Privacy

The Total Information Awareness system was an overarching plan for ubiquitous spying upon U.S. citizens and essentially upon "all" commerce and other activity which the U.S. spies might think to call a threat. It was later named the Terrorism Information Awareness system, because Terrorism became a big thing. Either way TIA promised to become the worst of our Big Brother fears. In 2003 the public became aware of the system and a bruhahahaha happened in Congress with a public shutdown of the project, including Admiral Poindexter having to resign from working for DARPA on the project.

Describes the Real ID Act as a the act of a totalitarian dystopia. Since those are $50 words I think he means totalitarian and domineering governments. Think of the movie portrayal of totalitarian governments, and you have a stern police officer demanding "papers, please". Today we have machines that scan our bodies, we have other machines that scan for metals, we have coming machines that scan biometric features of our bodies (such as iris pictures) and more. Taken together the technology has increased to where we can no longer go about our lives in anonymity.

Coverage of the Real ID act by Salon.COM. They point to Rep. Sensenbrenner who, at the time of the passage of this act, was railing against illegal immigration. He sees todays system of identity cards, the drivers license, as "chinks" in the armor of national security. He is also a well known anti-immigration bigot. This article characterises the Real ID Act as a matter of portraying fears, e.g. more terrorist attacks or the dangers of illegal immigration, and to pose this security card as the solution.

An analysis of a speech by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff about the Real ID Act.

Montana and other states are considering rejecting the requirements in the Real ID Act. The act places requirements on states which set standards for an identity card. If a given state does not meet those standards then residents of that state cannot partake in the activities for which the Real ID card is required, such as flying on an airplane, using federal services, etc. Meaning that residents of states who reject the requirements become like exiles in their own country.

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 eminent security expert, Bruce Schneier, explaining his opposition to the Real ID act. He claims it doesn't increase security, but decreases. He claims it's bogus to think requiring identification before boarding an airplane (for instance) increases the security of flying on airplanes. He claims that requiring this ID to be your drivers license just means illegal immigrants will start driving without a license, and just how does that make us any safer?