Stop Real ID
So I was a little curt in my bloviation the other day about the REAL ID forum. There’s good people doing real work to stop this thing, and they deserve your help and support.
Over 40 organizations representing transpartisan, nonpartisan, privacy, consumer, civil liberty, civil rights, and immigrant organizations have joined to launch a national campaign to solicit public comments on Real ID before the May 8 deadline … no matter what your political persuasion or individual perspective, you’re likely to find somebody there you agree with. See http://www.privacycoalition.org/stoprealid/ for more information.
To keep up with what else is going on with Real ID, subscribe to http://stoprealidnow.blogspot.com
Ensuring the integrity of authentication documents is a legitimate government concern.
The problem here is not RealID or the Wiretap laws, it is the specious political theory of the Unitary executive, a lawless administration that does not respect the constitution and a partisan Supreme Court that refuses to force it to do so.
The problem is the failure of the accountability infrastructure, not the technology itself.
We have a choice here, either we can have a RealID system with some protection against non-official use of the machine readable data or we can have a system in which there are no protections. That is the near term technical issue that can be addressed.
The accountability infrastructure is already healing itself via the ballot box. Voters want the system with checks and balances that the founders proposed, not the unchecked exercise of power the executive demands.
Phill,
If you want to compete with DHS for disengenuous statements, you’re going to have to do better. REAL ID isn’t about ensuring the integrity of authentication documents, it’s about denying the rights and privleges of citizenship to those without papers. It makes your ability to function in society a function of having papers.
Phill writes: “Ensuring the integrity of authentication documents is a legitimate government concern.”
And against what accurate database will the government authenticate documents, Phill? Oh, that’s right — we don’t have an accurate database because we can’t find out what info they have on us and there are no reliable and rapid means to correct errors.
The problem is the Real ID, because it does not protect against third parties gaining access to data that may or may not be accurate, and it creates a “Your papers, please” society.
It’s just post-9/11 hysteria at its worst — as is the use of warrantless surveillance.