Panel critical of Real ID Act

BOISE – Civil liberties advocates and security experts said Tuesday that implementing a federal act ordering states to standardize driver’s licenses would be unfeasible, violate the privacy of law-abiding Americans and cost billions of dollars.

Members of a four-person panel criticized the federal Real ID Act of 2005 – a requirement Rep. Phil Hart, R-Athol, called constitutionally questionable, an unfunded mandate and an attack on states’ rights. Hart introduced a joint resolution last week that would bar the Idaho Legislature from enforcing the act and ask the state’s congressional delegation to oppose it.

“I’m particularly bothered by the privacy issues and the federal government mandating something on the states,” Hart said.

The act aims to create a national database of identity information, add security features to IDs and make cards easily readable by machines by May 2008. Only upgraded licenses would be accepted for boarding an aircraft or entering certain federal buildings.

It would cost $11 billion to implement over five years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The Real ID mandate has created strange bedfellows. Tuesday’s panel included representatives from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank; the American Civil Liberties Union; and the Idaho Department of Homeland Security.

“I don’t think it’s necessary for us, in order to win the war on terror, to become like those we fight,” said Bill Bishop, director of the Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security.

Bishop said Congress passed the act “extremely hastily” as a silver bullet to dealing with terrorism. While it may help with criminal investigations, it won’t make ordinary Americans safer, he said.

Hart said Real ID is reminiscent of the 1999 science fiction blockbuster “The Matrix.”

“What’s happening in that movie is that every place you turn, there’s the government,” Hart said. “It’s watching you; it’s measuring your behavior. That has no place in America, although incrementally, it’s happening to us right now.”

States still lack federal guidelines, access to federal databases and proper funding to implement Real ID, said Jeremy Meadows of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The 2006 federal budget includes only $40 million, he said.

States could still issue noncompliant IDs, but they would need to be clearly marked.

“Everyone is going to have to come in for re-enrollment,” Meadows said.

“That is obviously going to be a major disruption in customer service.”

While the NCSL wants Congress to extend the compliance deadline and provide more funding, some panel members would like lawmakers to scrap the act.

U.S. senators have introduced a bill to repeal Real ID, and legislatures in 17 states have drafted resolutions calling for the federal government to repeal, revisit or nullify the act, said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program.

“Congress is simply going to have to revisit this,” he said.

Some experts believe the act violates the 10th Amendment by taking away a classic state right of issuing driver’s licenses, Steinhardt said.

Attorney Jim Harper, of the CATO Institute, said older citizens might not have proper documents to prove their identity. The change would also expose each state to the insecurity of other states’ vehicle-registration agencies, he said.

People would build scanning machines to read IDs for an increasing number of purposes, he said, allowing Americans’ movements to be tracked and progressing toward a “surveillance society.”

Steinhardt called Real ID an “impossible statute to enforce.”

Rep. Pete Nielsen, R-Mountain Home, expressed concern that new federal rules will deny Medicaid benefits to people who cannot prove their identification and citizenship.

“This is already in the system, and we need to be fighting this from every angle that we can,” Nielsen said, adding that Idaho is being “blackmailed” into accepting federal money.

“It’s crazy,” he said.

The House Transportation and Defense Committee is expected to hear Hart’s proposal this afternoon.