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

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

Federal officials blitzed Texas this week to fight a bill pending in Austin that would control TSA groping of air travelers in that state, reports Forbes’ “Not-So-Private Parts” blogger Kashmir Hill.

Federal government officials descended on the Capitol to hand out a letter … from the Texas U.S. Attorney letting senators know that if they passed the bill, the TSA would probably have to cancel all flights out of Texas. As much as they love their state, the idea of shutting down airports and trapping people in Texas was scary enough to get legislators to reconsider their support for the groping bill…

The federal government’s threat to shut down air travel is serious, but empty. As we’ve seen time and again with the REAL ID Act, the federal government does not have the political will to attack passenger air travel in the name of increasing surveillance and intrusion.

In fact, earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security didn’t even bother to threaten any repurcussions for states before it once again pushed back a May 2011 (false) deadline for REAL ID compliance. (Previous instances noted here and here.) The REAL ID Act allows the federal government to refuse licenses and ID cards from non-complying states at airport checkpoints, but it’s just not going to happen.

The DHS announcement notes $175 million in spending on REAL ID so far. That waste continues to accrue so long as Congress appropriates money for the national ID program, which will never be implemented.

While we’re on the subject of empty threats from federal officials—and do see Julian Sanchez’s post hitting the same subject—it has been more than four years since then-Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said about the REAL ID Act:

If we don’t get it done now, someone is going to be sitting around in three or four years explaining to the next 9/11 Commission why we didn’t do it.

Secretary Chertoff was wrong—factually wrong on the imminence and nature of the terror threat, and ethically wrong to tout terror threats in an attempt to defeat the will of our free people.

With our stubborn insistence on freedom, the American people and state leaders have done a better job of assessing the threat environment than the Secretary of Homeland Security. As I said when I testified on this topic to the Pennsylvania legislature, state leaders should continue to recognize that they are as equipped, if not better equipped, than federal officials to judge what is right for their people. Counterterrorism and airport security are not an exception to that, though federal imperiousness in these areas remains at a high.

State Officials Needn’t Heed Feds’ Threats 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 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.

Terror Arrest Does Not Justify REAL ID Revival is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

It’s a good thing for Congress to have an open debate on the bill that would fund the government from March 4th through the September 30 end of the 2011 fiscal year. The alternative is for the bill to be written and the political log-rolling to be done entirely behind the scenes. Open debate of the bill and amendments requires at least some level of discussion about various projects and programs rather than spending decisions being based solely on raw political power. And it gives the public some chance to have a say.

The debate may include an amendment to strip funding from the REAL ID Act, our deplorable national ID law. As I wrote here before, 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 ultimately REAL ID should be repealed once and for all.

Amendment #277 (find it on this page, scroll down…) would add the following language to the FY 2011 spending bill:

None of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services for the implementation of the REAL ID Act of 2005 (Public Law 109-13).

Congratulations are due to David Price (D-NC) for highlighting this issue. A national ID would not provide security gains that come anywhere close to the costs of creating a national ID and living under a national ID system. People who desire a national ID for immigration control conveniently forget or omit that natural-born citizens would be required to have and carry a national ID while illegal immigrants work various ways to defeat any of the utterly porous “internal enforcement” systems that restrictive immigration policies have made plausible. A national ID would be used not just to control access to working, but to housing, health care, financial services, and more. In short, it would make the country less free.

I’ll report here what happens with this amendment and the debate on it, which is a debate worth having.

House Debates Spending—and REAL ID Is on the Chopping Block 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

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

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

Here’s a window onto the upside-down way government spending works. The Department of Homeland Security has sent a letter to states begging them to spend federally provided money on implementing REAL ID, the national ID law.

“DHS is regularly asked by members of Congress, as well as the Office of Management and Budget, if these funds are needed by the states, and whether these funds should be reallocated to other efforts,” writes Juliette Kayyam of DHS’ Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. “As both the states and the Federal government face increasingly tough budgeting decisions, it is more important than ever that these available funds be utilized.”

That’s right: Tough budget times make it imperative to spend more money.

States don’t want to implement REAL ID, and the American people don’t want a national ID, but the DHS bureaucracy is rattling cages to try to get money spent purely for the sake of spending. It’s flabbergasting.

DHS to States: Pleeease Spend This Money! is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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 . . .

REAL ID Continues Its Long, Slow Failure is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In a classic example of the 5:00 Friday news drop, the Department of Homeland Security has announced that it is extending the REAL ID compliance deadline. Forty-six of 56 jurisdictions, it reports, were not able to implement even the interim measures it proposed requiring by December 31st when it last extended the deadline in May of 2008.

The DHS statement insists that a full compliance deadline on May 10, 2011 remains in effect. What that really means is that there will be another false crisis as that deadline approaches, and the DHS will extend the deadline yet again.

The better alternative is to repeal the national ID law and the worthless, expensive pseudo-security it represents. It is not to revive REAL ID under its alternative name “PASS ID.”

(No) Surprise! REAL ID Deadline Extended Again is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Via the ACLU blog, there’s no chance that the Department of Homeland Security will interfere with Americans’ travel when its latest deadline for REAL ID compliance passes at the end of this month. As happened with the original deadline for states to implement the national ID, DHS will give out waivers to recalcitrant states instead of carrying out the threat of refusing to accept travelers’ IDs at airports.

States were required by Tuesday to request a waiver from DHS showing that they had met certain milestones for REAL ID compliance. But according to NextGov, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and three U.S. territories have not asked for a waiver.

Supporters of a REAL ID revival bill called “PASS ID” want to use this end-of-year impasse to hustle their bill through Congress (the way REAL ID was originally passed). But the impasse is fake, and states can do what they want.

“Should Congress not act before it adjourns this year, DHS has planned for contingencies related to REAL ID implementation, including extending the deadline as a last resort,” said a DHS spokesman.

Latest REAL ID Deadline Will Pass Without a Blip is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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…

Will a False Crisis Revive REAL ID? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In the November 6th Washington Post, Petula Dvorak lamented the effect of REAL ID compliance on women who have changed their names. The Department of Homeland Security is about to give out blanket waivers to states across the country who have not complied with REAL ID requirements — again. But some states have been making it harder to get licenses because of the national ID standards they still think are coming.

“I doubt the most notorious terrorists of our time — the Sept. 11 hijackers, Timothy McVeigh — would have been stopped by these new DMV requirements,” Dvorak writes. ”All these laws have done is make us more harried, more paranoid and more red-faced than ever.”

‘Has Any of This Made Us Safer?’ is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog