[Infowarrior] - Maine rejects Real ID

[Richard Forno]

Maine rejects Real ID
State's legislature overwhelmingly opposes act requiring national digital ID
cards, putting Bush administration in a pickle.
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: January 25, 2007, 2:33 PM PST

http://news.com.com/2100-7348_3-6153532.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&subj
=news

Maine overwhelmingly rejected federal requirements for national
identification cards on Thursday, marking the first formal state opposition
to controversial legislation scheduled to go in effect for Americans next
year.

Both chambers of the Maine legislature approved a resolution saying the
state flatly "refuses" to force its citizens to use driver's licenses that
comply with digital ID standards, which were established under the 2005 Real
ID Act. It asks the U.S. Congress to repeal the law.

The vote represents a political setback for the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security and Republicans in Washington, D.C., which have argued that
nationalized ID cards for all Americans would help in the fight against
terrorists.

"I have faith that the Democrats in Congress will hear this from many states
and will find a way to repeal or amend this in the coming months," House
Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat, said in a telephone interview
after the vote. "It's not only a huge federal mandate, but it's a huge
mandate from the federal government asking us to do something we don't have
any interest in doing."

The Real ID Act says that, starting around May 2008, Americans will need a
federally approved ID card--a U.S. passport will also qualify--to travel on
an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments or take
advantage of nearly any government service. States will have to conduct
checks of their citizens' identification papers, and driver's licenses
likely will be reissued to comply with Homeland Security requirements.

In addition, the national ID cards must be "machine-readable," with details
left up to Homeland Security, which hasn't yet released final regulations.
That could end up being a magnetic strip, an enhanced bar code or radio
frequency identification (RFID) chips.

The votes in Maine on the resolution were nonpartisan. It was approved by a
34-to-0 vote in the state Senate and by a 137-to-4 vote in the House of
Representatives.

Other states are debating similar measures. Bills pending in Georgia,
Massachusetts, Montana and Washington state express varying degrees of
opposition to the Real ID Act.

Montana's is one of the strongest. The legislature held a hearing on
Wednesday on a bill that says "The state of Montana will not participate in
the implementation of the Real ID Act of 2005" and directs the state motor
vehicle department "not to implement the provisions."

Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project,
said he thinks Maine's vote will "break the logjam, and other states are
going to follow." (The American Civil Liberties Union has set up an
anti-Real ID Web site called Real Nightmare).

Pingree, Maine's House majority leader, said the Real ID Act would have cost
the state $185 million over five years and required every state resident to
visit the motor vehicle agency so that several forms of
identification--including an original copy of the birth certificate and a
Social Security card--would be uploaded into a federal database.