We've had plenty of discussions about the Real ID Act here on Politech, including these: http://www.politechbot.com/2007/02/09/california-officials-like/ http://www.politechbot.com/2007/01/25/maine-becomes-first/ http://www.politechbot.com/2005/03/24/john-gilmore-on/ But so far it's been difficult to figure out how bad the bloody law will be in practice. That's because the Department of Homeland Security has remarkably broad power to come up with regulations, which they finally did in draft form: http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/nprm_realid.pdf Here's a summary I wrote trying to put this in perspective: http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6163509.html Among the outstanding unanswered questions: Will the final rules include an RFID tag? Will all drivers licenses have a standard design dictated by Homeland Security? Will the information that has to be stored on the nationalized licenses (in the form of a 2D barcode) be encrypted? The deadline extension by Homeland Security was cunning. It's almost certainly intended to fragment opposition in state capitals. If the federalized ID card doesn't have to be complete until 2013 -- the earlier date was 2008 -- state DMVs won't be as alarmed right now and voters won't be either. Here's some more background: http://www.epic.org/privacy/id_cards/ http://www.realnightmare.org/ -Declan _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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