REAL ID – Page 12 – Papers, Please!

Jan 28 2008

The Guys At ID Smart Aren’t Very Clever

ID Smart Spam

Jan 11 2008

The REAL ID Final Rules Are Out

While we plow through the several hundred pages of text and figure-out precisely how heinous this National ID card scheme is, feel free to read it yourself:

Part the First
Part the Second

Jun 29 2007

Ordinary people wrote their Senators against Real ID

Part of why the Senate voted to debate the amendment which would have cut Real National ID out of the Immigration Bill is because thousands of ordinary Americans sent them faxes asking them to remove those provisions. These messages were written by ordinary folks, in their own words. Read those moving faxes to Senators on Real ID here.

Jun 29 2007

Did Real National ID help derail the immigration bill?

We think so. Ars Technica asks the question. So does Declan McCullagh on CNet News. Montana Senators Baucus and Tester, who filed the amendment on which the bill foundered, are happy to take the credit.

Jun 29 2007

Former Congressman Bob Barr opposes Real ID

Bob Barr is a former conservative hate-monger who somehow found his moral compass. He is now preaching tolerance of gays in the military, ending the drug war, repealing Real National ID, and most recently taking the Real National ID requirement out of the immigration bill. He is the first politician who straightforwardly says, “no America citizen should have to prove to a government entity who they are in order to obtain or retain employment.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

The thread that runs through all these issues is honoring the rights of individuals to make their own choices without being tracked or coerced by the nanny state. Welcome to your sanity, Bob; we hope you keep it a long time.

Jun 26 2007

Today is Your Day to Stop Real ID

We have less than 48 hours to stop our nation from having a National ID card scheme.

The US Senate is scheduled to vote either today or tomorrow on two amendments that will remove Real ID provisions from the immigration bill.

Real ID is a very, very real national identification card. Sixteen states have passed legislation rejecting REAL ID: now it’s time for the Senate to do their part.

You can fax your Senators and take immediate action by visiting:

http://unrealid.com/action.html

Jun 09 2007

New Hampshire Legislature blocks federal Real ID – Gov says he’ll sign

Mew Hampshire Legislature blocks federal Real ID – A Concord Monitor Article

Jun 06 2007

Ask your Senator TODAY to keep Real ID out of Immigration bill

As mentioned in the last article, the Feds are trying to ratchet up the punishment for states which refuse to implement the Real National ID that they slipped into a bill last year. Their latest trick is to declare that if you are a citizen of a state that rejects Real National ID, you won’t be able to legally hold a job. (Of course, preventing innocents from supporting themselves is unconstitutional, violating a fundamental freedom that existed before the Constitution, but don’t expect the quisling courts to save you.) Montana’s legislature decisively rejected Real National ID, and its two senators have offered Senate Amendment 1236 to the pending Senate immigration bill, S. 1348. The amendment would strip out all the Real National ID provisions from the immigration bill. This will be voted up or down on the Senate floor on Thursday, June 7, 2007.

Please call both of your Senators and ask them to vote FOR this amendment 1236 that removes Real ID from the immigration bill. Real ID — National ID — is a terrible, dangerous idea, and the Senate should repeal it rather than penalizing citizens of states that choose not to participate.

The objectionable provision is hidden on page 222-223 of this 790-page bill. It’s in Section 274A. Section (a)(1)(B) makes it unlawful “to hire, or to recruit or refer for a fee, for employment in the United States an individual unless such employer meets the requirements of subsections (c) and (d).” Subsection (c), “Document verification requirements”, requires “the employer shall attest, under penalty of perjury and on a form prescribed by the Secretary, that the employer has verified the identity and eligibility for employment of the individual by examining a document described in sub-paragraph (B).” (c)(1)(B) defines “Identification documents”: “(i) in the case of an individual who is a national of the United States– (I) a United States passport; or (II) a driver’s license or identity card issued by a State, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or an outlying possession of the United States that satisfies the requirements of division B of Public Law 109-13 (119 Stat. 302).” Division B of PL 109-13 is the Real ID Act. Put that all together — if an employer doesn’t see your Real ID driver’s license (or a passport), it’s unlawful for them to hire you.

