* MIT to hold public meeting about controversial Real ID Act
One of the catalytic identity events of this past year was the passage of the U.S. Real ID Act, which encourages standardization among the drivers’ licenses issued by the states, among other provisions.
So many people had been creating so much buzz about the privacy issues, the Big Brother concerns and the conspiracy fears associated with the act, that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will be holding a public meeting on Nov. 17 to discuss the identity management and driver’s license portions of the act.
In order to prepare for that meeting, the organizers last week conducted an online forum. The forum was divided into several tracks, which included presentations by leaders in the field, policy experts and governmental officials. There were also discussions by interested parties with the speakers. You can view the results of these conversations and presentations at the MIT online forum Web site.
What’s unfortunate, in my estimation, is that the law is being nicknamed a “National ID Card” initiative. While you might expect that left-wing politicians and privacy advocates would be tossing around that name, the shocker was a headline I read in the New Hampshire Union Leader, perhaps the most conservative general circulation newspaper in the country. “NH not sold on ‘national ID card'” was the title of the story.
But the Real ID Act doesn’t mandate a national ID card, nor does it create a national ID registry. It does require that the states create a uniform driver’s license and allow sharing of their Motor Vehicles’ Department data if those states wish their citizens to be able to use those driver’s licenses as official identification for, as an example, boarding an airplane.
Every state will still maintain their own data repository. There will be no national repository. What can happen, however, is that the “debate” about a National ID Card can override the discussion about the need for standardized state procedures to the point that “Joe Sixpack” begins to think that the FBI is tracking his every move and that the black helicopters are waiting, just over the horizon.
Hysterical advocates for the Real ID Act will tell you that lives can be saved by it, as it will prevent the easy infiltration of terrorists into our midst. That’s questionable and debatable. But it is possible that, had the full impact of the law been in effect this year, lives could have been saved and suffering could have been averted. Come back next issue and I’ll tell you about it.
