New Hampshire was the state where the “REAL ID rebellion” got its start. There, in 2006, Rep. Neal Kurk (R-Weare) took to the floor of the New Hampshire House to talk about his principled opposition to the federal national ID law.

In stirring words, Kurk urged his colleagues to overturn a committee recommendation that no action should be taken on his bill to have New Hampshire reject REAL ID. The House went on to pass his bill and half the states in the nation soon followed suit.

Now a bill pending in the New Hampshire House responds to a more insidious version of the federal government’s national ID plans: E-Verify.

E-Verify is a federal background check system that its proponents intend to be used on every person seeking work in the United States. Once in place, E-Verify would expand to new uses, giving the federal government direct regulatory control of all Americans’ lives through control of proof of identity. It’s being fitted to operate using only databases, so I’ve been referring to it as a “cardless national ID.”

New Hampshire Rep. Seth Cohn (R-Merrimack 6) has introduced a bill to prevent his state from contributing New Hampshirites’ personal data to the E-Verify system. HB 1549 would not only prohibit the state from allowing citizens’ personal data to be used in E-Verify. It would prohibit the state from requiring employers to participate in the E-Verify system.

It’s an appropriate response to the Department of Homeland Security’s latest move. You see, a branch of E-Verify is called the “RIDE” program. That stands for “Records and Information from Department of Motor Vehicles for E-Verify” (Yeah, it’s a stretch…) Basically, RIDE is the conduit through which the states are going to start passing data to the federal government, weaving together that national ID outside of the REAL ID Act.

In their desire to bring illegal immigration under control, a lot of people have convinced themselves over many years that growing the federal government and conscripting businesses into “internal enforcement” of immigration law was the way to go. Unfortunately, that route costs a lot of money, it bloats the federal government, and it requires a national ID system, which is a threat to liberty that Americans reject. My paper, “Franz Kafka’s Solution to Illegal Immigration,” goes through many of the details.

Is this the beginning of the E-Verify rebellion? It’s a welcome addition to the national debate from the “Live Free or Die” state.

Cardless National ID and the E-Verify Rebellion is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Because all of us are with ourselves all day every day, we naturally tend to think that our own lives are pretty standard fare. But that’s just not so in a country of 300+ million people ranging over a vast expanse. So I found worthwhile this NPR story on people who don’t have IDs, people who face difficulty with laws requiring IDs to vote. Not everyone trundles down to the DMV and plunks down money and paperwork for an ID whenever they please.

The voter ID issue is a hot one. Some are strongly committed to the idea that identification requirements are needed to suppress voter fraud. There isn’t much evidence of that problem, and to worry about impersonation fraud at polling places, one has to put aside absentee ballot fraud, which is probably much easier, as well as election fraud—rigged vote counts, for example—which is much more efficient.

States should tinker with their voting rules and processes, each seeking for itself the methods that optimally secure elections while facilitating voting. It’s a big country, and different states may require different rules. My emphasis has always been on avoiding a national voter ID system, which would inevitably be a national ID system, paving the way for greater federal control of individuals’ lives.

Photo ID Laws Mean Some Won’t Vote is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Speaking at a town hall meeting at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa yesterday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney backed a national ID system and government pre-approval of all new hires in the country. It’s a stunning amount of power he wants the federal government to have.

Addressing a question about illegal immigration (starting at 30:40 in this video) he said:

You’ve got to crack down on employers that hire people that are illegal, and that means you have to have a system that identifies who’s here legally, with a biometric card that has: this is the person, they’re allowed to work here. You say to an employer, you look at that card, you swipe it in your computer, you type in the number, it instantly tells you whether they’re legal or not.

He’s describing an expanded E-Verify system, and the biometric national identity system that has been proposed for it. That system would not only be used for controlling employment, of course. Like the Social Security number did when it caught mission creep, the national ID Romney talks about would come to be used to control access to housing, to financial services and credit, gun ownership, health care and medicine, the list goes on and on.

It’s technically possible to have a biometric card that solely indicates one’s qualification to work under federal law, but as I wrote in my paper, “Franz Kafka’s Solution to Illegal Immigration,” there is almost no chance that the government would limit itself this way. E-Verify requires a national identity system, and Mitt Romney wants that national identity system.

Romney Supports National ID, Government Pre-Approval of Working is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Back in March of this year, with a May deadline for REAL ID compliance looming, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security quietly kicked the can down the road. It once again changed the date on which states would have to implement federal standards for their drivers’ licenses and IDs.

The original deadline was three years after the law’s May 2005 passage. It has now been more than five years and there’s no REAL ID thanks to resistance from states around the country. Congress has not moved to repeal this failed law. In fact, it still appropriates money to REAL ID in the Homeland Security appropriations bill.

The DHS has now set a new compliance deadline at January 15, 2013. That’s five days before the next presidential term begins on January 20, 2013. Indeed, the period between the election and the inauguration is when the question of whether to enforce REAL ID against the states will be decided.

Which puts a question before the Republican candidates vying for the highest political office. Where do you stand on the national ID issue? If your Transportation Security Administration is turning fliers away from airports because their states aren’t going along with this federal surveillance mandate, are you going to stand by the feds or stand by the states and people who say no to having a national ID?

The question is a nice bellwether for Republicans on both federalism and essential American liberty.

Question for Candidates: Yes or No to a National ID? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Your chance to comment on a Department of Homeland Security plan to tap into state drivers’ license databases and create a new national ID system expires next week. It’s the groundwork for a cardless national ID, which threatens liberty even more than card-based schemes like REAL ID.

The E-Verify program’s move to merge federal background checks and state driver license data sets the stage for satisfying all three elements of a national ID. (Two years ago, I discussed what constitutes a national ID in some detail.) E-Verify has not satisfied these criteria up to now, but the pieces are coming together quickly.

First, it is national. That is, it is intended to be used throughout the country, and to be nationally uniform in its key elements. If its proponents have their way, E-Verify will indeed soon go national, a requirement on every employer to vet new workers past the federal government’s databases.

Second, its use is either practically or legally required. This is a judgment call, but in two diferent ways, E-Verify appears to meet this element. First, not having data in the E-Verify databases means not having legal work, so “participation” in E-Verify can be fairly called practically required. Second, try to opt out of the system and you will meet a dead end. The program includes no opportunity I know of to refuse participation. It’s legally required if the state or federal governments have got your identity data.

I could be wrong, of course. Interested researchers should try contacting their state motor vehicle bureaus (cc: your state legislators) and ask not to have data about you transferred to the federal government for E-Verify. Please let me know what you learn.

The final “element” of a national ID is that it is used for identification. Up to now, E-Verify has  largely worked by comparing identifiers. (I.e., Does this name match this Social Security number?) The current plan is to tap into state databases for more identifiers: name, date of birth, driver’s license/permit number, and so on. From there, it’s a short ride to gathering drivers’ license photos and biometric descriptors. (E-Verify already uses federally acquired photos in its “Photo Screening Tool.”) With the inclusion of your driver’s license photo, the E-Verify system will be able to display your picture on the screen of anyone who looks you up, allowing for positive identification.

This is a national identification system. If every employer has to use E-Verify—or even every major employer—it will become the all-purpose security device, used for cashing checks, confirming the name on credit cards, and looking you up at the prescription counter. Of course, it will be used at airport checkpoints. You’ll be screened through E-Verify at entrances to government buildings—maybe private buildings, too. And why not for random, “instant” checks at the subway or bus station? 

Just remember: If you have a tax dispute with the government, the Department of Homeland Security might flag you in the database—or it might de-identify you entirely—until you get right with the government.

Because it’s a database system, you won’t be able to argue your case like you can in the familiar card environment. With a card, at least, you can say, “No, look. This is me. This is my ID card. This is my picture. Give me my prescription.” With E-Verify, the answer will be, “Sorry, you have to talk to DHS or Social Security.” For good reason, I named my paper on electronic employment eligibility verification, “Franz Kafka’s Solution to Illegal Immigration.”

Arguments for the E-Verify system sounding in practicality and common sense do not hold up, but there are also principled reasons to oppose having a government background check system. Using E-Verify, the Department of Homeland Security is rapidly assembling a national ID system that can be converted to boundless uses. In addition to controlling employment, E-Verify can be put to use in regulating access to health care and housing, in gun control and registration, in monitoring travel and lodging—the list goes on and on.

