[Infowarrior] - REAL ID: States Will Get More Time for Secure ID Plan

[Richard Forno]

States Will Get More Time for Secure ID Plan

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 11, 2008; A03

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/10/AR2008011003
971_pf.html

The Bush administration will announce today that states will have more than
five additional years to comply with its controversial nationwide Real ID
program, the second such delay in a year, people briefed on the plan said
yesterday.

By May 2011, the program to tighten national standards for driver's licenses
would require motorists born after Dec. 1, 1964, to submit a digital
photograph upon application, a birth certificate or similar proof of
identity, and a statement on penalty of perjury that information provided on
applications was true, they said. Other changes would take effect in 2014.

Drivers older than 50 would have until 2018 to meet the new license
requirements, according to sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity
before today's announcement by the Department of Homeland Security.

DHS revised its ID plan after states and civil libertarians criticized draft
regulations, issued last March and setting a 2013 deadline, as unworkable
and threatening to Americans' privacy by creating a de facto national ID for
245 million U.S. drivers. Seventeen states have passed legislation opposing
or opting out of the program.

The 2005 law authorizing Real ID set a May 2008 deadline for its
implementation. The delay will allow state motor vehicle departments to
avoid a surge of applications and instead to phase in more secure licenses
as motorists reach their scheduled license renewal dates, sources said.

The change will lower the projected $14.6 billion state cost of the program
to no more than $3.9 billion, officials said.

"We have worked very closely with the states in terms of developing a plan
that I think will be quite inexpensive, reasonable to implement and produce
the results," recommended by the 9/11 Commission and mandated by Congress,
namely more secure identification, Homeland Security Secretary Michael
Chertoff said. He did not detail the plan.

The announcement comes two months after New York Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer (D)
withdrew a proposal to provide driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, and
Bush administration officials and Real ID advocates have tied the national
program to the debate over illegal immigration.

As Chertoff, speaking to a department advisory board, put it yesterday,
"False identification facilitates illegal immigration, which I'm hearing
again and again is a very big concern for the American people."

Elements of Real ID, such as the photograph requirement, could support
efforts now being piloted by DHS to help employers verify the identity of
prospective hires, said C. Stewart Verdery Jr., a consultant and former DHS
assistant secretary for policy.

By cutting costs and with Congress approving a $50 million down payment for
states' Real ID costs in 2008, Verdery said, DHS is "on a glide path now to
having this thing done."

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has called Real ID a "real
nightmare," called such claims a political spin, especially if costs were
being shifted to the federal government or to individuals.

"The devil is always in the details with DHS, and we'll have to look very
closely" at the program, ACLU legislative counsel Timothy D. Sparapani said.

David Quam, director of federal relations for the National Governors
Association, cautioned that the final regulations "put us at the beginning
of the process, not the end."