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July 28, 2007

Senate kills more federal money for national ID; Would a chip make you feel safer?

Support for a national ID card seems tied to where you stand on issues of security and privacy -- if you fear an attack more than you fear Big Brother, you may think it will make you safer. Personally, I think sophisticated would-be terrorists will counterfeit whatever they need -- the collected information would be stored in a national database available to all sorts of government employees who cannot be made secure.

Technology can't make us safe. It may make some feel safer, but couldn't we find a cheaper way to manage our fears, one that doesn't also turn America into a remake of Casablanca -- a nation of people "with papers," and of desperate others trying to obtain them through the Resistance at Rick's (Cyber)Café Américain? Land of the free and home of the brave, remember?

Read on...

A still from Casablanca, part of an interesting scholarly analysis of the movie at Bright Lights film journal.

Senate rejects extra $300 million for Real ID. ZDNet:

By a 50-44 vote mostly along party lines, the chamber set aside a Republican-backed amendment to a homeland security spending bill that would have spread $300 million across the states to help them implement the so-called Real ID Act.

The Senate also agreed unanimously to adopt an amendment, proposed by vocal Real ID critic Max Baucus (D-Mont.), which prohibits the use of any of the spending bill's funding for "planning, testing, piloting, or developing a national identification card."

The votes leave just $50 million in additional Real ID grants for states in the the final bill, which passed by an 89-4 vote late Thursday and is now headed to the president's desk. President Bush has previously vowed to veto the entire measure, but it was not immediately clear whether that was still the case.

The remaining grant figure appears unlikely to satisfy state officials, many of whom have blasted Real ID as an "unfunded mandate." The Department of Homeland Security projects the cost of Real ID for states and taxpayers over the next 10 years at more than $23 billion....
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...The law dictates that, starting on May 11, 2008, Americans will need a federally approved, "machine readable" ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments or take advantage of nearly any government service.

The Real ID bill still stands, but states would now be required to fund it themselves. Some have simply opted out.

(In Rhode Island, House Resolution No.5474 ENTITLED, JOINT RESOLUTION OPPOSING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE REAL ID ACT OF 2005 {LC1868/1} was introduced February 7 by Reps. Gemma, San Bento, Rose, Scott and Fox and referred to the House Judiciary Committee.)

An ID implemented by Alaska, bearing the governor's photo and info; travel agent Sally Huntley is suing the state DMV over its implementation after a bill authorizing it passed the state Senate, died in the House and was implemented anyway. More at her site, my Alaska id.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn -- co-sponsor of the bill defeated Thursday -- wrote an op-ed in The Tennesseean yesterday (Repeal this mandate, or at least pay for it):

What could unfunded mandates mean? Higher property taxes and tuition costs. Less money for lower classroom sizes, less money for teachers — that's just the beginning. Little wonder Tennessee legislators have joined 16 other states in passing a resolution opposing the Real ID Act.

... Instead of pretending we are not creating ID cards when we obviously are, Congress should carefully create an effective federal document that helps prevent terrorism — with as much respect for privacy as possible.

Either way, it's the federal government's responsibility to foot the bill.

Ironically, the Providence Journal's Kathy Gregg, in a story Tuesday about increasing numbers of state "contract employees," in Rhode Island, reported that one of the contracts includes some money related to Real ID:

Administration officials seem hard-pressed to explain how some contract employees got hired, for example: the $280,000 a year no-bid contract awarded Marlboro, Mass.-based Project Solutions Group for the services of “Karen Barth.”

In a series of interviews over the course of a week, the Department of Administration’s new information-technology chief John Landers said the firm was initially selected, in February 2005, for an $80,325 contract from among the many firms listed on “master price agreement.”

...According to Landers, she is currently poised to work with the DMV on the installation of a new $13-million “DMV modernization system,” after the winning bidder is chosen for that project. A DMV spokesman confirmed that the state is also paying Barth’s way to Washington in September to talk at a conference about the new security features states will have to encode in their driver’s licenses by 2009 under the federally mandated "REAL I.D." program. The spokesman, Charles Hollis, said he did not know her background in this arena.

Maybe that expense won't be necessary now. The defeat of the immigration bill and the failure of this effort to throw a little more money at it may doom it. We can't afford it.

Or maybe we'll do it ourselves. Libertarian Katherine Mangu-Ward wrote in Reason Online July 3 (Is Real ID a Real Problem? ),

When artist and Rutgers professor Hasan Elahi, a Bangladeshi-born American citizen, found his name on an FBI watch list, he started calling the FBI every time he planned to fly, to avoid trouble. But he got paranoid (and, as they say, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you). He worried that he "might be shipped off to Gitmo before anyone realized their mistake."

So Elahi started putting his whole life online. He carries a GPS device in his pocket, which offers casual visitors to his website an image of where he is at all times. Icons lead you to snaps of food, airports, toilets (not while he's on them, thankfully), and just about everything else he encounters in his frequent work-related world travels.

Elahi is just the wildest example of what normal people do every day when they fill out customs cards, update their Facebook entries, show bouncers their drivers licenses, and allow credit checks. More cars, phones, etc. have GPS devices (plus, check out Google's new faux GPS for mobile phones, and my previous musings on the privacy implications of Google's Street View feature), so another chip in your pocket, embedded in your ID, will be superfluous.

But you probably still won't feel safer with that chip in your pocket. Here's an idea: The Iraq war is fueling such anger against the United States, as well as costing us some $447 billion at the moment I type this. (It has cost Rhode Islanders more than $1,800,000,000.)

Let's end the war, make a deal for the oil and, as a nation, stop behaving in ways that make people want to hurt us. That would make me feel a lot safer.

Here's the cost of the war as you read this.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 4:31 PM | Permalink