Monday, March 26, 2007

REAL ID Act

Armageddon here we come! Even if these people don't care about personal freedoms, or have ever picked up a Bible in their lives, don't they go to the movies for gosh sakes?
clipped from secure.eff.org
The federal government has taken another step towards forcing you to carry a national ID in order to get on airplanes, open a bank account, enter federal buildings, and much more.
On March 1, the
DHS
released draft regulations
for implementing REAL ID, which makes states standardize drivers licenses and create a vast national database linking all of the ID records together. Once in place, uses of the IDs and database will inevitably expand to facilitate a wide range of tracking and surveillance activities. Remember, the Social Security number started innocuously enough
but it has become a prerequisite for a host of government services and been co-opted by private companies to create massive databases of personal information.

REAL ID won't just cost you your privacy. The states and individual taxpayers bear the estimated 23 billion dollar burden of implementing the law, and that figure is probably low given that the necessary verification systems don't exist yet.

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