Jun 05 2007

Real National ID is dead; get a clue

Stateline.org has noticed the Real ID controversy, but hasn’t figured out what’s going on. They keep reporting blather about how “citizens of states that are not compliant would be unhappy when they realize they can’t use their driver’s licenses to board flights“. They haven’t figured out yet that no federal statute can disenfranchise every citizen of Nevada, Washington, Montana, and New Hampshire from their fundamental rights. The federal government cannot constitutionally pass a law that prohibits Montanans from flying to Texas — or that prevents them from entering a federal courthouse to witness a public trial.

The states are no longer in post-9/11 mania; they are showing sense. The Feds are still trying to milk the mania long past the public’s former tolerance, as if they can’t quite believe the years of carte blanche are over. As usual when someone questions its authority, the Federal response is to ratchet up the punishment. Now there’s a bill in the Senate claiming that no citizen of those four states will be able to legally hold a job! The Feds might as well straightforwardly declare them “unpersons” and order that they be shot on sight. Their fellow unperson employers will just ignore that federal pronouncement, too.

And the excuse for this shoddy regimentation? There’s a secret blacklist of people who the US Government believes are so innocent that they can’t be arrested, nor put on the “Most Wanted” list — but so dangerous they can’t be given the same rights as everybody else, and can’t challenge their dalit status in a court. Can you say “claptrap”? I knew you could. So, the reason all 300 million citizens of the US need to get their Real National ID card is so the Feds will know that anybody who has such a card isn’t one of these few thousand dangerous people on the no-fly blacklist. That’s the reason. Ask DHS if you don’t believe me.

There’s a word for when a government is totally concerned with whether the paperwork about you was properly filed in their database, and totally unconcerned with whether you are an innocent person just trying to exercise the basic rights of your life, like freedom of movement, observing the workings of government, the right to work, and liberty of contract. I’ll let you recall it yourself.

May 17 2007

What’s the risk of a national ID card?

Some people don’t understand why we oppose a national ID card. “It’s just a piece of paper,” they say. “What does it matter?”

Historian and law professor Eric Muller of the University of North Carolina has been trying to find out exactly what happened to his great-uncle Leopold Muller, who was deported from his home in Germany in 1942 and never heard from again by those of his family who survived. Most likely, he was eventually murdered at the death camp called Belzec.

Recently, in the course of his research, Eric found his Uncle Leopold’s German national ID card. He also found his Uncle Leopold’s medals for his service in the German army in World War I, during which he lost the use of one arm. But his Kemmkarte identified him boldly on the cover as Jew, not a decorated war veteran. Perhaps that’s why he arrived at the “evacuation” center without his ID card:

The Jew Leopold Israel Müller … will be evacuated to the East on April 25, 1942. He alleges that on April 24, 1942, he lost the kennkarte that he formerly had in his possession…. Müller is therefore without identification papers.

Was the ID card “just a piece of paper” to the Nazis? Was it sufficient that they had the person they wanted in their custody, and would soon send him to his death? No. They immedietely sent the police to search his empty house, find his kennkarte, and dutifully forward it after him (although by the time it arrived, he had been sent on, presumably to his death). The card itself mattered. To “lose” the card was, perhaps, to escape the fatal consequences of the definition it imposed.

Eric tells the story much more eloquently than we could. But what we think is noteworthy in contemporary context is the importance the national ID card played in defining the individual, and involuntarily binding the actual person to the designation (in his case, “Jew”) and categorization imposed on him by the government.

We are people, entitled to define (and redefine) ourselves. We are not, and we should not be, “identified” solely by which pigeon-hole(s) a government decides to put us in.

Papers, Please!

The Identity Project

Papers, Please!

The Identity Project

Category Archives: REAL ID

The Guys At ID Smart Aren’t Very Clever

The REAL ID Final Rules Are Out

Ordinary people wrote their Senators against Real ID

Did Real National ID help derail the immigration bill?

Former Congressman Bob Barr opposes Real ID

Today is Your Day to Stop Real ID

New Hampshire Legislature blocks federal Real ID – Gov says he’ll sign

Ask your Senator TODAY to keep Real ID out of Immigration bill

Real National ID is dead; get a clue

What’s the risk of a national ID card?