Here’s a gem of an idea.
Gather all your most personal information. Place it on a card that can be read by strangers. Hand it over to, yep, the Department of Motor Vehicles for safekeeping.
This apparently is the federal government’s idea of keeping us safe.
In 2005, the Republican Congress passed the Real ID Act, a de facto national identification program that would force every Coloradan to tell the government their life story, so to speak.
And when I write Congress “passed” the Real ID Act, I actually mean that Congress “passed the Real ID Act in the middle of the night like a bunch of slippery weasels,” as it was attached to an unrelated emergency spending bill on Iraq, Afghanistan and tsunami relief.
It isn’t an uncommon practice in Washington to piggyback bad policy. But, then again, this isn’t your average pork. It’s a momentous and wide-ranging intrusion on privacy. An imposition that would permanently put your once-confidential information onto something called “common machine-readable technology.”
Doesn’t everyone want personal information – Social Security numbers, for instance – on easy-to-read technology? You know, this way, strangers no longer have to climb into grimy garbage cans to steal your identity.
The cost? According to the National Conference of State Legislatures the tab will be $11 billion. Homeland Security estimates it will cost around $20 billion to implement the program nationally.
Moreover, it will be another unfunded federally mandated program for Colorado to deal with, one which will almost certainly cause havoc in an already-wobbly budget – and give legislators yet another excuse to raise your taxes.
As Mike Krause, a Senior Fellow at the conservative Independence Institute explained, “Colorado driver’s license holders will have to be ‘re-enrolled’ under an astonishing 162 pages of rules and regulations recently issued by the Department of Homeland Security. The state driver’s license will become a de facto national ID and the Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles will be little more than a branch office of Homeland Security.”
The good news is that the Colorado legislature, in one of the last acts of the 2007 session, joined 15 other states in opposing Real ID.
The nonbinding resolution passed unanimously. It not only points out the numerous problems of the act, but also promises that the Colorado General Assembly won’t pass any laws to help Real ID get off the ground.
ACLU of Colorado executive director Cathy Hazouri was one of the leading proponents of the resolution.
“It’s a strong statement in support of the privacy and civil liberties for everyone in the state,” she explains. “It was clearly bipartisan. The most conservative member of the legislature voted for it, as did the most liberal member of the legislature. They believed that federal government was overstepping its bounds. Obviously, this is the kind of intrusion into our personal lives that we should all be worried about.”
Now, Cathy and I seldom agree on public policy issues, but Real ID has provoked widespread concern from both ideological camps.
And this anxiety is well founded. Americans have an innate disdain for showing papers on demand. And as the Wall Street Journal editorial page has pointed out, “It’s not hard to imagine these de facto national ID cards turning into a kind of domestic passport.”
“The whole idea that the United States is going to a national ID card smacks of unnecessary government control and intrusion,” adds Hazouri.
If Colorado does not implement Real ID by 2010, however, citizens would not be able to board a plane or use any service under federal jurisdiction. Does anyone believe Colorado legislators will have the backbone to fight this thing until the end?
“I hope so,” says Hazouri.
Unfortunately, without major popular support, that’s very doubtful.
David Harsanyi’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 303-954-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com.
