ID Cards

Seen in the New York Times:

The battle over voting rights will expand this week as lawmakers in Missouri are expected to support a proposed constitutional amendment to enable election officials to require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote.[...]

The Missouri secretary of state, Robin Carnahan, a Democrat who opposes the measure, estimated that it could disenfranchise up to 240,000 registered voters who would be unable to prove their citizenship.

Now, I’ve been uncomfortable with the notion of requiring Voter ID.  I can understand the concerns by proponents of the concept, but the fact of the matter is that even in this day and age, some people lack photo ID.  Despite the difficulty in participating in society without identification, it’s not a requirement.

I realize that the Supreme Court supported Voter ID laws in part due to plaintiffs’ failure to produce anyone who really was impacted by the law.   However, I can’t help but think that the folks most likely to be impacted are also the folks least likely to complain about being impacted.

The expansion of such a measure only seems to aggravate the problem to me.   A little over a year ago, my wife and I had the experience of trying to secure new “proof of citizenship” for her, in advance of a cruise, since she had forgotten where her passport and birth certificate were.  The hoops we had to go through to get her a new copy of her birth certificate weren’t insurmountable…but that was only because we had net access at home, the means to easily copy some of the supporting documentation required, and spare cash to pay for the processing fees.

I can easily imagine how nearly-impossible the process might seem to a disadvantaged individual.

I’m reminded of something in the Constitution, the 24th Amendment:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

I know “ID” and “proof of citizenship” don’t translate to “poll tax or any other tax”… but for folks who don’t have the requisite documentation, it would seem that they will be required to shell out a few bucks to obtain that documentation…and that sounds like “other tax” to me.

This only fuels my suspicion that it’s time to move on from the increasingly-illusory belief that an ID is not mandatory in American society.   If you’re going to require identification to exercise one of the fundamental rights of citizenship, you might as well mandate that everyone possess identification documents, and help those without such papers to obtain them.

If we are going to slide down that slope, however, could we at least get some privacy protections to cushion our assimilation?

Seen at Threat Level:

Citizens of all 50 states are now free to board airplanes using their driver’s licenses—at least until 2010, after the final renegade anti-Real ID state—Maine—won a time extension Wednesday from deadlines attached to new federal identification rules.[...]

On Wednesday, Maine’s governor agreed to seek legislation to tighten licensing restrictions, including restricting licenses to residents and those who can prove their legal status in the United States. He did not, however, have to promise the changes would happen.

And thus we see that the SEP (Somebody Else’s Problem) field is fully functional at DHS, in these waning days of the Bush Administration.

It looks like the days of some folks being required to show a passport for domestic travel have been postponed. Wired’s Threat Level blog comments on DHS caving on South Carolina’s rebellion:

Despite blasting a defiant last day letter to the Homeland Security Department over pending federal rules Monday, South Carolina Republican governor Mark Sandford secured South Carolinians the right to use their driver’s licenses to board planes without being patted down, at least until 2010.[...]

It’s clear the rebel states won, according to Bill Scannell, a spokesman for the Identity Project which has been fighting against Real ID.

“Montana’s letter smirked,” Scannell said. “New Hampshire’s was down right disrespectful and you could see the scotch tape from where they cut-and-pasted pages from their DMV handbook.”

“But Sanford’s five-page letter was Fort Sumter-quality,” Scannell said, referring to the South Carolina military installation where the Civil War started.

That leaves Maine as the only rogue left rogue, though the state is likely to get its own extension late Monday.

A little while after this Threat Level post was made, the AP noted that Maine had been granted an extension to Wednesday to permit them to finish drafting a response, with approval expected later this week.

So, no internal passports required until at least 2010. A new administration will be in power, so from DHS’s POV, the matter is now for all practical purposes Someone Else’s Problem.

Seen in the New York Times, in a story discussing how Mainers and South Carolinians may have to get passports soon if the feds don’t blink on Real ID:

“There is no wiggle room in South Carolina law in terms of asking for an extension,” Joel Sawyer, the spokesman, said. “If Washington wants a more secure form of ID, then Washington ought to be able to pay for it.”

So do any Republicans at the federal level still remember the Contract With America? You know, that pledge that was signed back in 1994 by Congressional Republicans which included a provision of “no unfunded mandates”?

It’s not fair! 

There are so many things I’d like to blog about, but I have several piles of work (which I’m taking a lunchtime mental health break from) preventing me from doing much more than issuing a round of congratulations:

• Congratulations to folo and Rossmiller for so vigorously discussing the second person plural pronoun, “y’all”.  Having grown up in Memphis and also having spent time in L.A. (Lower Alabama), I feel perfectly comfortable observing: All y’all yankees seem to have a hard time with simple grammar.
   
