU: Repeal REAL ID
The New York Civil Liberties Union has issued an impressive report calling for the repeal of the REAL ID Act.
“No Freedom Without Privacy: The REAL ID Act’s Assault on Americans’ Everyday Life” is a thorough look at the federal government’s national ID law, which states have refused to implement.
Less than a year ago, when it was clear that no state would be in compliance with the national ID law by the May 2008 deadline, then-DHS secretary Michael Chertoff granted waivers until December of this year, even to states that have statutorily barred themselves from complying. One of those states was South Carolina, whose governor Mark Sanford (R) has been a leading REAL ID opponent. The report cites him favorably for that.
Last year, bills to repeal the national ID law were introduced in both the Senate and House. With President Bush sure to veto, and Secretary Chertoff sure to demagogue a REAL ID repeal, the bills did not move. The political dynamics have changed since then, of course.
“Though the Real ID Act is not a household name,” the report says, “it is a central component of the Bush Administration’s assault on Americans’ liberty and privacy rights, and one that if not repealed now would forever change the fabric of American life.”
In its finite wisdom, the federal government often doubles down on bad policies, but the REAL ID Act is ripe for repeal. The law can’t be fixed, and there is no such thing as an acceptable national ID card.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
National ID Promoted by Anti-Immigrant Group — Sorta
If it was ever in doubt that REAL ID and the push for national ID systems are a project of anti-immigrant groups, this should dispel it.
The Center for Immigration Studies has a page up on its website in which REAL ID lobbyist Janice Kephart trots out videos of Bush administration Department of Homeland Security officials sort of making the case for REAL ID. Or at least for all the different ID programs they had. Or something.
Frankly, it’s not clear what this piece is getting at. The material is rather meandering, and neither the videos nor the text provide a coherent argument for a national ID, much less defeat the arguments against one. (The featured former officials are former, and not involved with the current administration, because voters rejected the fear-mongering of the former DHS and administration in the most recent election.)
What the text does say is that the Obama administration is cool on a national ID because it “gained many votes from those who support mass, illegal and unchecked immigration into the US.” This is inaccurate in many respects. Nobody supports illegal immigration, but many people do recognize that balanced and generous immigration rules would reduce it. This country has a long history of being immigrant friendly and of favoring liberty over things like national ID systems. If those kinds of policies win votes, so be it! It’s nice to see a group like CIS admit that their agenda is politically unpopular.
Whatever the case, if you had any doubt about what motivates national ID advocacy in the country, it’s anti-immigrant groups. Their amateurish interest in terrorism and national security is motivated by their fixation on preventing free movement of people. The great irony is that the Center for Immigration Studies would put native-born American citizens into a national ID system to try to get at their anti-immigrant goals.
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