Atlanta, GA -- “’September 11’ has become the catch-all excuse for virtually every proposed expansion of government power,” notes Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party nominee for president. “One example is a national identification card and data base, long desired by some in government, and which was mandated by legislation passed by the Congress in 2005 with the support of both Senators McCain and Obama. Although I was no longer in the Congress when this bad legislation was passed, I had vigorously opposed it in the years since it became law, just as I led the successful effort to rescind a previous mandate for a national ID card.”
Unfortunately, he explains, “the Real ID Act establishes a new and privacy-invasive national ID card program. By forcing states to standardize their driver’s licenses and creating a vast national data base of private information on the citizenry, the law establishes through the back door something Americans would never have accepted directly—a National Identification Card.” In fact, “there was no open and honest vote on Real ID. The mandate was slipped into a supplemental appropriations bill, discouraging any real debate over the issue.”
“Creating anything close to a national ID card threatens Americans’ basic civil liberties and privacy while doing little or nothing to make us more secure,” warns Barr. The legislation also “means higher fees, longer lines, and greater inconvenience for Americans getting a driver’s license. The burden on states, which have to redesign and remake state licenses and include all manner of information on citizens applying for new driver’s licenses, would be extremely high and immensely costly, since they would have to restructure computer databases, security systems, verification measures, and more.”
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