I went through the arguments against having a national identification system in my book, Identity Crisis. In brief, a national ID would strip us of privacy even faster than is already happening, producing formal dossiers and increased surveillance. A national ID would transfer power en masse from individuals to governments. They would administer our rights by controlling the tools we need to navigate a “papers, please” society. A national ID would also be insecure, as it centralizes and homogenizes information assets (identity data) that are more secure if widely dispersed and heterogeneous.

As I noted last week, the federal government cannot and will not implement the REAL ID Act. So it’s on a new tack: E-Verify will soon be the new national ID.

The New—Cardless!—National ID is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Yesterday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee had a hearing entitled: “Ten Years After 9/11: A Report From the 9/11 Commission Chairmen,” part of what evidently will be a series commemorating the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks this September.

At the end of his oral statement, former 9/11 Commission co-chairman Tom Keane made a half-hearted pitch for implementation of the REAL ID Act, the national ID law Congress passed attached to a military spending bill in early 2005. His written statement with fellow former co-chair Lee Hamilton dedicates three paragraphs (out of 23 pages) to the appeal for the national ID law.

The paltriness of Keane’s argument for a national ID parallels the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission report. It dedicated three-quarters of a page (out of 400+ pages) to identity documents. The 9/11 Commission report did not detail how a national ID would have secured against 9/11 in any way that is remotely cost-effective. Indeed, nobody ever has, much less how having a national ID would secure against future attacks.

In his testimony, Governor Keane touted the expertise of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Preparedness Group, with which he is affiliated. Given all that expertise and the supposed urgency of implementing the national ID law, you would think that the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Web site would have a definitive articulation of how REAL ID would secure the country. It doesn’t.

At the time it was rammed through Congress, Senator Lieberman (I-CT) spoke out against REAL ID on the Senate floor:

I urge my colleagues to oppose the REAL ID Act. We must ask our Senate conferees not to allow such a controversial measure to be pushed through Congress on an emergency spending bill. The REAL ID Act contradicts our historic identity as a nation that provides haven for the oppressed. The REAL ID Act would not make us safer. It would make us less safe.

If the 9/11 Commission co-chairs, the Bipartisan Policy Center, or any other set of advocates want to go to battle over REAL ID, they should make their best case for having this national ID. Tell us how it would work, and how it would defeat the counterattacks and complications of national-scale identity systems. Anyone attempting to do so can expect a schooling from yours truly, of course. The alternative, which I recommend, is to drop the national ID advocacy and work on things that cost-effectively secure the country without sacrificing our freedom and privacy.

REAL ID: An Afterthought, Tacked On is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL) is the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security. That’s the subcommittee that makes spending decisions for the Department of Homeland Security and the programs within it, including the REAL ID Act.

Earlier this month, a constituent of his from Fyffe, Alabama posted a question on Mr. Aderholt’s Facebook page:

Rep. Aderholt, I’ve seen reports that the “REAL ID ACT” will be implemented in May of this year, giving the govt the ability to track every person who has a drivers license via encoded GPS. Is this actually the case and if so, what is the House going to do to stop this Orwellian infringement of our Liberty. Also, HOW could this have happened in the first place!

Mr. Aderholt has not replied.

But Right Side News recently reported on a hearing in which DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano presented her agency’s budget request. The DHS has not requested funds for implementing REAL ID. But according to the report, Chairman Aderholt “pointedly reminded” the committee of the need for funding of REAL ID.

It is good of Representative Aderholt to give his constituents a means to contact him and to invite public discussion of the issues. It’s an open question whether he will listen more closely to the voice of his constituents or to influences in Washington, D.C. who would like to see law-abiding American citizens herded into a national ID system.

Does Rep. Aderholt Support or Oppose Having a National ID? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Until now, Florida has not been one of the states to buck the federal government’s national ID mandate, established in the REAL ID Act of 2005. A pair of grand jury reports in 2002 had moved the state to tighten its driver licensing processes prior to any federal action, so it was already doing many of the things that the Department of Homeland Security is now seeking to require of states in the name of REAL ID.