• Congratulations to John McCain for clinching the GOP nomination to run for President.   And, Congratulations to Huckabee for finally acknowledging the inevitable, doing so very graciously without damaging his prospects to campaign for a kinder, gentler theocracy in the future.
   
• Congratulations to Hillary for winning the Rhode Island, Ohio, and Texas primaries.
   
• Congratulations to Obama for winning the Vermont primary, for likely winning the Texas caucuses, and for having emerged from yesterday’s contests without having lost too much of his lead in the delegate count.
   
• Congratulations or condolences are in order for Pennsylvanians, who will now be rewarded for their stalwart refusal to jump on the bandwagon for ever-earlier primaries.  They will likely receive the brunt of Hillary’s, Obama’s, and the media’s attention from now until their primary on 22 April.
   
• Condolences for Americans; considering word of irregularities in Ohio and Texas, it seems we still don’t know how to hold an election.
   
• Congratulations to the vast right-wing conspiracy for so effectively keeping the Dems’ battling over their nominee likely until the convention this summer.
   
• And finally, congratulations to Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and South Carolina, for sticking to their guns so far, and resisting the unfunded mandated privacy intrusion of Real ID.

One of the reasons I feel more comfortable going as “MikeTheActuary” online is because I have such common first and last names that it’s virtually an everyday occurrence for me to encounter someone with the same first and last name as mine.

(Heck, even my wife’s name is only one letter different….)

At least I’m not the only person with such a problem…and at least I haven’t had this problem yet (from the Commercial Appeal):

Hale’s driver’s license was suspended by the department, but she learned after waiting three hours Wednesday at a state office on Summer Avenue in Memphis that it was because of a case of mistaken identity.

Hale, a federal government worker in Memphis, has the same last name, the same date of birth and a similar first name to a woman from Mississippi who failed to take care of a traffic matter in Collierville.

While I’ve never been a fan of a formal National ID card system, or of the use of National ID numbers, the imprecision we face in this data-rich world from the imprecision of other means of automated identity verification does give rise to a good argument for such schemes.

Wisebread reminds us of the upcoming tightening of border controls, as well as the introduction of a new “Passport Card” to speed land crossings along:

Last year’s plan making a passport required for all international travel created a frenzy of applications for the document and sent the issuing system into gridlock. The result was a delay of the plan but it is still set to take effect by June, 2009.

This means that you will be required to present a passport, which now costs $97 for an adult and $82 for a child, in order to re-enter the United States. If you are planning a family vacation abroad this could mean a substantial additional cost.

However, if your travel plans involve a border crossing via land (to Canada or Mexico, for example) or sea (like a cruise to the Caribbean), then you may be able to take advantage of a new option, almost 50% cheaper. The new passport card is a wallet sized ID imprinted with a RFID chip. If all goes to plan, the cards will be available in February at the price of $45 for adults and $35 for children. If you are an adult in need of a passport renewal, the card will cost only $20.

Now, when looking at the State Departments’ propaganda on the passport card, and with the awareness that I’m going to need to renew my passport next year, I have a few thoughts:

• The card is pretty, in a federally bureaucratic kind of way.
   
• I originally got my passport back in the days where it was possible to get some superb “internet deals” on international travel.  My initial application for a passport was so that I could take such a trip “just in case”.  (Indeed, my wife’s and my trip to Paris 9 years ago was on an “internet special” ticket.)   However, other than that adventure, my limited use of my passport has been for the occasional run to Canada, for our cruise last summer, and when I’ve changed jobs and didn’t want to dig up other documentation for the first-day formalities.
   
• Therefore, when it comes time to renew, maybe I ought to consider getting the passport card rather than a full-fledged passport.
   
• Ah, but the State Department specifies that the passport card is to be used only for land border crossings.  For entering the country by air, you still need the full-fledged passport.
   
• So…why the distinction?   I realize that other international conventions may govern the nature of passports, but fundamentally if a new fancy card is deemed sufficient to “guarantee” security is satisfied for land crossings, then shouldn’t it be adequate for air transit as well?
   
• At the very least, for those of us who will be getting full-blown passports, perhaps the State Department could throw in a passport card in addition to the full passport, so we can have the added convenience for a quick run for the border. 
   
