Federal ID plan raises privacy concerns

[Posteritatis]

Source: CNN

(CNN) -- Americans may need passports to board domestic flights or to picnic in a national park next year if they live in one of the states defying the federal Real ID Act.

The act, signed in 2005 as part of an emergency military spending and tsunami relief bill, aims to weave driver's licenses and state ID cards into a sort of national identification system by May 2008. The law sets baseline criteria for how driver's licenses will be issued and what information they must contain.

. . .

More than half the nation's state legislatures have passed symbolic legislation denouncing the plan, and some have penned bills expressly forbidding compliance.

. . .

The cards would be mandatory for all "federal purposes," which include boarding an airplane or walking into a federal building, nuclear facility or national park, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the National Conference of State Legislatures last week. Citizens in states that don't comply with the new rules will have to use passports for federal purposes.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/16/real.id/index.html

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Can someone educate this Canadian on the legal status of requiring domestic passports in the US? I know you guys made a huge deal out of the Soviets doing that during the Cold War as an example of tyranny, but I have no idea whether the concept of "just" obscene or explicitly forbidden in the States.

[grilled onions]

1. Total Insanity

You will have to remember the fried chicken,lemonade,potato salad and don't forget the passport! Will the ants be checked as well???/

[aquart]

2. It's a fascist outrage.

[iburl]

3. Nothing is expilcitly forbidden anymore

Ya see, on 9/11 everything changed. We now have a unitardy executive who is the decider on all matters. Once we were the United States of America. Now we are the Homeland. In Der Homeländ you muzz show ze paperzz!

[Robbien]

4. Well, depends on who you are talking to

Those on the right feel this is so very important to make sure those nasty "illegals" are identified and don't have access to services.

The rest of us feel that it is an awful intrusion by a militant government.

[WidowsSon]

5. The End of the Republic

We are living at one of the most interesting times in human history.

[Gormy Cuss]

6. But it's not mandatory

"This is not a mandate," Chertoff said. "A state doesn't have to do this, but if the state doesn't have -- at the end of the day, at the end of the deadline -- Real ID-compliant licenses then the state cannot expect that those licenses will be accepted for federal purposes."

I love "voluntary" programs. Currently there is no requirement to show ID before entering national parks so if as the article states you'll need to show your Real- ID compliant card in order to have a picnic, it's a new strong arm tactic on the part of Vaterland Security.

[Javaman]

7. Excuse me, Fraulein, my I see your papers? nt

[rodeodance]

8. my gawd-----you need this ID to get into a PARK!

[Mnemosyne]

9. Fuck you Skeletor. n/t