Full compliance with REAL ID remains a distant hope, so DHS has set out a list of 18 “milestones,” progress toward which it is treating as REAL ID compliance. Full compliance with REAL ID includes putting driver information into a network for nationwide information sharing—including scanned copies of basic identity documents. It includes giving all licensees and ID holders a nationally uniform driver’s license or ID card so their identity can be checked at airports, federal facilities, and wherever the Secretary of Homeland Security determines to have federal checkpoints.

Again, the state of Florida meets DHS’ milestones. Starting from an already strict driver licensing regime, the state’s bureaucrats have been doing (and asking the legislature to do) things that match up with the requirements of the national ID law. But now, thanks to the work of Florida’s Tenth Amendment Center, Floridians Against REAL ID, and others, the legislature is beginning to pay attention.

Why is it so hard for law-abiding citizens and residents of Florida to get or renew their licenses? What kinds of barriers to progress are being thrown in front of lawful immigrants from Haiti, who haven’t the documentation required to get a license and thus a job?

Rep. Geraldine Thompson (D-Orlando) has lived in Florida since 1955 and was elected to the Florida legislature in 2006. She was born in New Orleans and is not able to get a copy of her birth certificate. The Florida Department of Motor Vehicles would not accept her Florida House ID card as proof of her identity!

Several members of the Florida legislature are concerned that the state is scanning and databasing the basic identity documents of Floridians, exposing those documents and the people of Florida to unknown cybersecurity risks. If these databases were hacked, Floridians’ data would be treasure trove for identity fraud. A breach of an entire state’s identity data could collapse the system we now rely on to know who people are. This is not an improvement in security for Floridians.

Florida’s Cuban ex-pat population has some idea of what could result if they were herded into a national identity system. They are too familiar with central government control of access to goods, services, employment, and other essentials of life. Advocates of national ID systems here in the United States have already argued for using REAL ID to control access to employment, to financial services and credit, to medicines, to housing, and more.

In my testimony to the Florida legislature, I noted that the federal government is impotent to enforce REAL ID. The political costs of a DHS attack on air travel (if it refused to recognize drivers’ licenses from non-compliant states at airport checkpoints) would be too high. Indeed, word is spreading that DHS will soon extend the REAL ID deadline once again.

What’s clear from my visit to Florida is that legislators there respond to what they hear from their constituents. It’s unclear what the Florida legislature will do to reassert control of its driver licensing policy from the concerted action of the federal government and its motor vehicle bureaucrats.

One of the questions they might ask is, “Who committed Florida to comply with REAL ID?” That’s item number seventeen in the DHS’ eighteen-point material compliance checklist.

Is the REAL ID Rebellion Coming to Florida? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The cost and ease of implementing REAL ID are not shown by a new report from the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies.

Nor does it establish why law-abiding American citizens should be required to carry a national ID. But the report is a good signal that the national ID effort continues. A coterie of national ID advocates are working with state motor vehicle bureaucrats to build a national ID. This is why repeal and defunding of REAL ID is so needed.

It’s been a while, so let’s review: REAL ID is the national ID law Congress passed in May of 2005. It gave states a three-year deadline to produce IDs meeting national standards and to network their databases of driver information together into a national ID system. 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.

At the time, DHS 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. The bulk of the costs fell on state governments, though: nearly $11 billion dollars.

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 eighteen “benchmarks”—many of them things states were already doing or would have done anyway: taking pictures of license applicants, having them sign their applications, documenting their dates of birth, maintaining fraudulent document training programs, and so on.

Then states would have until the end of 2017 to replace all cards with the national ID card—just under ten years. DHS assumed that only 75% of people would actually get the national ID to drive the cost estimate down even further.

The Center for Immigration Studies report, authored by national ID lobbyist Janice Kephart, ratchets back even further on what ”implementation” means to argue that REAL ID is a cost-effective success.

States like Maryland and Delaware, once committed, have completed implementation of the 18 benchmarks within a year for only twice the grant monies provided by the federal government. Extrapolated out, that puts total costs for implementing the 18 REAL ID benchmarks in a range from $350 million to $750 million, an order of magnitude less than estimated previously.

Again, these benchmarks are not the substance of REAL ID, which is uniform collection and sharing of driver information, and uniform display of driver information in the “machine-readable zone” of a national ID card. But meeting some of the benchmarks only costs twice as much money as the states don’t have to spare!

