[Infowarrior] - As Bush's ID Plan Was Delayed, Coalition Formed Against It

[Richard Forno]

As Bush's ID Plan Was Delayed, Coalition Formed Against It

By Spencer S. Hsu and Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 25, 2007; A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/24/AR2007022401
407_pf.html

Inspired by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a sweeping federal law to tighten
security requirements for driver's licenses is in jeopardy of unraveling
after missteps by Congress and the Homeland Security Department, analysts
and lawmakers said.

While Washington has delayed implementing it, a rebellion against the
program has grown. Privacy advocates say the effort could create a de facto
national ID card. Meanwhile, state officials charge that complying with
federal requirements will cost $11 billion and potentially double fees and
waiting times for 245 million Americans whose licenses would have to be
reissued starting next year.

The issue threatens to turn into a partisan fight. The White House expects
to release its driver's license plan, Real ID, this week and has warned
congressional critics not to thwart or further delay a program that was
recommended by the Sept. 11 commission.

"If we don't get it done now, someone's going to be sitting around in three
or four years explaining to the next 9/11 commission why we didn't do it,"
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the Senate's Homeland
Security Committee on Feb. 13.

Critics in both parties will try to delay the launch of the program by
offering an amendment to legislation that Senate Democrats are pushing to
implement remaining changes suggested by the Sept. 11 commission.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the homeland security panel,
said in a statement that Real ID may not provide real security and that it
is opposed by states "because it is overly burdensome, possibly unworkable,
and may actually increase a terrorist's ability to commit identity theft."

The White House plan, which has been in the works for two years and will
take effect in May 2008, standardizes information that must be included on
licenses, including a digital photograph, a signature and machine-readable
features such as a bar code.

The new rules also will spell out how states must verify applicants'
citizenship status, check identity documents such as birth certificates and
cross-check information with other states and with Social Security,
immigration and State Department databases. Only complying IDs can be used
for federal purposes such as boarding airplanes or entering government
buildings.

The law is "vital for the protection of the country," said former New Jersey
governor Thomas H. Kean Jr., co-chairman of the Sept. 11 commission. "You
can't have 30 different methods of identification to get in and out of the
country . . . many of them easily forged, and expect to keep the bad guys
out."

All but one of the Sept. 11 hijackers acquired, legitimately or by fraud,
IDs that allowed them to board planes, rent cars and move through the
country.

Tightening U.S. identification requirements was a focus of both the Sept. 11
commission and the Markle Foundation's earlier bipartisan task force on
terrorism. Markle, a New York think tank, focuses on technology policy.

But concern has mounted over Real ID's cost, practicality and impact on
privacy and travel.

The National Governors Association calls Real ID an $11 billion unfunded
mandate. States say the federal government, not license holders, should pay
the tab. It wants up to 10 years for states to enact laws, pass budgets,
develop technology, hire staff members and educate the public to phase in
changes.

Last month, Maine's lawmakers voted to stop the initiative, saying it would
cost $185 million -- six times the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles' annual
budget. Measures are pending in at least 21 states to oppose or question the
law.

Matthew Dunlap, Maine's secretary of state and head of the bureau, said the
message from the lawmakers was: "We don't care if you give us bags of money.
We don't want it."

An unusual and powerful alliance of civil liberties groups and libertarian
groups important to the political bases of both parties has also mobilized.
They describe Orwellian scenarios in which Real ID integrates nationwide
databases storing personal information without adequate security safeguards,
and they ask who will own and control access to the system.

"Real ID is a real nightmare," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's
Program on Technology and Liberty. "No one should be fooled that just
because the data resides in 50 different states it's not all functionally
one big database, because all the data is linked together."

Steinhardt said he fears that private companies that demand to check
driver's licenses for commercial purposes could sell unencrypted data they
get from the licenses to big data brokers. Means to prevent that could be
even more costly and raise other security risks.

There are other worries. If Maine wants to include gun-permit information on
its driver's licenses, Dunlap asked, will a Maine gun owner whose ID is
swiped in a traffic stop in another state face extra scrutiny?

Practical problems also loom. Computer systems that would let state workers
electronically verify birth certificates, Social Security numbers or
citizenship status do not yet exist, Dunlap said, calling them "science
fiction."

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), ranking Republican on Lieberman's panel, and
Rep. Tom Allen (D-Maine) are seeking to delay or repeal Real ID and let
security experts, privacy advocates and the states renegotiate the rules.

That is what Congress started to do in 2004. But in 2005, Rep. F. James
Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), then chairman of the Judiciary Committee,
rewrote the law to keep illegal immigrants from getting licenses and to let
the Homeland Security Department define the rules for the program.

"If that process had been allowed to finish, we would have been done by
now," said David Quam of the National Governors Association.

Instead, work bogged down in the overstretched department, whose top
officials failed at first to give it enough attention, current and former
officials said.

Stewart A. Baker, assistant homeland security secretary for policy, defended
the department's effort: "We've moved this as fast as possible given the
importance of the issue to so many different constituencies."

Michael E. O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, blamed
the administration and the previous Congress for squandering the consensus
on security that formed after Sept. 11.

"It's a very badly mishandled case overall of a homeland security reform
that was logical, important and yet not sufficiently promoted at the right
time," O'Hanlon said. "We've lost the sense of urgency."

Staff writer Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.