My Little Corner of the Web

The Moleskin is the personal web site of Kelsey Ruger and is a collection of creative work, thoughts and lessons.

So What’s The Deal with Real ID?

March 5th, 2007

There is something brewing in the United States that I am actually surprised hasn’t become a main stream issue yet. Real ID. For those of you who haven’t heard of it Real ID is a part (division B) of the Real ID Act of 2005. The Act which was a part of a military spending bill allows for a nationally mandated and regulated ID card. All states were supposed to comply with the new Act by 2008, but under pressure from governors and civil liberties groups, the Bush administration have given states another year and a half to comply with the REAL ID Act. The fact that we have something looming isn’t what concerned me most. What concerned me most was that I polled about 20 people I know and not one of them knew what it was. Heck, I knew what it was but really hadn’t paid it much attention until I realized that the original deadline was a year away. I am definitely not trying to start a debate here but if you want to know more about it here are some links for you.

There are lots of other articles and resources available. I’m as guilty as the next tech community person, but if you spend most of your time reading Tech Crunch and never read the New York Times…maybe you should.

For the record it’s things like this that have people concerned..”States must submit a plan of how they’ll comply with the Real ID Act by October 7, 2007. If they don’t, their residents will not be able to use IDs to board planes or enter federal buildings starting on May 11, 2008.”

Someone out there please tell me they knew about this and not just the latest Ajax and Ruby on Rails news.

Comments for “So What’s The Deal with Real ID?”

  • Madison Rabe

    March 5th, 2007

    I think the Real ID Act is an absolute scandal. The interlinking of databases on such a large scale is a huge identity theft risk. Implementing “a common machine-readable technology” would allow the government to track our daily movements. Moreover, the act is terribly expensive. And to what end? Increased security? This will work about as well as the War on Drugs (or Prohibition for that matter). This is an awfully expensive way to annoy benign illegal aliens.

    And if that wasn’t scalding enough, check out thisReal ID Act rant.

  • Jeff Green

    March 5th, 2007

    Yep all it takes is one hacker to get into the database and hundreds of millions of IDs would be at risk. I am the first one to say that some of the ID practices used in Federal building and by the FAA should be drastically improved. I don’t think this is the way to do it.

  • John

    March 6th, 2007

    I’ve been trackint the issues of REAL ID since I first saw it passed in May 2005. I’m a Republican (conservative), but when I saw this pass, my first thought was “The Republicans are betraying us.” I still feel that way.

    There is nothing conservative about this legislation. It is a major step forward in big government intrusion.

    I’ve also got real questions about the spirit of the 4th Amendment.

    We’re moving from “innocent until proven guilty” to “suspicious/guilty until properly identified.”

    No wonder so many people despise this law.

    Is this what America is all about?

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