With the states in an uprise against Real ID, there has been an attempt to mollify critics and avoid some of the criticisms of the original. In its new incarnation it’s called Pass ID.
On November 18th, the National Governors Association sent a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi noting “PASS ID offers better, more secure and less costly standards for driver’s licenses than REAL ID. It would alter REAL ID to allow state innovation in meeting security requirements and reduce costs by eliminating unnecessary requirements that do not increase the security and integrity of driver’s licenses and identification cards. It also addresses privacy concerns by protecting individuals’ personal information and takes the first step toward covering the cost of compliance by authorizing funds for all states to implement the law.
More on Real ID act
- The Real ID Act and New Mexico travelers: Bingaman and Udall's statement issued December 1st
- The issue of legal and illegal immigrants, passports for domestic travel and the Real ID act
- Passports for domestic travel, the Real ID Act: Albuquerque Journal editorial
- The Real ID Act and Passports for domestic travel: The issue of extensions
- States rebellion and noncompliance with the Real ID act: What is your state's position?
Some of the changes are an improvement. (For more infomation on Pass ID go to Thomas.loc.gov and search for S 1261 RS
Addresses on License The person's address of principal residence would appear, except– as provided for under section 827 of the Violence Against Women Act (Public Law 109-162); or for any individual who a State determines should be exempted from the requirement under this paragraph to protect the safety or security of the applicant.
In lieu of presenting a photo identity document a non-photo identity document is acceptable if it includes both the person's full name and date of birth.
However, it still requires states to forgo providing driver’s licenses to undocumented residents - the illegal immigrants. It still appears to create a giant, deep national database, which is one of the objections leveled. Security concerns are still there. Break into the national database and everyone’s information is compromised. But the other concern is that this is still comprehensive database of every legal resident in the country. The possibility for tracking individual citizens is still there, and it still creates the national ID, or the infamous grade B movie “papers” that many find unacceptable.
For a thoughtful look at the issues visit http://www.cato-at-liberty.org
Finally, this is still not an inexpensive program and during a time when all states and the federal government is facing massive shortfalls, does it make sense to spend money on this?
Realnightmare.org concurs calling the PASS ID Act of 2009: An Inadequate Fix for Real ID
(c) Neala Schwartzberg
Comments
So, the government will spend even more money and still not have a working solution. What else is new?
Thank you for keeping up with this.
I'm sure someone had the best of intentions for this (*cough*) and even if you ignore the other concerns, burdening states with an unfunded mandate of this magnitude right now is simply not prudent.
Somebody somewhere is going to pocket a bunch of $$$$ on this.
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