Opposition to REAL ID Continues to Grow

from the state-legislators-say-no dept

Thu, Apr 24th 2008 5:56am — Timothy Lee

My colleague Jim Harper points out that the National Conference of State Legislatures has called for the repeal of the REAL ID Act. We last noted that the Department of Homeland Security was pretending that all 50 states were on schedule to implement the law, despite the fact that several of them had explicitly said they wouldn't implement it. Now it appears that a lot of state legislators are ready to take things a step further and call for the outright repeal of a law that many of them have refused to implement in their own states. The NCSL letter makes an excellent point that can't be emphasized enough: the worthwhile parts of REAL ID, such as making driver's licenses harder to forge, can be accomplished at the state level without getting the feds involved. States can take what's good from REAL ID and voluntarily incorporate it into their state identification systems without participating in a massive federal database that would become a magnet for identity theft.

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Filed Under: drivers licenses, opposition, real id

13 Comments

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Matt Bennett, 24 Apr 2008 @ 6:54am

Totally unrelated, but if congress is actually in mood to repeal stuff, which I though basically never happened, they should repeal the ethanol requirement in gasoline. Nothing good has come of that, not even environmentally.
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Dave Zawislak, 24 Apr 2008 @ 6:59am

Re:
I don't thing Monsanto et al, things so.
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Hellsvilla, 24 Apr 2008 @ 7:25am

repealing stuff?
Repeal any leftovers from the DMCA and the PATRIOT act. (And uh, that stupid ports gambling thing...)
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PRMan, 24 Apr 2008 @ 7:35am

And while we're on the subject of Monsanto...
Let's repeal FDA approval of NutraSweet as well. That stuff is bad news and only passed just before the FDA chiefs took cushy jobs at Monsanto.
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Matt Bennett, 24 Apr 2008 @ 7:47am

Somebody should make a list.
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Incredulous, 24 Apr 2008 @ 8:05am

Bigbrotherbigbrotherbigbrotherbigbrother...
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Haywood, 24 Apr 2008 @ 8:30am

Re: And while we're on the subject of Monsanto...
I like the Nutrasweet, Diet coke wouldn't be the same without it. I'd be all for getting rid of Splenda though, that crap affects me like meth.
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just an American, 24 Apr 2008 @ 8:49am

Thank God
Americans, sometimes, still unite against government overstepping their bounds.
We need government for protection of national threats but not to protect each person from their own created problems (such as drug addiction, poverty, etc.). Education and intelligent people I value more than material possessions (including money and gold). I don't think this is related to article in anyway but I wanted to state it anyway!
With love,
~Mireah
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Joe, 24 Apr 2008 @ 11:06am

Re: And while we're on the subject of Monsanto...
We actually just found out that my father may actually be allergic to nutrasweet. He didn't come away failing any currently testable allergies, but whenever he drinks a soda with it (diet soda) his sinus's won't stop running.
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Ryan S, 24 Apr 2008 @ 1:36pm

Support for REAL ID continues to be hard to find
I wrote up a short paper entitled:How criminals will benefit from the REAL ID legislation.

While you are there you should check out my other articles and subscribe to my RSS feed if you see something you like.

Ryan S
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RAWR, 24 Apr 2008 @ 2:35pm

I agree with Matt
"Totally unrelated, but if congress is actually in mood to repeal stuff, which I though basically never happened, they should repeal the ethanol requirement in gasoline. Nothing good has come of that, not even environmentally."

Especially since your fuel MPG goes way down using Gas/Eth mixture. Back when we had MTB instead my truck got 25-30 (88 toyo pickup) MPG now with this ethanol crap I get 21-24 MPG which means I'm filling up more and polluting more since I'm burning now twice the amount.

That California MTB study was complete crap if you actually read the "research". (Which could probably be tied to people lobbying for Ethanol...)

btw our gas prices would be slightly cheaper with MTB.
(Esp. love the people driving into mexico to fill up for $2 less than what is in the US. - Check CNN for video)
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Apr 2008 @ 6:16pm

Re: Support for REAL ID continues to be hard to find
shameless plug
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little bo beep will be upset, 24 Apr 2008 @ 7:00pm

Thank the stars that opposition for the REAL ID act is gaining this much momentum. If everyone in the United States has to rely upon RFID chips, then all the government or a corporation has to do is turn off that chip and you may as well no longer exist. RFID is designed for one thing and one thing only: tracking. It's bad enough every cell phone the world now has GPS locating, car manufactureres are implementing gps and onstar standard into new models, soon enough every electronic device we have will be able to pin point our exact loactions every second of every day.

To believe there isn't some institution behind the scenes using all of this data to create some form of method into further increasing its power would be absurbed. Countless companies around the globe do nothing but collect data on human behavior. How often you drive, how far you drive, what speeds you drive, where you drive, all this information can be secertly recorded and sold off for millions to the appropriate agents.

Most pepople however are iggnorant to this fact, as well as most any other matter or grave importance effecting the world today; so, maybe getting that final ear-tag to finalize their transition into mindless sheep won't come as a huge inconvenience as it most certianly will to the rest of us.
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