Collins and
Chertoff Fight to Save the National ID
CATO institute | March 9, 2007
by Jim Harper
Jim Harper
is director of information policy studies for
the Cato Institute.
Bush administration officials and
some Republican senators remain undeterred by the mounting
opposition among state governments to a national ID measure and are
looking to companies and organizations that will benefit from the ID
scheme to persuade opponents beyond the Beltway to back down.
Senator Susan Collins, a
Republican of Maine, is the author of the latest effort to sell
reluctant states on the REAL ID Act, the 2005 measure which would
coerce states into issuing nationally standardized driver's licenses
and require them to enter information about their drivers in
nationally accessible databases.
Despite Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff's public insistence that the Act needs to
be implemented rapidly, the administration, and Mr. Chertoff
himself, appear happy to avoid an immediate confrontation with the
states and to go along with Ms. Collins' sales tactic. The Maine
Senator introduced a bill, and pressed it as an amendment on the
Senate floor, to extend the deadline for state compliance with the
REAL ID Act, allowing companies in favor of the measure time to work
in state capitols to calm the burgeoning rebellion.
Sen. Collins' counter-rebellion
role is laden with irony. The revolt, after all, started in her own
New England state. In late January, George Smith, executive director
of the Maine Sportsmen's Alliance, stood to denounce the REAL ID Act
at a community forum in Augusta. A Norman Rockwell painting come to
life with the directness and accent of a lifelong Mainer, he said:
"They had their Boston Tea Party. Let's have a REAL ID Party!"
The next day, the Maine House and
Senate passed a resolution to reject REAL ID by overwhelming
margins.
Working with Sen. Collins, DHS has
now moved the deadline for complying with REAL ID back more than a
year and a half, from May 2008 to December 2009. DHS says it will
start allocating Homeland Security Grant Program funds for REAL ID
while implementation is delayed. That gives incentive to the
ultimate recipients of the funds to start lobbying rebellious state
lawmakers.
Whether the Collins tactic will
work remains in doubt. The original objections to the REAL ID Act
are still potent. A cost estimate of $11 billion dollars from the
National Conference of State Legislatures has now been replaced by a
$17 billion dollar estimate out of the Department of Homeland
Security itself. Implementing REAL ID will force drivers to spend
more time to secure or renew licenses as they will have to document
more carefully to DMV bureaucrats exactly who they are. It will
force law-abiding, Americans to prove that they are lawfully in the
United States. People who have been driving for decades will be
turned away without drivers' licenses routinely because they will
not have their papers in order.
The REAL ID Act also requires
states to enter information about their drivers into databases to
which all other states will have access. Identity thieves will have
much greater opportunities to get their hands on driver information
nationwide. And a uniform “machine-readable technology” on the
licenses themselves will make it easier for governments and
businesses to scan licenses and compile storehouses of data about
our whereabouts and activities.
American Civil Liberties Union
affiliates across the country have worked with state legislators to
expose the flaws in REAL ID. Its RealNightmare.org Web site lists 24
states where bills and resolutions opposing and refusing REAL ID are
moving. Eight have passed at least one chamber of the legislature.
But opposition to the REAL ID is
not restricted to the left. In Utah's Republican-dominated
legislature, the leading opponent of REAL ID is Glenn Donnelson, a
Republican of North Ogden and chairman of the House Government
Operations Committee. His bill to reject the REAL ID Act was passed
unanimously by the Utah House of Representatives.
Idaho Representative Phil Hart, a
Republican of Athol, has been leading the charge in his state. In
mid-February, he convened a panel discussion in the Boise
statehouse. One of the panelists was Bill Bishop, Director of the
Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security. You might think that a state
homeland security official would support REAL ID. Bishop does not.
Bishop pointed out its weaknesses
as a security tool. Even if it was possible to accurately nail down
the identity of everyone in the country, we would be no better off
in terms of preventing a terrorist attack. The 9/11 attackers, just
like Timothy McVeigh before them, would have been able to get
drivers' licenses had REAL ID been the law when they struck.
"I don't believe in the Easter
Bunny, I don't believe in Santa Claus, and I don't believe in
the Lone Ranger," said Bishop, "which means I don't believe in
silver bullets." Representative Hart's resolution passed both
chambers of the Idaho legislature.
Extraordinary cost and
inconvenience is not a measure of effectiveness. Implementing REAL
ID would burden the country with wasteful spending and needlessly
undermine Americans' freedom and privacy without adding to our
protections.
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