The report is an important signal, though. The national ID builders haven’t gone away, and Congress continues to fund the national ID project. DHS has allocated $176 million to building a national ID so far, and it has gaudily rattled states’ cages trying to get them to spend.

During the debate about spending for the current (2011) fiscal year, the House-passed “Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act” defunded the network for driver information sharing known as the “REAL ID hub,” and it also rescinded $16,500,000 in previously spent funds. That rescission should be included when the current Congress takes up FY 2011 spending again in March. And Congress should put a stake through the heart of the REAL ID law. The liberty-crushing national ID plan should be repealed, eliminated once and for all.

REAL ID Is Still Dead, But It Is Walking Dead is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

It might take Facebook awhile to turn identity provision into a revenue opportunity, but if it is a money-maker, it could be a substantial one. Simson Garfinkel has a piece in Technology Review that goes into some of the things Facebook is doing with its “Connect” service.

As security professionals debate whether the Internet needs an “identity layer”—a uniform protocol for authenticating users’ identities—a growing number of websites are voting with their code, adopting “Facebook Connect” as a way for anyone with a Facebook account to log into the site at the click of a button.

It’s a good, relatively short article, worth a read.

As an online identity provider, Facebook could facilitate secure commerce and communication in a way that’s easy and familiar for consumers. That adds value to the Internet ecosystem, and Facebook may be able to extract some of the surplus for itself—perhaps by charging sites and services that are heavy users small amounts per login via Connect. The security challenges of such a system would grow as more sites and services rely on it, of course, and Garfinkel highlights them in an accessible way—accessible as you’re going to get, anyway.

Quibbles are always more interesting, so I’ll note that I cocked my head to one side where Garfinkel asks “whether it’s a good thing for one company to hold such a position of power.” Strange.

Taking “power” in its philosophical sense to mean “a measure of an entity’s ability to control its environment, including the behavior of other entities,” Facebook Connect gives the company very little power. Separate, per-site logins—or a parallel service that might be created by Google, for example—are near at hand and easy to switch to for anyone who doesn’t like Facebook’s offering.

Ironically, Garfinkel refers to these identity services as “Internet driver’s licenses,” inviting a comparison with the power structure in the real-world licensing area. If you want to drive a car legally, there are no alternatives to dealing with the state, so the state can impose onerous conditions on licensing. Drivers’ licenses require one to share a great deal of information, they cost a lot of money (relative to Facebook’s dollar price of “free”), and switching is not an option if the issuer starts to change the bargain and enroll licensees in a national ID system. Garfinkel himself noted how drivers’ licenses enhance state power in a good 1994 Wired article.

In sum, the upsides of an identity marketplace are there, for both consumers and for Facebook. The downsides are relatively small. The “power” exercised by any provider in a marketplace for identity provision is small compared to the alternative of using states as identity providers.

Facebook as Identity Provider is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

I’ve emphasized in the past that a national ID requirement—for travel, for work, whatever the case—would exclude the indigent from rungs on the ladder.

If you don’t know the story of the homeless man whose golden radio voice got him a second chance, you should.  But, as the New York Daily News reports, his long-awaited reunion with his mother has been delayed while he proves his identity so he can fly.

A land of freedom doesn’t put paperwork requirements between a man on the rebound and a long-awaited reunion with his mother.

ID Requirements and the Indigent is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The REAL ID Act—the 2005 national ID law rejected by the states asked to implement it—continues its long slow death. The latest nail in the coffin: moves in Congress to defund the “hub” system that would share driver information nationwide.

The House-passed “Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act” contains the following language in the section that funds U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services: “none of the funds made available in this section shall be available for development of the system commonly known as the ‘REAL ID hub’.”

And also: “From unobligated balances of prior year appropriations made available for United States Citizenship and Immigration Services for the program commonly known as the ‘REAL ID hub’, $16,500,000 is rescinded.”

Senator Inouye’s (D-HI) amendment in the Senate also denies USCIS funding for the REAL ID hub. And it, too, rescinds $16.5 million in prior-year funding.

Money spent on REAL ID is waste. That money should be put to better uses, including deficit reduction. No future money should go to the national ID boondoggle, and REAL ID should be repealed once and for all.