• And, if the State Department is putting together the means to start issuing these new fancy cards…heck, you almost wonder if one possible answer to the Real ID mess is to allow DMV’s in the states which don’t want to shell out the money to comply with Real ID to accept and pass along Passport Card applications to help folks get a mandatory-in-all-but-name identity card satisfying the tougher federal specs.

One thing you have to give the Geheimstaatspolizei credit for is being persistent in their efforts to have all Americans carry ID matching federal specs.

We’ve known for quite a while that if you didn’t possess (either by choice or by your state’s opting out) a REAL ID-compliant drivers license, you’d have trouble entering federal buildings and you’d be subject to the extra-special, extra-friendly secondary screening by TSA agents when flying.

However, Homeland Insecurity has upped the ante. From Threat Level:

Currently individuals who want to buy over-the-counter decongestants containing pseudo-ephedrine have to show I.D. to a pharmacy clerk, sign a log sheet and are limited in the amount they can purchase. The rules—pushed heavily by California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, are intended to make it harder for meth labs to get pseudo-ephedrine to cook into full-blown methamphetamines. They were made law in the 2006 re-authorization of the Patriot Act.

Stewart Baker, the assistant director for policy at Homeland Security and a longtime needler of privacy groups, suggested on Wednesday that the federal law could be tweaked to require controversial REAL ID identification cards, according to News.com.[...]

The Cato Institutes’s Jim Harper interprets Baker’s statement to mean a REAL ID would be necessary for any prescription. I don’t see that in the report on Baker’s remark, but certainly the F in FDA stands for Federal. The feds probably could do this, but from a health standpoint it would be a nightmare. No REAL ID, no birth control, no antibiotics, no insulin. How many dead Americans are these rules going to be worth?

This past week, Homeland Security announced their rules for implementing Real ID, including a provision indicating that states had to express a willingness to begin to come into compliance by 11 May, or their drivers licenses would no longer be accepted as identification for federal purposes.

Threat Level at Wired offers a picture of what could happen if the states continue to resist Real ID:

Eight states have already passed legislation opting out of the program, saying the costly program infringes on privacy and states rights. DHS originally estimated the cost of the program at $20 billion, but used creative math to slash that estimate by 73% today. Today’s estimate said the change would cost states $3.8 billion, and individuals $5.8 billion. The federal government has only authorized $80 million in earmarked funds for the states, but says states can raid their state grant funds to get at another $280 million dollars.[...]

If by May, Georgia hasn’t changed it mind and the feds don’t blink, the nation’s busiest airport—Hartsfield-Atlanta airport—will have security lines that last for hours. If a federal court house did not let a state resident get to his court date or prohibited someone from getting into a Social Security office, lawsuits and a storm of unflattering news stories will surely follow.

Throw in this being an election year too, and things could become mighty interesting. (Or, they would if we had a candidate running who actually valued privacy, rather than the authoritarian types we have in the current ranks of viable candidates.)

From a Geheimstaatspolizei press release:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced today a final rule establishing minimum security standards for state-issued drivers’ licenses and identification cards. The rule sets uniform standards that enhance the integrity and reliability of drivers’ licenses and identification cards, strengthen issuance capabilities, and increase security at drivers’ license and identification card production facilities. The final rule also dramatically reduces state implementation costs by roughly 73 percent.[...]

REAL ID will address document fraud by setting specific requirements that states must adopt for compliance, to include: (1) information and security features that must be incorporated into each card; (2) proof of the identity and U.S. citizenship or legal status of an applicant; (3) verification of the source documents provided by an applicant; and (4) security standards for the offices that issue licenses and identification cards.

The tomes of rules are available from DHS.  However, the high points from what I heard in the press conference include:

• Folks under age 50 fully migrated over to the new ID by 2014; older folks by 2017
• Mandatory cross-checks of information provided (SSN) to confirm validity
• Photos taken at the start of the DL application process, theoretically to preclude a potential fraudster from making multiple attempts to apply for licenses (…although no mention was made that anyone will actually check the photo database to see if someone is making multiple attempts…)
• Other physical security measures to be built into Real ID-compliant licenses, although states will have some flexibility — a menu of options to choose from

I didn’t hear any mention yet as to whether we’ll all get to go experience the hospitality of the DMV (seems likely), or if some provision will be made for remote/by-mail renewals in those states where such a practice alleviates DMV strain.

Also, as expected, there’s no mention of providing license-holders with the ability to check to see who’s been accessing their data in the databases to be established for this plan, a provision which would go a long way towards combating certain forms of fraud and identity crime, as well as to protect against inappropriate invasion of privacy.

I still say we ought to just go to tattooing or implanting microchips into everyone’s forehead or onto the back of their hands.