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:
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.
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.
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.
Auditors from the Government Accountability Office who reviewed the “Automated Targeting System” (who’s a target? anyone who travels) concluded that the DHS Customs and Burder Protection division “has not fully disclosed or assessed the privacy impacts of its use of personal information during international passenger prescreening as required by law.”
CBP has published public notices and reports that describe certain elements of its international prescreening process, but these documents do not fully or accurately describe CBP’s use of personal data throughout the passenger prescreening process. It is important for CBP’s documentation to describe all of the steps of the prescreening process because the interrelationship of various steps of the process allows data to be transferred and used in ways that have not been fully disclosed.
CBP’s international prescreening process involves a wide range of procedures and data sources that CBP utilizes to determine passenger risk levels. According to a CBP official, to help make these prescreening decisions, CBP collects personal data from multiple sources (including passengers and government databases), and uses the data for several purposes, including identity matching against the government watch list, risk targeting, and passenger document validation. According to CBP, its officers also use commercial data, to a limited degree, to assist them in confirming a passenger’s identity when needed. CBP’s public disclosures about APIS and ATS do not describe all of the data inputs or the extent to which the data are combined and used in making prescreening decisions.
That’s one of the specific complaint the Identity Project made in our original and supplementary comments to the DHS in response to its (late and legally inadequate) notices about the targeting system. The GAO report on airline passenger “screening” was submitted to Congress, and to the DHS, in November 2006, but a censored (“redacted”) version wasn’t made public until this week.
As we pointed out in our comments, it’s a crime under the Privacy Act for a Federal official to operate a system of records — to keep dossiers on U.S. citizens or residents — without legal authority and proper notice. Now the government’s own auditors have confirmed that those running this system to target travelers are, indeed, criminals.
Are the DHS’s “Privacy Officers” capable of policing their own colleagues’ criminal violations of the Privacy Act? If not, will anyone else step in to hold them accountable? Or will the public have to take matters into our own hands, by refusing to comply with unlawful, unconstitutional demands to surrender our human rights and freedom of movement?
Good news from the Last Frontier: The REAL ID Enabling Act of 2007 (HB3) failed to even get a floor vote in in the House before the Alaska state legislature adjourned for the year. There’s a chance the bill will be taken-up again next year, but Alaskans are an independent lot who don’t like being told they have to carry ‘papers’.
The Identity Project is proud to have testified at every hearing held on HB3; and was instrumental in drawing attention to the real problems with REAL ID.
State Rep Bob Lynn (R), a nice guy who should know better than to push totalitarian nonsense down the throats of his constituents, has been pimping REAL ID snake oil for several years. Fortunately, he hasn’t been terribly successful.
Alaskans need to remain vigilant. They’ll have their chance over the next couple of months as an IDP assisted lawsuit against the Alaska DMV for changing their drivers license rules goes forward in state court.
Real ID requires states to act as Federal agents in the unwise policy of turning our transportation systems into a dragnet for law enforcement. Americans must increasingly prove they are not on secret government lists in order to travel or generally function in their own country. This is wrong. Contrary to DHS’ mantra that “we must do everything to prevent terrorism,” we must not surrender our hard won liberty and then falsely believe ourselves safer or patriotic in doing so.
Other have addressed the financial cost and inconvenience this program imposes upon the states and their citizens, the violation of state sovereignty and the commandeering of their resources by the federal government, and the privacy and security concerns surrounding the gathering, maintaining, and sharing this huge amount of data. Briefly addressed here is whether the intended use of Real ID achieves its goals, and a warning that the path we are on is a dangerous one.
On May 1, 43 organizations encouraged citizens to submit public comments to stop the nation’s first national ID system: REAL ID. The groups represent privacy, consumer, labor, civil liberty, civil rights, and immigrant organizations, such as the American Library Association, AFL-CIO, Common Cause, National Council of La Raza, and Gun Owners of America. Read More
The European Commission is considering whether to revise or repeal its regulations governing Computerized Reservation Systems (CRS’s), including the provisions of those regulations protecting the privacy of personal information in airline reservations.
The Identity Project has filed comments with the Commission, urging that these privacy provisions be retained, strengthened, and enforced — not weakened or repealed.