Another Nail in REAL ID’s Coffin is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Across the country, state legislatures have objected to, and outright rejected, the national ID and surveillance mandate imposed on them by the REAL ID Act. Passed in May 2005 with a compliance deadline three years later, the law has never been implemented. The Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly threatened to deny air travel to people from the states refusing compliance, then backed down when states have not caved to its demands.

But state legislatures are one thing. State-level bureaucrats are quite another. And they are hedgehogging along, positioning their states to implement the national ID law.

Writes Alan Greenblatt in State Legislatures magazine:

In a number of states, motor vehicle departments are doing the behind-the-scenes work necessary to move closer to compliance, including updating computer systems, installing face-recognition software and setting up more secure card production rooms. . . . [E]very state is moving toward compliance. Even in the 14 states where legislatures have explicitly rejected REAL ID through laws or resolutions, some moves have been made in the direction of compliance.

Politicians come and go, but the bureaucrats are in it for life. And they can grow their portfolio be building a national ID.

State Bureaucrats Continuing to Advance REAL ID is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

It is a premise of national identification policy that requiring proof of lawful presence to get an ID, then requiring the use of that ID for many essential functions of life, would make it more difficult to be an illegal immigrant in the United States. The natural result of having a national ID and routine identity checks would be suppression of illegal immigration. The premise is undoubtedly true.

The question is how much influence it would have on illegal immigrants’ decision whether to come to, or remain in, this country. And how much it would cause illegal immigrants to take other steps, such as avoidance of ID checks?

A recent article in the Arizona Republic illustrates that leaving the country isn’t the obvious step for illegal immigrants faced with the lawful presence requirement. “Illegal Immigrants Flocking to 3 States to Obtain Identification” tells the story of how illegal immigrant Carlos Hernandez moved his family to Washington state after the passage of S.B. 1070 in Arizona. The story is illustrated with a picture of Hernandez watching his 2-year-old daughter play on a slide near their apartment in Burien, Washington.

“Hernandez said he knows other illegal immigrants who considered New Mexico because of the ease of getting a license. But he and others thought Washington would be safer.”

One inference from the story is that states with “weak” licensing requirements should tighten things up. But would Hernandez’ young daughter have better prospects if he moved the family to Puebla, Mexico, or would she be better off living in the United States with a father who acquired a false U.S. identification? In many cases, a family man like Hernandez will take the risk of acquiring and using false ID to provide his daughter the stable environment and opportunities the United States has to offer.

A national ID system, and background checks instituted for access to work, housing, and financial services, would suppress illegal immigration some, but it would also drive greater identity fraud and corruption.

The next question is how much inconvenience and tracking the natural-born and naturalized citizens of the country should suffer in order to achieve the marginal gains of presssuring illegal immigrants this way.

On balance, the gains are not worth the costs—especially when the “gains” include making life worse for Carlos Hernandez’ young daughter.

Yes, Illegal Immigrants Are Influenced by ID Policies is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece this morning, John Fund speculates about a post-election, lame-duck strategy in which Democrats move a variety of controversial proposals before giving up power to November’s presumed victors. Among these proposals is “a federally mandated universal voter registration system to override state laws.”

The answer to that idea is No.

Part of the reason is because this proposal hasn’t seen any discussion or debate. Its benefits, costs, and consequences have had no public vetting.

Likely, a national voter ID system would also be a national ID system. Its utility in addressing whatever voter fraud there is would be matched or outstripped by its utility for controlling our access to health care, travel, guns, financial services, and every other thing that the federal government might like to regulate more thoroughly. That’s also part of why the answer is No.

I’m not too worried. Fund is interested in voter and election fraud, so he may be overweighting the likelihood of legislation to address it. And, as I said this morning in a broader WashingtonWatch.com blog post worth reading only for the pun, “Chances are that Fund is using the lame-duck speculation to goose (yuk yuk) his generally conservative readership, and that the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate aren’t thinking that far ahead yet.”

A Lame Duck, a National/Voter ID, and the Pun That Makes it All Worthwhile is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

More than once I’ve come across reports in the immigration area that start from false premises. A good example is a report from the Smart Card Alliance titled “Securing Identity and Enabling Employment Verification: How Do Immigration Reform and Citizen Identification Align?”

