Privacy groups renew push against Real ID bill

Privacy advocates are making a last-ditch effort to muster public opposition to the controversial Real ID bill, which proposes to create a national standard for issuing state drivers' licenses and other forms of state-issued identification.

Earlier this week, a broad coalition of more than 40 organizations launched a national campaign urging the public to submit comments to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expressing opposition to Real ID.

The effort comes less than a week before a May 8 deadline for submitting comments on a set of draft regulations for implementing Real ID. Those regulations were released by the DHS in March.

"Basically this large coalition is trying to solicit public comment to stop the national ID system created by the Real ID Act," said Melissa Ngo, senior counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a Washington, D.C-based privacy group. "There already is a large groundswell of public support against this national ID program. What we are trying to do is rally the public. They didn't get a chance to speak out when Real ID was pushed through Congress attached to a military funding bill."

The Real ID Act of 2005 was passed as part of a wider effort to combat terrorism. It establishes certain minimum national standards that states must use when issuing drivers licenses and other forms of identification. This includes a photo ID, documentation of birth date and address, proof of citizenship or immigration status and verification of Social Security numbers. States are required to hold digital images of each identity document for periods ranging from seven to 10 years. The cards themselves will include all of the standard elements found on most drivers licenses today and will be machine-readable to allow for the easy capture of information from the card.

Under the act, all state drivers license databases would be linked, with shared access across them. The system will allow information in a person's record in any state to be accessible by officials in other states and by the federal government. The database could include images of birth certificates, marriage licenses, Social Security numbers, divorce papers and other information used to issue state identification cards.

Though states are not required to issue Real ID cards, individuals would need Real ID-compliant cards for air travel or for getting into federal buildings such as courthouses and nuclear facilities -- even for receiving federal benefits such as Medicaid or Social Security.

"Make no mistake, this is a national identification system that will affect your everyday life" and could eventually be used for a wider range of purposes than the DHS has stated, Ngo said.

The act substantially changes how drivers licenses are issued and used, said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, a San Diego-based advocacy group.

"The biggest difference is that a license will be linked to a centralized database" accessible from anywhere, Dixon said. The sheer size of the database, the kind of information it will contain and the number of access points it offers, make it more susceptible to security threats she said. But the DHS has set no minimum privacy or security safeguards to protect the data from external or internal compromise or misuse, she said.

For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld. Story copyright Computerworld, Inc.