“He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.” Revelation 13:16-17
We are now less than a year away from the deadline for states to comply with the federal Real ID Act, buried inside a spending bill that passed – virtually without debate – in the throes of anti-terrorism furor and signed into law by President Bush two years ago this month.
By next May 12 all state-issued driver’s licenses and alternative identifications must include the following information:
- Full legal name
- Date of Birth
- Gender
- DL or ID card number
- Digital photograph
- Principal residence address
- Signature
- Physical security features
- Machine Readable Zone
That last feature is needed to contain all the data and may be either a credit card type “swipe strip” or a Radio Frequency Identification tag, called an “RFID chip,” like those currently used to remotely track products and identify lost pets via low-power radio waves.
Though maintained by the individual states, the information will be mutually available among them, as well as to the federal government, effectively creating a national database accessible from tens of thousands of locations throughout the country.
To acquire a new Real ID everyone – citizen and non-citizen alike – will have to appear in person at a Secretary of State office with the following, verifiable documentation:
- Proof of identity
- Proof of date of birth
- Proof of Social Security Number (or non-eligibility)
- Proof of residence address
- Proof of lawful status or citizenship (no foreign documents accepted except passports)
It is true that under the US Constitution the federal government has no authority to impose a national identity card on American citizens.
Indeed, the 10th Amendment explicitly declares that all powers not delegated to the federal government “are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
But Big Brother is not so easily frustrated in his determination to watch you (for your own good, you understand.) So he is resorting to the tried-and-true alternative to a direct mandate: extortion.
State-issued driver’s licenses that are not Real ID compliant will, after May 11, 2008, no longer be accepted by the federal government as valid identification for any of its purposes including:
- Boarding a commercial airplane
- Entering secure federal facilities – including courthouses
- Receiving Social Security benefits
- Opening an account at a federally-chartered bank or conducting any federally regulated financial transaction
- Any other purpose per rules to be promulgated by the Department of Homeland Security
In other words the federal government has made it “so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark” of its national ID.
But the good news (for those of us who still harbor the quaint notion that we ought to be presumed innocent until there is, at minimum, probable cause to believe otherwise) is that we are seeing the biggest 10th Amendment showdown in nearly a century and half.
Eleven states have already passed resolutions or enacted legislation opposing Real ID. Two of them – Montana and Washington – have flat out defied the federal government and prohibited their motor vehicle departments from adopting the mandated driver’s license modifications.
Hopefully, Michigan will become the third. If not out of a patriotic belief in the free republic of sovereign states bequeathed to us by our forebears, at least to preempt the creation of the penultimate treasure trove for identity thieves.
The sad thing about all of this is that the whole premise upon which the Real ID is founded – that verifying an individual’s identity will somehow prevent terrorism – is manifestly false. In point of fact, only two of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers would not have qualified for a Real ID. And none of the rest of them (logically enough) bothered to use false identification in their suicide mission in any case.
The terrifying thing is that we are now only one step removed from having the federal government end the identification problem once and for all – by mandating that the data be put into an RFID microchip that is simply inserted under the skin.
Say, for instance, on your right hand or your forehead.
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