Ars Technica: Stop the Real ID Act by May 8
This past March, the Department of Homeland Security posted its Notice of Proposed Rule-Making (NPRM) for the implementation of the Real ID Act of 2005. The NPRM has been open to the public for comments, but that comments period is slated to end on May 8. If you're concerned about the implications of a national ID card and a national database with tons of your sensitive data in it, and you'd like to join the growing revolt against the Act by an ideologically diverse array of states and citizens' groups, then you can find instructions and aids for submitting your comments to DHS at the following links:
* The Privacy Coalition
* American Civil Liberties Union
* Electronic Frontier Foundation
* Privacy Activism
At least one of the links provides a sample letter that you can modify and submit, but if you really want your voice heard then it's best to write some comments from scratch. It took me less than five minutes to put together a quick, two-paragraph e-mail to Congress and DHS based on the talking points given at the above links, so I urge you to do the same.
Now, none of the links above make clear what this round of comments is about, and if you've been following Real ID you may be thinking, "didn't this already pass... what's this about 'stopping' it?" To understand what the NPRM is about, and what you can do to stop Real ID, you need a bit of historical context.
Congress passed the Real ID Act back in 2005 by burying it so deep within a "must-pass" military appropriations bill that it wasn't discovered by privacy advocates until just a few days before the bill came up for a vote. With such short notice, there wasn't time to rally enough opposition to the Act to get it stripped from the bill—and that's in spite of the fact that it contained an unprecedented and supremely odd "Trojan horse" type A3S2 provision that apparently guts judicial review for a really obscure reason.
Ausweiss, bitte? Get your comments into DHS by May 8th, to stop the implementation of what's effectively a National ID card. What's even worse is the databases. It would ironically be better if the federal government simply implemented a national citizens database. That would cause enough privacy and Big Brother problems right there. But that's not what's being implemented. Instead, state DMVs are being required to implement connectivity features into their driver's license databases, ensuring that any state government employee with access to one state database can make queries about any citizen in all 50 states. It's like a national database, only with horrible security, even more potentials for bugs and errors causing problems with your records, and a total mess that will be used for privacy violation, identity theft and Big Brothering.