Cnet news has a thorough and informative article on REAL ID and how it results in the citizens of this country living in a state where all of our information is available for the taking and shared at the very least, across our country.
From the article:
“What does that mean for me?
Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you’ll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service. Practically speaking, your driver’s license likely will have to be reissued to meet federal standards.”
The article also describes how the card will have at least: “name, birth date, sex, ID number, a digital photograph, address, and a “common machine-readable technology” that Homeland Security will decide on.”
This means that once whatever “machine-readable technology” is cracked (everything is crack-able), someone can easily steal your information and your identity. If the Department of Homeland in-security uses RFID, the crook doesn’t even need to physically touch your card, as demonstrated in this article. They could just walk by with a card reader, capture your card’s information, and then duplicate it later like in that example.
Let’s say no one manages to get your information so easily. How comfortable are you with every business you deal with having all of that information in a database with unknown security? Anyone who works at, perhaps, the bank can pull up your REAL ID information that reveals everything about you. Maybe you have important medical information about your AIDS condition on the card in case you are in an accident. Guess what? Now anywhere you do business has that information as well. Your blood type? Same.
The possibilities are limitless as to what can be stored on the card since it is left to the discretion of the “Secretary of Homeland Security”. Perhaps he decides to mandate retinal scans logged into the card’s “machine-readable” information? Maybe your court record.
I’m not a whack-job, but I do think that this is crossing the line of our government’s power. The states are sovereign except for powers given to the federal government by the Constitution. I don’t recall anything in there about REAL ID or turning citizens into subjects.
I think the part about subjects was actually in the Declaration of Independence.
“…That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.“