In the second paragraph of the executive summary, the report states:  ”A robust system of identification and secure identification documents is a key requirement that needs to be addressed in the immigration reform debate.”

This premise is wrong. Reforming immigration law is what should be addressed in the immigration reform debate. Identity security, just like border control, will flow naturally from reforms to immigration law that create legal avenues for entry. There is no need to create a national ID.

You may disagree with my thinking on that, but can you present objective proof that I’m wrong? Some repeatable experiment showing to a high degree of certainty that identity systems must be a part of immigration reform? I suspect you’ll agree fair-mindedly that the proposition is subject to debate.

But the next paragraph says “This document limits itself to providing factual information to allow the reader to make educated and informed decisions.” Balderdash.

The “privacy” section of the report—less than a page of it—deals mostly with security, not the tougher problem of designing a system that allows law-abiding citizens to control personal information, both within the card system and in its likely uses.

The Smart Card Alliance, for sponsoring this report, and readers of it should ask themselves a searching question.

Ever Get the Feeling You’ve Been Cheated? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Via the ACLU’s Blog of Rights, a temporary measure Governor Jim Gibbons put in place to bring Nevada into compliance with REAL ID has expired, and the legislature does not plan to renew it.

But the Nevada DMV wants it. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports, “the DMV will seek legislative approval to implement the new licensing system at least by May 1, 2011.”

I wonder if the DMV will donate to candidates that support REAL ID, or perhaps campaign against legislators that don’t. Maybe it should just start voting in elections. The gall of these bureaucrats, telling the legislature what to do.

Nevadans Don’t Want REAL ID, but the DMV Does, and That’s What Matters is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In April, I inquired aloud whether Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) supported a national ID. It’s clear now that he does—and he’s told us how he wants to use it.

On “Meet the Press” Sunday morning, he said:

I’ve got a driver’s license. It has my photo on it. I have a passport. When I go in and out of the country, the government swipes that passport, and it says, “OK, Luis, you’re ready to come in. You’re authorized.” Why can’t we have a Social Security card with a picture on it, so when you go get a job you swipe it? And if employers don’t use that card, issued by the government to authorize you before you go to work, we send those employers to jail.

Create an internal passport. Send employers to jail. Stop willing Americans from working. Get a handle on all this unfettered freedom.

I discussed why we shouldn’t have a national ID card and federal worker background check system in my Cato Policy Analysis, “Franz Kafka’s Solution to Illegal Immigration.” Congressman Gutierrez’ desire for overall reform is welcome. Some reasons why not to adopt the current national ID card proposal are here, here, here, and here.

Yes, Rep. Luis Gutierrez Is Pro-National ID is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Amid the hullaballoo about Facebook and privacy, it’s easy to forget the most powerful privacy setting.

In my 2004 Policy Analysis, “Understanding Privacy—and the Real Threats to It,” I wrote about the “privacy-protecting decisions that millions of consumers make in billions of daily actions, inactions, transactions, and refusals.”

Inactions and refusals. Declining to engage in activities that emit personal information protects privacy. Not broadcasting oneself on Facebook protects privacy. Not going online protects privacy.

The horror, some may think, of not having access to the wonders of the online world. Actually, many people live full and complete lives without it, enjoying the perfect online privacy default. The irony is a little too rich when avid users of Facebook—which is little more than a publicity tool—complain about its privacy problems.

Facebook does have some work to do on rationalizing and communicating the privacy protections its offers its publicity-seeking users. But people will always have the privacy protecting option of not using Facebook.

Not so for government-sponsored incursions on privacy, like the national ID system proposed by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Inaction and refusal of his national ID system would not be a practical option if Senator Schumer has his way. The irony isn’t just rich, it’s curdled and reeking when Senator Schumer leads the attack on Facebook for its privacy practices.

The Most Powerful Privacy Setting is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Reports the London Evening Standard: “The £5 billion national identity card scheme will be consigned to the scrapheap as a result of the new coalition Government, the Home Office confirmed.”

I’ve written here a few times before about the uneven course of the national ID in the UK, paralleling our own: 1, 2, 3, 4.

UK Scraps National ID is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog