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Category Archives: REAL ID

Jan 13 2016

Bills to repeal the REAL-ID Act introduced in Congress

Bills to repeal the REAL-ID Act of 2005 were introduced yesterday in both houses of Congress by the members of Montana’s Congressional and Senate delegation:

Sen. Daines: “Montanans have spoken loud and clear: we don’t want REAL ID and we don’t want the federal government infringing on our personal privacy. The Repeal ID Act ensures Montanans’ voices are heard and will help strike the right balance that protects our security while also safeguarding Montanans’ civil liberties.”

Sen. Tester: “REAL ID violates the constitutional freedoms of law-abiding Americans and has no place in Montana. I will continue my fight to protect Montanans from this costly overreach that invades privacy and forces local taxpayers to foot the bill.”

Rep. Zinke: “Rolling back these Washington mandates is important to ensure Montana’s state sovereignty. While maintaining security standards is important, we cannot allow the federal government to infringe on our right to privacy and strip Montana of our state sovereignty.”

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Jan 08 2016

DHS doubles down on its big lie about ID to fly

Just days after posting an out-and-out lie on DHS.gov about whether states that want to comply with the REAL-ID Act have to give other states unconditional access to their drivers’ license and ID database (they do, contrary to what the DHS claims), the DHS has posted an equally blatant lie about whether domestic air travelers do or will have to show ID (they don’t and they won’t, contrary to what the DHS claims).

Today’s whopper is part of a press release attributed to Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, announcing arbitrary dates for “enforcement” of alleged REAL-ID Act requirements. One might expect those dates and requirements to be spelled out in the U.S. Code or in regulations published in the Federal Register. But rulemaking by press release, Web posting, or Tweet has become the norm for the DHS as part of its enforcement of standardless, discretionary, and secret adminstrative “law”.

Today’s announcement by the DHS comes in the midst of a new round of vigorous debate by state officials as to whether to agree to comply with requirements of the REAL-ID Act that they continue to find objectionable — especially with respect to its mandate for a distributed but integated and nationally accessible ID database. It also comes almost simultaneously with the introduction in both houses of Congress of bills to repeal the REAL-ID Act.

The REAL-ID Act does not purport to create any legal obligation on states to comply. It can’t: The Federal government has no authority to compel the enactment of state legislation. If financial carrots in the form of Federal grants to fund REAL-ID Act implementation aren’t sufficient to win over states that stand up for their residents’ rights, the only stick the Federal government has available to induce those states to comply with the REAL-ID Act is the threat to harass, delay, or prevent residents of those states from traveling by air.

Today’s DHS press release and Tweet make that threat explicit.

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Jan 08 2016

The REAL-ID Act is about the database

At yesterday’s first meeting of a new Minnesota “Legislative Working Group on REAL-ID Compliance“, state lawmakers’ concerns centered on (1) whether residents showing state-issued IDs will be prevented from boarding domestic flights, or harassed and delayed by the TSA, if the state doesn’t agree to “comply” with the REAL-Act Act to the satisfaction of the DHS, and (2) what compliance with the REAL-ID Act would mean for the state’s database of information about people with Minnesota drivers’ licenses or state ID cards.

The DHS has been trying to mislead state officials and the public about both these issues. Understanding both, and separating fact from DHS fiction and innuendo, is key to understanding the REAL-ID Act.

A report from a legislative analyst with the legislature’s research department distributed at yesterday’s meeting asserts that, “At some unspecified point in time (which could be in 2016), a REAL ID-compliant form of documentation will become required to fly in scheduled airline service.” But — oddly for a purported legislative analysis or research report — no authority is cited for this alleged legal “requirement”.

In fact, as we testified yesterday and as we have confirmed through more than a decade of litigation, research, and FOIA requests, this key claim — the threat being used by the DHS to induce reluctant states to accede to DHS requests for “compliance” — has no basis in any publicly-disclosed law or regulation.

People fly without ID every day, and the TSA has procedures for that, as we’ve heard them testify in court. People without ID may be (unlawfully) harassed and delayed at TSA checkpoints and airline check-in counters, but the TSA’s responses to our FOIA requests for its daily reports on how many people try to fly without ID show that almost all of these people are allowed to fly. And those few people who are prevented by the TSA from traveling by air, like the larger numbers who are harassed or delayed by the TSA merely because they don’t show ID or answer other questions, likely have cause for legal action against the TSA. They deserve the support of the states where they reside.

If you lose your wallet and find out the next day that your mother is dying 2,000 miles away, as happened to a friend of ours in St. Paul just before Christmas, you don’t have time to get your driver’s license replaced or take a bus across the country. You need to get on a plane right away, without ID. That’s what our friend did, and fortunately she got there in time. The TSA isn’t going to try to stop you from seeing your mother before she dies. That’s not a case the TSA wants to take to court, or would be likely to win.

But what’s this other question about the database?

To meet the requirements of the REAL-ID-Act, a state must “Provide electronic access to all other States to information contained in the motor vehicle database of the State,” including, “all data fields printed on drivers’ licenses and identification cards issued by the State.” In effect, this would allow state databases to function as part of a distributed but national ID database system.

The DHS has picked out only a subset of the statutory requirements in the REAL-ID Act to consider in deciding whether to exercise its statutorily standardless discretion to certify whether states are making progress toward compliance or to grant them discretionary waivers of “deadlines” which have been set by the DHS in its discretion, and can be and have been repeatedly postponed in the exercise of that same discretion.

The initial DHS-selected criteria don’t include the requirement in the law for nationwide access by state agencies to other states’ drivers’ license and ID databases. DHS undoubtedly knows that this is one of the most objectionable, and potentially one of the most difficult and costly to implement, of the elements of state “compliance” with the REAL-ID Act, and has tried to downplay or deny the plain language in the law requiring unrestricted interstate access to drivers’ license databases. Including full interstate database access in its “compliance” criteria also would probably compel DHS, if it was to be honest, to concede that no state has yet fully complied with the REAL-ID Act.

But state officials shouldn’t be fooled: A state that agrees to “comply” with the REAL-ID Act is agreeing to comply with all of its provisions, including the database access mandate, not just the less objectionable portions that the DHS has decided to focus on first.

Once a state agrees to comply, it no longer has any leverage to move Congress to change those requirements. The only power a state has to exert pressure for change in the REAL-ID Act requirements, or their repeal, is to withhold state agreement to comply until those requirements are amended to its satisfaction, repealed, or overturned by the courts as unconstitutional.

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Jan 07 2016

Minnesota Legislative Working Group on REAL-ID Act Compliance

We attended and testified at the first meeting of Minnesota’s “Legislative Working Group on REAL-ID Act Compliance” today in St. Paul. Like other states, Minnesota has been told (falsely) that it’s the only state that isn’t planning to “comply” with the Federal requests in the REAL-ID Act, and (also falsely) that Minnesota residents will be prevented from boarding domestic airline flights if the state doesn’t agree to “comply”.

You can watch the full meeting here (our testimony is at 1:37-1:40 of the video).

Here’s what we told Minnesota legislators (Download as PDF):

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Jan 04 2016

DHS posts new lies about the REAL-ID Act

In response to a flurry of publicity kicked off by a story last week in the New York Times in which we were quoted, the DHS has posted several new or updated pages about the REAL-ID Act on its website, including a new page headed, “REAL ID and You: Rumor Control“.

Not surprisingly, the DHS is still lying about what the REAL-ID Act requires. According to the new “Rumor Control” page on DHS.gov:

Rumor: The Department of Homeland Security is trying to build a national database with all of our information

Fact: REAL ID does not build a national database nor does it grant the Federal Government or another state access to a state’s driver’s license data. States and territories will continue to … maintain its own records, and determine who may access those records

This is a lie. The text of the REAL-ID Act, Title II, Section 202(d)(12), is clear and unambiguous:

(d) To meet the requirements of this section, a State shall adopt the following practices in the issuance of drivers’ licenses and identification cards:…

(12) Provide electronic access to all other States to information contained in the motor vehicle database of the State.

(13) Maintain a State motor vehicle database that contains, at a minimum —

(A) all data fields printed on drivers’ licenses and identification cards issued by the State; and
(B) motor vehicle drivers’ histories, including motor vehicle violations, suspensions, and points on licenses.

The REAL-ID Act won’t require you to show ID to fly. But unless the REAL-ID Act is repealed by Congress, it will require states to grant all other states access to drivers license and state ID data or risk having the DHS try to harass residents of those states that don’t participate.

As we’ve discussed previously, the main point of the REAL-ID Act is to intimidate or otherwise induce state governments into creating a distributed national ID databases, through which a single query roted through a national “hub” (operated by a private contractor, the AAMVA) will be able to retrieve data, including standardized digital photographs, from the drivers’ license and ID databases of all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and US territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, etc.).

The DHS is lying about what the REAL-ID Act requires because it knows that the real point of the law is the distributed national database and its contents, and because most of the opposition to the law by individuals, civil liberties advocates, and state legislators and governors is based on opposition to this distributed but functionally integrated and national database.

Since the DHS has no authority to compel state governments to “comply” with the REAL-ID Act, the DHS is relying on threats — most of them empty. The latest official statements posted on DHS.gov send a clear message to state officials trying to decide what to do about the REAL-ID Act. That message is that the DHS lies about the REAL-ID Act.

If you want to know whether the REAL-ID Act (or any provision of Federal law or regulations) even purports to require anyone to show any ID to fly, read the law: It doesn’t.

If you want to know whether the REAL-ID Act would require states that want to “comply” to connect their state drivers’ license and ID databases to the national “hub” that gives all other states root access to that database, read the law: It does.

Don’t believe the DHS lies, and don’t take DHS threats at face value.

Dec 28 2015

You don’t have to show any ID to fly

We’re quoted in an article today in the New York Times about the Federal government’s efforts to use the threat of denial of air travel to scare state legislators into connecting their state drivers license and ID databases to the distributed national “REAL-ID” database through the REAL-ID “hub” operated by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA).

We welcome the Times’ coverage of this issue. But some readers might be misled by the Times’ headline, “T.S.A. Moves Closer to Rejecting Some State Driver’s Licenses for Travel“.

As Edward Hasbrouck of the Identity Project, who was quoted in the New York Times story, discussed in detail in this presentation earlier this year at the Cato Institute in Washington, the most important thing you need to know about this issue is that you do not — and you will not, regardless of how or when the TSA “implements” the REAL-ID Act — need to show any ID to fly. People fly, legally, every day, without showing any ID, and that will continue to be the case. You have a legal right to fly, and the REAL-ID Act does not and cannot deprive you of that right.

The TSA often lies in its public statements, including on its website and on signs at airports, and claims that airline passengers “must” or are “required” to have and to show government-issued photo ID. Currently, the page on TSA.gov headed “Identification” begins with the knowingly false and deliberately misleading statement, “Adult passengers 18 and over must show valid identification at the airport checkpoint in order to travel.” But the consistent official position of the TSA in court has been that no law, no TSA regulation, and no policy or practice of the TSA — not even the secret TSA “Standard Operating Procedures” (SOPs) and other secret TSA orders to its checkpoint staff and contractors — requires anyone to show any ID to pass through TSA checkpoints and travel by air.

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Sep 15 2015

California Dreamin’

Stumbling into the embrace of the homeland-security state, California’s state legislature has sent to Governor Jerry Brown a bill which, unless the Governor vetoes it by October 11th, will require that:

[T]he Department [of Motor Vehicles] shall require an applicant for an original driver’s license or identification card to submit satisfactory proof of California residency and that the applicant’s presence in the United States is authorized under federal law.

A.B. 1465 is unnecessary, would create severe problems for many Californians, and would discourage both immigrants to the US and residents of other states from moving to California.

As our friend Jim Harper of the Cato Institute has noted, the intent of  A.B. 1465 appears to be to make it easier for the DHS to claim that California is making “progress” toward compliance with the REAL-ID Act.

Why would Californians want that?

The DHS has repeatedly threatened that if states don’t comply with the REAL-ID Act, including connecting their state drivers license and ID databases to the outsourced REAL-ID “hub” operated by the AAMVA, residents of those states won’t be allowed through Federal checkpoints at airports and at entrances to Federal facilities.

But as we discussed here and here and in this presentation at Cato earlier this year, these threats are hollow.

The TSA allows people to fly without ID every day, despite false notices in airports that ID is required.

As for access to federal buildings, the DHS says that “REAL-ID does not apply to … applying for or receiving Federal benefits, … accessing hospitals and health clinics…, or constitutionally protected activities.”

We’re not sure why else ordinary people would want to access most Federal facilities.

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Jun 22 2015

Will the REAL-ID Act deny you access to Federal facilities?

As we’ve noted in our previous commentaries on the REAL-ACT in this blog and in our recent presentation at the Cato Institute, there are two components to the threats against individual residents of “noncompliant” states (and territories and the District of Columbia) that are being used by the DHS to try to induce reluctant state governments to incorporate their state drivers license and ID databases to the distributed national REAL-ID database by connecting them to the contractor-operated REAL-ID hub:

  1. Threatened denial of common carrier airline transportation to individuals who present drivers licenses or other ID credentials issued by noncompliant states; and
  2. Threatened denial of access to (certain) Federal facilities to these individuals.

The first of these threats appears to be hollow. The TSA has consistently argued, when demands for ID from air travelers have been challenged in court, that no ID credentials at all are required to fly.

The TSA claims the right to subject any traveler to more intrusive search and interrogation, without probable cause, and may use this arbitrary power against residents of states that don’t comply with the REAL-ID Act. But the TSA appears to realize that it has no legal authority for outright denial of air travel to people who don’t have, or decline to carry or show to the TSA or its contractors, government-issued ID credentials, REAL-ID Act compliant or not.

With respect to its threat to deny access to Federal facilities, the DHS (in its usual fashion of rulemaking by press release) has posted an announcement on its website that this will be implemented in phases determined by the “Federal Security Level” (FSL) assigned to individual facilities.

But what are the facilities, if any, to which these levels have been assigned, and to which individuals with ID from noncompliant states will therefore be denied access? We’ve filed a series of Freedom of Information Act requests to find out.

The responses to our FOIA requests suggest that this prong of the REAL-ID Act enforcement cattle prod is, to mix metaphors, a paper tiger. We’ve been unable to find any Federal facility to which such an FSL has actually been assigned.

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Apr 09 2015

Why did the TSA prevent these people from flying?

Documents newly released to us by the TSA strongly suggest that the TSA has been lying about whether people are “allowed” by the TSA to fly without showing ID, and that decisions about whether to allow travelers to fly without ID are being made arbitrarily, on the basis of irrelevant and unreliable commercial data and/or at the “discretion” of individual field-level TSA staff.  The TSA documents also show that, at least for the limited sample of data initially released, the “false-positive” rate of watch-list matches is 100%.

The TSA has for many years been contradicting itself, both in word and in deed, as to whether travelers are required show government-issued (or any other) ID credentials in order to fly, or whether it is possible to fly without ID.

TSA signs at airports say that passengers are “required” to show ID. But the TSA has repeatedly told courts at all levels — from in camera (secret) submissions to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Gilmore v. Gonzales in 2006 to public testimony of the TSA’s witness in the (unsuccessful) state court frame-up of Phil Mocek in Albuquerque in 2011 — that these and other official TSA notices to passengers are false, that ID is not required to fly, and that the TSA does have (secret) “procedures” that allow people to fly without having or showing ID.

The TSA’s actions are equally bipolar.  People who say they have lost their ID cards or had them stolen are “allowed” to fly every day.  But people who the TSA deems (for secret or not-so-secret reasons, or completely arbitrarily) to  be”suspicious” or “uncooperative” are routinely subjected to retaliation and summary sanctions including denial of  their right to travel.  Mr. Mocek, for example, was both prevented from boarding the flight for which he had a valid ticket, and falsely arrested by local police at the behest of TSA staff, when he tried to fly without ID and to document the process that the TSA claimed would have allowed him to do so.

