A bipartisan proposal to withdraw the state of Maine from compliance with the Federal REAL-ID Act of 2005 had its first hearing today (archived video) before the Joint Standing Committee on Transportation of the Maine State Legislature.

The REAL-ID withdrawal bill, LD 160, was presented to the Transportation Committee by state Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn) and state Sen. Nicole Grohowski (D-Ellsworth), two of the six co-sponsors.

Public testimony in support of LD 160 was given by:

• Edward Hasbrouck (The Identity Project)
• Michael Kebede (ACLU of Maine)
• Matt Flanders (Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom)
• Harris Van Pate (Maine Policy Institute)

There was no public testimony against LD 160. The only opposition to the bill was voiced by Maine’s Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows.

Secretary of State Bellows struggled to explain her current support for REAL-ID compliance, in light of her history of opposition to the REAL-ID Act and Maine state compliance in her former positions as Executive Director of the ACLU of Maine and Maine State Senator.

Today, Secretary of State Bellows claimed, falsely — even after Mr. Kebede of the ACLU quoted the provisions of the REAL-ID Act requiring sharing with all other states of the contents of the state’s driver’s license database — that all of this information remains in the state of Maine. Secretary of State Bellows also claimed, also falsely, that the Federal government could not access the national REAL-ID database, SPEXS.

In fact, the SPEXS database is held by AAMVA, not by any Federal or state government agency. The Federal government could obtain access to SPEXS with a search warrant, subpoena, or national security letter directed to AAMVA, the same way it could obtain similar records from any private custodian. That order to AAMVA could include a “gag order” prohibiting AAMVA from disclosing the existence of the order or the release of SPEXS records to Maine, other states, or affected individuals. For all we, Secretary of State Bellows, or anyone in Maine knows, this may already have happened.

Members of the Transportation Committee seemed surprised — understandably — to learn from our testimony and that of other sponsors and supporters of LD 160 that the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles already uploaded personally identifying information extracted from all Maine driver’s license records to the SPEXS national ID database in December 2024.

Later in the same hearing, the Transportation Committee heard testimony from some of the same witnesses with respect to LD 1360, a well-meaning but inevitably flawed alternate legislative proposal to require the BMV to maintain the option of a “noncompliant” driver’s license or state ID. The  problem with this is that those who get a noncompliant license or ID will think they have opted out of the national ID system, but their information will end up in the same SPEXS national ID database.

Secretary of State Bellows first tried to say that there was no such database, then that it only contained information concerning REAL-ID compliant licenses and IDs, but finally conceded that Maine actually has only one driver’s license and ID database that includes both compliant and noncompliant credentials. Pointers extracted from all records in this state database, including both compliant and noncompliant licenses and IDs, have been and are continuing to be uploaded to SPEXS. And those pointer records, as we pointed out, contain sensitive personal information vulnerable to abuse.

Here’s our 3-minute statement in support of LD 160 (full written submission):

Senator Nangle, Representative Crafts, members of the Committee:

My name is Edward Hasbrouck, and I represent the Identity Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit project focused on ID requirements and their impact on human rights.

We urge that LD 160 ought to pass.

LD 160 is necessary to remove Mainers’ personal information from the national REAL-ID database – a database that has grave potential for abuse.

If a state chooses to comply with the REAL-ID Act, it must “Provide electronic access to all other States” to its driver’s license database. The only way to do this is to upload information about all licenses to the national ID database, SPEXS. The Maine BMV did this on December 15th of last year, although most Mainers have no idea that their information was just added to this national database.

The TSA says that SPEXS isn’t a “Federal” database because it isn’t operated by the Federal government. But that’s part of the problem: If SPEXS were operated by a Federal agency, it would be subject to the Privacy Act, the Computer Matching Act, and so forth. But SPEXS is operated by AAMVA, a nominally “private” entity not subject to any of the privacy, transparency, or accountability laws that apply to government agencies.

Once data is uploaded to SPEXS, neither individuals nor Maine officials know for sure to whom AAMVA has disclosed it, including whether Federal agencies have obtained this data and ordered AAMVA not to disclose this fact to states.

SPEXS is a time bomb that could be weaponized against Mainers by the current or any future Federal administration.

For example, the “pointers” uploaded by Maine to SPEXS include current gender identities, but Fderal records show sex as assigned at birth. Matching of SPEXS data against Federal records would be the easiest way to generate a national list of transgender and non-binary individuals to single out for discrimination.

The only way to prevent this sort of abuse is not to upload records to SPEXS – which would preclude compliance with the REAL-ID Act.

Don’t be intimidated by threats that if Maine opts out of REAL-ID, Mainers won’t be allowed to fly.

In court, the TSA has stated repeatedly that no law requires airline passengers to have any ID.

People fly without ID every day. Records released to us by the TSA show that 98% of travelers who showed up at airports without ID or with “unacceptable” ID — almost 2,000 people a day — were allowed to fly.

The latest TSA statement, last Friday, says that “Passengers who present [ID] that is not REAL ID compliant can expect delays [and] additional screening…. TSA … will continue with additional screening measures for those without a REAL ID.” That doesn’t mean they won’t be allowed to fly.

We urge you to support LD 160 and expungement of Mainers’ personal information from the SPEXS database.

No vote was taken today. The next step in consideration of LD 160 will be a “work session” and vote on a recommendation to the full legislature by the Transportation Committee.