Does Rep. Aderholt Support or Oppose Having a National ID?
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.
Is the REAL ID Rebellion Coming to Florida?
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.
Terror Arrest Does Not Justify REAL ID Revival
The zeitgeist on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. may be for limited, constitutional government, but that doesn’t mean that big-government conservatives aren’t going to use the reprieve voters gave Republicans in the fall to once again advance big-government goals. On Monday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King (R-N.Y.) and Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security Subcommittee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano encouraging her to fully implement our national ID law, the REAL ID Act of 2005.
The deadline for state implementation of the national ID law lapsed nearly three years ago. Half the states in the country have affirmatively barred themselves from implementing REAL ID or they have passed resolutions objecting to the national ID law. But the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly extended the deadline and reduced the compliance bar to suggest progress on the flagging national ID effort. With another faux implementation deadline looming in May, the DHS is almost certain to issue a blanket extension of the compliance deadline again soon.
Smith, King, and Sensenbrenner don’t want that to happen. They cite the arrest of Khalid Aldawsari in Texas as a reason for “immediate implementation of REAL ID.”
According to the government’s affidavit, Aldawsari planned to acquire a false birth certificate and multiple false drivers licenses, assumedly to assist in his getaway after executing his formative bombing plans. But if you read the affidavit, you can see just how remote and speculative his use of any false identification is compared to the real acts that go into his plans. You can also see the web of identifiers that law enforcement use to effectively track and surveil their targets, including phone numbers, license plates, physical addresses, immigration records, email addresses, and Internet Protocol addresses. Aldawsari was nowhere near slipping through the net, and having a false driver’s license would have made no difference after a North Carolina chemical supply company reported to the FBI his suspicious attempt to purchase the chemical phenol. Nor would false identification have made a difference had he succeeded in an attack of any significance.
Having a national ID is the fantastical way of addressing the fantastical part of Aldawsari’s alleged plot. Thankfully, the real plot was disrupted using real law enforcement techniques, which include the reporting of suspicious behavior and narrowly targeted, lawful surveillance.
REAL ID Continues Its Long, Slow Failure
REAL ID continues its long, slow failure. The federal government’s national ID plans continue to bash against the shoals of state and popular opposition.
Late last month, the governor of Utah signed H.B. 234 into law. The bill prohibits the Utah driver license division from implementing REAL ID. That brings to 25 the number of states rejecting the national ID law, according to the Tenth Amendment Center.
And the State of Nevada, one of the few states that had been working to get in front of REAL ID, is reconsidering. With wait times at Las Vegas DMVs reaching two to four hours, the legislature may soon allow a temporary REAL ID implementation measure signed last year to lapse—this according to the Ely (NV) News.
Congress has attempted to circumvent the growing state opposition to REAL ID with the now-stalled PASS ID legislation. It basically would rename REAL ID so as to nullify the many state resolutions and laws barring implementation of the national ID law because they refer to the May 2005 “REAL ID” law specifically. But PASS ID is the same national ID, it has all the privacy issues of REAL ID, and its costs would be as great or greater than REAL ID.
That doesn’t mean national ID supporters in Congress won’t try to sneak the REAL ID revival bill into law sometime later this year, of course . . .
Symbols, Security, and Collectivism
The state of Nevada is one of few that is tripping over itself to comply with the REAL ID Act, the U.S. national ID law.
It’s worth taking a look at the sample license displayed in this news report, especially the gold star used on the license to indicate that it is federally approved.
The reasons for “improving” drivers’ licenses this way are complex. The nominal reason for REAL ID was to secure the country against terrorism. The presence of a gold star signals that this the card bears a correct identity and that watch-list checking has ensured the person is not a threat.
Don’t be too thrilled, though. The weakness of watch-listing was demonstrated again by the Christmas-day attempt on a Northwest airlines flight. The underpants bomber wasn’t listed, so checking his name against a watch-list didn’t do anything.