What’s the real story? From our close reading of the available evidence, it appears that:

  1. There are no publicly-disclosed “rules” (and probably not even any unambiguous secret rules) defining what is or is not permitted or required of travelers at TSA checkpoints, or what conditions the TSA imposes on the exercise of the right to travel by air.
  2. The TSA claims to have the legal authority, and in practice exercises actual power, to determine who to allow to fly, and who not to allow to fly, in an entirely secret, standardless, and arbitrary manner, at its sole discretion, which discretion is often delegated to front-line TSA staff.

How does this work in practice? We are just beginning to find out.

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Mar 23 2015

Smile for the camera, citizen!

The Department of Homeland Security is extending its photography of travelers at US border crossings, ports, and international airports from foreign nationals to US citizens entering and leaving our own country.

On January 5, 2004, under an “interim final rule” for the “US-VISIT” program effective the same day it was published in the Federal Register, agents of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began fingerprinting and photographing foreign visitors on their arrival and again on their departure from the US.

At first, only those foreign citizens who required visas to enter the US were given this treatment.  A few countries. starting with Brazil, took this as a sign of their “least favored nation” status with the US government, and reciprocated by photographing and fingerprinting US citizens arriving in and departing from their countries. Many other countries didn’t take things quite so far, but partially reciprocated to the extent of increasing their visa or entry fees for US visitors, or imposing new fees where entry for US tourists had been free, to match the US$135 minimum fee for a tourist or transit visa to the US for citizens of most other countries.

On August 31, 2004, under yet another “interim” rule effective the same day it was published, fingerprinting and photography at US airports and borders was extended to citizens of countries in the US “visa waiver program”.

For the third phase of expansion of US-VISIT fingerprinting and photography of border crossers, the DHS published a notice of proposed rulemaking in 2006, giving organizations and individuals a chance to object before the rules were finalized. But the numerous objections, including ours, were ignored. In December 2008, the DHS promulgated a final rule extending the fingerprinting and photography of visitors to all non-US citizens, including permanent US residents (green-card holders).

Now, without bothering to propose or finalize any new regulations, DHS has announced through a non-binding “Privacy Impact Assessment” (PIA) posted on its website that CBP is already conducting a “Facial Recognition Air Entry Pilot” program under which some unspecified fraction of US citizens entering the US by air are being required to submit to facial photography by CBP agents:

U.S. citizens with U.S. e-passports arriving at air ports of entry testing the technology may be selected to participate in the pilot at port discretion. Individuals that are selected do not have the option to opt out of this process.

Facial recognition software is being used to compare the photos to the digital photos stored on the RFID chips in US citizens’ passports, and to assign a score indicating the robot’s “confidence” that the photo in the passport and the photo taken at the airport depict the same person. “The facial recognition system is a tool to assist CBPOs [CBP officers] in the inspection process.”

The selection is supposedly random, but there is no specified limit on how large the percentage of US citizens subjected to this requirement might be:

Supervisory CBPOs (SCBPO) will set the standard for the random selection criteria and have discretion to change the criteria as needed. For example, the SCBPO may choose to select every fifth traveler but may change to every third or every seventh traveler at his or her discretion.

DHS has a history of prolonging and expanding “tests” as cover for de facto full implementation of controversial requirements. There’s nothing in this PIA to rule out the extension of the “pilot” program to nine out of ten arriving US citizens, or 99 out of 100.

Disturbingly but characteristically, DHS suggests that US citizens returning to our own country can be required to do whatever is necessary to “satisfy” CBP officers:

A person claiming U.S. citizenship must establish that fact to the examining [CBP] officer’s satisfaction [emphasis added] and must present a U.S. passport or alternative documentation as required by 22 CFR part 53. If such applicant for admission fails to satisfy the examining immigration officer that he or she is a U.S. citizen, he or she shall thereafter be inspected as an alien.

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