Why National REAL ID is a bad idea

In written testimony (DHS Secretary Michael) Chertoff submitted (PDF) on Wednesday to the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, he made another pitch for his department’s requirements, which generally say that starting on May 11, 2008, Americans will need a federally approved, “machine readable” ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments or take advantage of nearly any government service.

A Real ID-compliant document will be of higher “quality” than existing driver’s licenses and other state-issued identification cards, thus helping prevent terrorists and identity thieves alike from committing forgery, Chertoff said in his testimony.

That improved quality will come about, in part, because motor vehicle administrators will be required to link into databases to verify the legitimacy of the
underlying identification documents, such as birth certificates, that Americans submit when they apply for Real ID-compliant cards, the Homeland Security chief suggested. Another senior Homeland Security official, Stewart Baker, made similar claims earlier this year.

Opponents of the Real ID plan, meanwhile, have cited numerous privacy and security flaws in the plan. One of their concerns is that the government’s failure to require encryption on the cards’ two-dimensional bar code could lead to information being swiped and harvested by outsiders for potentially invasive purposes.

Homeland Security is shelving a $42 million data mining system, following revelations that the system development was paused after a report that it was tested using personal data without first doing a required privacy audit, according to a story from the Associated Press.