The real reason for REAL ID, though, was anti-immigrant fervor. If the driver licensing system distinguished between citizens and non-citizens, the theory goes, possession of a driver’s license can be used to regulate access not just to driving, but to working, financial services, health care, and anything else the government wants. Illegal presence in the country could be made unpleasant enough that illegal immigrants would leave.
Alas, human behavior isn’t that simple. If ‘driven’ to it—(I had to…)—people will get behind the wheel without licenses—and without the training that comes with licensing. Then they’ll crash. When the governor of New York briefly de-linked driver licensing and immigration status in 2007, he cited public safety and the likelihood that insurance rates would fall, to the benefit of New Yorkers. (When the state of New Mexico de-linked driver licensing and immigration status, uninsured vehicle rates in the state dropped from 33 percent to 17 percent.) But the governor suffered withering criticism from anti-immigrant groups and quickly reversed course.
Like linking immigration status and driving, linking immigration status and work through an ID system imposes costs on the law-abiding citizen. Complications and counterattacks raise costs on workers and employers while reducing the already small benefits of such programs. I articulated those in my paper on employment eligibility verification.
REAL ID Retreats Yet Again
Several different outlets are noting the quiet passing of a Department of Homeland Security deadline to implement our national ID law, the REAL ID Act.
In May of 2008, with many states outright rejecting this national surveillance mandate, the DHS issued blanket waivers and set a new deadline of December 31, 2009 by which states were supposed to meet several compliance goals.
They have not, and the threat that the DHS/Transportation Security Administration would prevent Americans from traveling has quieted to a whimper.
The reason why? The federal government would be blamed for it. As Neala Schwartzberg writes in her review of the push and pull over REAL ID:
If I was a betting person (and I am from time to time) I’d bet the backed-up-down-the-corridor traveler who is then turned away after presenting his or her state-issued, official complete with hologram ID will blame Homeland Security.
Does the ongoing collapse of REAL ID leave us vulnerable?
Richard Esguerra of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says in this Wired article that REAL ID “threatens citizens’ personal privacy without actually justifying its impact or improving security.”
REAL ID remains a dead letter. All that remains is for Congress to declare it so. And it may be dawning on Congress that passing it a second time under the name “PASS ID” will not work.
Will a False Crisis Revive REAL ID?
I’ve written here before about how the National Governors Association is seeking to peddle state power over driver licensing and identification to the federal government in order to cement its role as a supplicant for states in Washington, D.C.
NGA is currently seeking to drum up a false, end-of-year driver license crisis to convince Congress to pass a new version of REAL ID called PASS ID, moving the national ID project forward.
The letter says that states must be “materially compliant” with the REAL ID Act by the end of the year or their citizens will not be able to use their driver’s licenses as identification to board commercial aircraft. This is technically true, in one sense, but it omits some important information.
The statutory deadline for REAL ID compliance was actually a year and a half ago, May of 2008. No state was in compliance then, and the Department of Homeland Security gave out deadline extensions wholesale—even to states that didn’t ask for them.
If Congress takes no action by the end of the year, the DHS will simply do this again. There is no end-of-year driver license crisis.
And it’s no harm, no foul—nobody who has studied identity-based security believes that the national ID law would cost-effectively protect the country. Ignoring or repealing REAL ID are the best paths forward.
The NGA, of course, believes that states will be better off with its preferred version of REAL ID. Some of the sharpest corners are taken off REAL ID in the new ”PASS ID“ version, but states are kidding themselves if they think PASS ID is good for their bottom lines.
As I wrote before—twice!—PASS ID is likely to cost states as much or more than REAL ID. Its requirements are essentially the same, and its implementation deadline—one of the biggest cost drivers—is tighter in some respects than REAL ID.
Will Congress slip PASS ID into law by the end of the year the way REAL ID was slipped into law four-plus years ago? It’ll be interesting to see…
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!
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).
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.
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.
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