One of the fun things about the news business is learning to feel the slight rumblings of a big story about to come thundering into town. And REAL-ID, a government mandate that states comply with federal rules for drivers licenses in order to create a de facto national I.D. card, is about to round the bend.
The requirement passed in 2005 gave the Department of Homeland Security the job of figuring out what the rules would be: e.g. what data has to be on the card, what shared machine-readable technology has to be embedded, how states would verify identity and share information, and what exceptions will be allowed for edge cases: victims of domestic violence, people without birth certificates, and the transgendered.
Those long-delayed rules (DMVs have to be compliant in a little over a year from now) are not yet public, but will be coming soon as the Office of Management and Budget is finalizing its review. In fact, I'm getting the feeling the rules will be dumped this Friday.
In the meantime, the ACLU has released a score card (.pdf), outlining a laundry list of concerns that they will grade the rules against. It's a great place to start if you want to get a sense of why many states and privacy advocates are fighting the proposal.
In the meantime, Maine has already opted out, and Senator Susan Collins, the powerful Maine centrist Republican who is the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, is introducing federal legislation to slow, if not repeal, REAL ID. Montana is also moving to block the bill, though some states are dreaming of the cool things they could do with high-tech IDs.
Either way, few people know about REAL ID, nor do they know that it likely means they will soon be spending a lot more time in line at the DMV.
Photo: Valorie Beaman
