Maine lawmakers reject REAL ID Act
Yesterday, state legislators in Maine voted to reject the federally defined standards of the REAL ID Act, which Congress signed into law in May of 2005.
REAL ID has been controversial in the states since it passed. There has long been a resistance among civil libertarians on the left and the right to a mandate for a "National ID card", prompting comparisons to Nazi Germany requiring citizens to "show their papers". The federal legislation tried to avoid that problem by instead establishing "Federal standards" for state driver's licenses and other government documents - that states could determine how best to meet. Some states have argued that the distinction between a mandate and a standard is too thin.
The debate over REAL ID, for the most part, has been an issue of states rights - not against RFID or other smart card technologies. That is starting to change. Opponents of a federal standard for a state driver's license are adopting the arguments used against RFID to argue that it is an issue of personal privacy and data security, as the following quote from this article in United Press International indicates:
"'Mainers ... alarmed by the threat posed to privacy and identity-security' by Real ID, were 'leading a nationwide movement,' Shenna Bellows of the Maine Civil Liberties Union told UPI, adding that lawmakers also saw it as 'a hugely expensive unfunded mandate.' … 'It will be a one-stop shop for identity thieves,' said Bellows, adding that a requirement for machine-readable capability for new licenses would potentially enable government databases to track license holders as they moved around."
Additionally, in a recent press release the ACLU has urged other states to follow in Maine's "call for privacy," though in actuality, various quotes from Maine lawmakers like House Majority leader Hannah Pingree have critcized the REAL ID Act moreso as a "massive unfunded federal mandate", rather than as an infringement on civil liberties.
Similar legislation is in the works in up to a dozen other states.
