Re: [IP] Real ID = National ID (fwd from dave@farber.net)
From: Justin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: May 9, 2005 3:55 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IP] Real ID = National ID (fwd from [EMAIL PROTECTED]) .. What do we need security for? We need security because a lot of people hate the U.S., and because we won't close our borders, and because society has become too diverse. Drivers license security is being pursued because a bunch of people want to be able to reliably use drivers licenses as ID cards for their own purposes. That can be for TSA screening of passneger names (though I think it's fantasy to imagine that this will really prevent terrorists from flying, and it has endless creepy totalitarian uses), or for making it harder to get a bank account without submitting your true name so you get taxed and monitored, or making it easier for the folks running various preferred shopper card programs to make you give them the right information, or keeping you from reselling your airline tickets. (Note that the whole market segmentation/price discrimination scheme that this threatened has basically died by now, but we're still stuck with binding names to airline tickets.) There is a significant correlation between cultural diversity/proximity and social unrest. That does not require people of different races; put white klansmen next to white members of the Black Panthers and you have the same thing. This is *very* dependent on the cultures in question. For the most part, Japanese and Korean immigrants (to take a couple easy examples) make wonderful neighbors, though they're members of a different race and culture and often a different religion. On the other hand, turn of the century Irish immigrants were English-speaking Christians, but they made nightmarish neighbors. And neither of those have much to do with terrorism (as opposed to low-level crime, public drunkenness, imported criminal gangs, etc.). The Irish in the US have never been much of a terrorist threat, though things are very different in the UK! None of those three core problems will be solved by RealID. Therefore, while RealID may make some difference at the margins, it cannot be very effective. Well, it depends on what your goal is. If your goal is harder-to-forge drivers licenses for all kinds of good and bad purposes, then it may help. If your goal is seriously stopping terrorism or shutting down illegal immigration, it probably won't have much of an impact. --John
Re: [IP] Real ID = National ID (fwd from dave@farber.net)
From: Justin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: May 9, 2005 3:55 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IP] Real ID = National ID (fwd from [EMAIL PROTECTED]) ... What do we need security for? We need security because a lot of people hate the U.S., and because we won't close our borders, and because society has become too diverse. Drivers license security is being pursued because a bunch of people want to be able to reliably use drivers licenses as ID cards for their own purposes. That can be for TSA screening of passneger names (though I think it's fantasy to imagine that this will really prevent terrorists from flying, and it has endless creepy totalitarian uses), or for making it harder to get a bank account without submitting your true name so you get taxed and monitored, or making it easier for the folks running various preferred shopper card programs to make you give them the right information, or keeping you from reselling your airline tickets. (Note that the whole market segmentation/price discrimination scheme that this threatened has basically died by now, but we're still stuck with binding names to airline tickets.) There is a significant correlation between cultural diversity/proximity and social unrest. That does not require people of different races; put white klansmen next to white members of the Black Panthers and you have the same thing. This is *very* dependent on the cultures in question. For the most part, Japanese and Korean immigrants (to take a couple easy examples) make wonderful neighbors, though they're members of a different race and culture and often a different religion. On the other hand, turn of the century Irish immigrants were English-speaking Christians, but they made nightmarish neighbors. And neither of those have much to do with terrorism (as opposed to low-level crime, public drunkenness, imported criminal gangs, etc.). The Irish in the US have never been much of a terrorist threat, though things are very different in the UK! None of those three core problems will be solved by RealID. Therefore, while RealID may make some difference at the margins, it cannot be very effective. Well, it depends on what your goal is. If your goal is harder-to-forge drivers licenses for all kinds of good and bad purposes, then it may help. If your goal is seriously stopping terrorism or shutting down illegal immigration, it probably won't have much of an impact. --John
Re: [IP] Real ID = National ID (fwd from dave@farber.net)
On 2005-05-09T19:55:26+, Justin wrote: What do we need security for? We need security because a lot of people hate the U.S., and because we won't close our borders, and Apparently I have not learned any lessons from the follies of a certain California governor. By close the borders, I mean secure the borders against illegal immigration. I have no interest in doing away with immigration.
Re: [IP] Real ID = National ID (fwd from dave@farber.net)
On 2005-05-09T12:22:22-0700, cypherpunk wrote: We already have de facto national ID in the form of our state driver's licenses. They are accepted at face value at all 50 states as well as by the federal government. Real ID would rationalize the issuing procedures and require a certain minimum of verification. Without it we have security that is only as strong as the weakest state's policies. States should be free to regulate DRIVERS however they want. The DL was not meant to be an ID card, and if it was that intent was unconstitutional. The entire DL scheme may be unconstitutional anyway, but oh well. What do we need security for? We need security because a lot of people hate the U.S., and because we won't close our borders, and because society has become too diverse. There is a significant correlation between cultural diversity/proximity and social unrest. That does not require people of different races; put white klansmen next to white members of the Black Panthers and you have the same thing. None of those three core problems will be solved by RealID. Therefore, while RealID may make some difference at the margins, it cannot be very effective.
Re: [IP] Real ID = National ID (fwd from dave@farber.net)
We already have de facto national ID in the form of our state driver's licenses. They are accepted at face value at all 50 states as well as by the federal government. Real ID would rationalize the issuing procedures and require a certain minimum of verification. Without it we have security that is only as strong as the weakest state's policies. CP
Re: [IP] Real ID = National ID (fwd from dave@farber.net)
We already have de facto national ID in the form of our state driver's licenses. They are accepted at face value at all 50 states as well as by the federal government. Real ID would rationalize the issuing procedures and require a certain minimum of verification. Without it we have security that is only as strong as the weakest state's policies. CP
Re: [IP] Real ID = National ID (fwd from dave@farber.net)
On 2005-05-09T12:22:22-0700, cypherpunk wrote: We already have de facto national ID in the form of our state driver's licenses. They are accepted at face value at all 50 states as well as by the federal government. Real ID would rationalize the issuing procedures and require a certain minimum of verification. Without it we have security that is only as strong as the weakest state's policies. States should be free to regulate DRIVERS however they want. The DL was not meant to be an ID card, and if it was that intent was unconstitutional. The entire DL scheme may be unconstitutional anyway, but oh well. What do we need security for? We need security because a lot of people hate the U.S., and because we won't close our borders, and because society has become too diverse. There is a significant correlation between cultural diversity/proximity and social unrest. That does not require people of different races; put white klansmen next to white members of the Black Panthers and you have the same thing. None of those three core problems will be solved by RealID. Therefore, while RealID may make some difference at the margins, it cannot be very effective.
Re: [IP] Real ID = National ID (fwd from dave@farber.net)
On 2005-05-09T19:55:26+, Justin wrote: What do we need security for? We need security because a lot of people hate the U.S., and because we won't close our borders, and Apparently I have not learned any lessons from the follies of a certain California governor. By close the borders, I mean secure the borders against illegal immigration. I have no interest in doing away with immigration.
[IP] Real ID = National ID (fwd from dave@farber.net)
- Forwarded message from David Farber [EMAIL PROTECTED] - From: David Farber [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 11:12:58 -0400 To: Ip ip@v2.listbox.com Subject: [IP] Real ID = National ID X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.728) Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Begin forwarded message: From: Barry Steinhardt [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: May 4, 2005 11:05:11 AM EDT To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Real ID = National ID Dave, Congressional passage of the Real ID legislation is now all but a done deal, House and Senate conferees having agreed to inclusion of language in an appropriations bill that is all but certain to pass. The name Real ID is, if anything, too modest. Despite deep public opposition over the years to a national identity card, and Congress's unwillingness to even consider the idea directly, our security agencies have now gotten what they want as proponents have succeeded in pushing through Congress a National ID-in-disguise. The Real ID Act is indeed a real (national) ID. Although individual states' driver's licenses may continue to exhibit cosmetic differences, they will now contain a standardized set of information collected by all 50 states, which means that underneath each state's pretty designs they are really a single standardized national card - backed up not only by biometrics, but also by a standardized machine- readable zone and by a national database of ID information. Local DMV offices may continue to appear to be state offices, but they will now become agents acting on behalf of the federal government, charged with issuing a national identity document without which one will be unable to function in America. National database creates powerful tracking tool. Real ID requires the states to link their databases together for the mutual sharing of data from these IDs. This is, in effect, a single seamless national database, available to all the states and to the federal government. (The fact that the database is a distributed one, maintained on interconnected servers in the separate states, makes no difference.) National database creates security risks. The creation of a single interlinked database creates a one-stop shop for identity thieves and terrorists who want to assume an American's identity. The security problems with creating concentrated databases has recently been demonstrated by the rampant number of data breaches in recent months in which information held by commercial database companies has fallen into the hands of identity thieves or others. The government's record at information security is little better and that is especially true at state Motor Vehicle Departments that have routinely been the targets of both insider and outsider fraud and just plain larceny. The machine-readable zone paves the way for private-sector piggybacking. Our new IDs will have to make their data available through a common machine-readable technology. That will make it easy for anybody in private industry to snap up the data on these IDs. Bars swiping licenses to collect personal data on customers will be just the tip of the iceberg as every retailer in America learns to grab that data and sell it to Choicepoint for a dime. It won't matter whether the states and federal government protect the data - it will be harvested by the private sector, which will keep it in a parallel database not subject even to the limited privacy rules in effect for the government. This national ID card will make observation of citizens easy but won't do much about terrorism. The fact is, identity-based security is not an effective way to stop terrorism. ID documents do not reveal anything about evil intent - and even if they did, determined terrorists will always be able to obtain fraudulent documents (either counterfeit or real documents bought from corrupt officials). Negotiated rulemaking. Among the any unfortunate effects of this legislation is that it pre-empts another process for considering standardized driver's licenses that was far superior. That process (set in motion by the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004) included a negotiated rulemaking among interested parties - including the states and civil liberties groups - to create standards. Instead, the worst form of rules is being imposed, with the details to be worked out by security officials at DHS instead of through balanced negotiations among affected parties. Your papers, please. In the days after 9/11, President Bush and others proclaimed that we must not let the terrorists change American life. It is now clear that - despite its lack of effectiveness against actual terrorism - we have allowed our security agencies push us into making a deep, far-reaching change to the character of American life. Barry Steinhardt Director Technology and Liberty Project American Civil Liberties Union
