February 2007     

Less Terrorism
or More Big Brother?

The National ID Card

By Stanley Holditch

On May 21, 2000, Larry "Dudley" Hiibel was arrested by Nevada police for refusing to produce his identification. The arresting officers were following up on a report that someone was hitting a female in a pickup truck on the side of the highway; when the officers approached Hiibel and asked for ID, he was standing on the side of the highway, talking to his daughter who sat inside his truck.

Hiibel repeatedly asked what he was being charged with or if he was illegally parked, and the officer replied each time that he was not being charged, and that his car was fine. However, his refusal to present his identification landed him in the back of the officers' cruiser, with the charge of "obstructing a police officer," and a $250 fine.

Proponents of privacy rights and civil liberties seized upon the case, but in June 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Hiibel's arrest in a 5-4 decision. The court wrote that neither the Fourth nor the Fifth Amendment gives U.S. citizens the right to refuse to identify themselves to an officer conducting an investigation, regardless of whether that person is a suspect.

Eleven months later, Congress passed the Real ID Act (H.R. 418), which some say is the first step toward a national identification card. Passed without debate as part of a massive military spending bill, the Real ID Act has been the focus of controversy, and a catalyst for pitting personal privacy against national security, since it became law.

Bigger Brother?

In essence, H.R. 418 mandates that states increase the requirements for obtaining driver's licenses in order to meet uniform identification standards by May, 2008. To get a new license, each motorist will have to provide proof of his or her name, date of birth, U.S. citizenship, Social Security number, and residence. States will then check each motorist's documents against federal databases to confirm that the data are valid before issuing a new license.

It remains unclear just what personal information the new licenses will contain, how states will transmit and store the data, and who will have access to it. One thing the legislation does make clear is that, by 2008, such identification will be required to take part in restricted activities, such as boarding commercial aircraft and entering government buildings. Some say that, in fact, the new licenses will be tantamount to national ID cards.

"In the first three years of implementation, the cards will likely include things like thumb prints," says University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) criminologist, Kent Kerley, Ph.D. "The options really are almost endless. They might also include retinal or facial scans, and some of the tracking technologies, like RFIDs." RFIDs, or Radio Frequency Identifiers, would allow the transmission of any kind of data, including biometric information, medical histories, police records, and possibly even purchasing records.

"RFIDs were originally designed to track items as they move around without any human intervention," says business IT expert, Sanjay Singh, Ph.D., noting that Wal-Mart is beginning to incorporate RFIDs into its inventory systems. "Right now, when we purchase an item at Wal-Mart, we have it scanned out by a clerk using a barcode. But in a few years, the moment an item is taken off the shelf, it will scan itself out automatically."

Singh mentions Wal-Mart because the huge retail giant serves as a proving ground for developing technologies. "Wal-Mart is a very big technology-standardization company, so when they make the switch to RFID, the whole retail industry will follow." And it isn't only retailers - according to Singh, when Wal-Mart makes a technological move, the Department of Defense watches, and often follows suit. "The Department of Defense is interested because they have millions of items floating all over the world, and they want to be able to track them easily," says Singh. "RFID emits signals saying 'Hey, I'm here!' So if RFID is used in the ID cards, federal authorities will know exactly who you are, and where you are at every moment."

Just Because You're Paranoid...

The movement toward a national ID program began as a response to the attacks on September 11, 2001. But how does tracking your own citizens protect them from terrorist attacks? "When there is an incident like 9/11, there will be some extreme measures taken by the government," says UAB expert in government surveillance Akhlaque Haque, Ph.D., explaining that several of the terrorists involved in those acts had obtained American driver's licenses. "But by and large, it is the U.S. citizens who will be affected by these cards, not those outside the U.S."

"The argument for such powers was that they're necessary to deter illegal immigrants and potential terrorists who might apply for licenses," agrees Kerley. "But at best, there would be a minimal deterrent effect, because the kinds of acts that terrorists typically commit are things they could accomplish even without official driver's licenses."

To its opponents, the thought of a national ID card linked to a database of what has traditionally been private information on the U.S. citizenry, can conjure images of George Orwell's nightmarish 1984 police state. If the Real IDs are implemented in the manner currently under discussion, licenses and ID cards will become a means to track and survey every U.S. citizen.

Federal agencies such as the FBI admit that, during the Civil Rights Movement and during the Vietnam War, the government did in fact collect information about citizens who were active in civil rights and antiwar groups. Now, as questions are being raised about the range of citizens and activist groups that were monitored after September 11, fears over a national ID program may grow stronger.

"Generally, people don't react unless they are affected," says Haque. "Most of us don't feel targeted right now. But what many people don't realize is that this is a permanent, general law, so it applies to everyone, and therefore it opens doors for surveillance authorities like the FBI and DHS to snoop in people's business."

Fighting the Power

The Real ID Act has drawn opposition from varied sources - not only the American Civil Liberties Union, but also the Republican Liberty Caucus, Episcopal Migration Ministries, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and Gun Owners of America.

"This bill creates a stricter test for applying for and receiving asylum or refugee status," says Kerley, explaining that the act is repugnant to religious groups because it requires asylum seekers to produce verifiable documentation of their persecution from the very people persecuting them. The ACLU has raised the concern that any private company that scans driver's licenses, such as merchants who check ID for certain purchases, would be able to access personal information through the card. State governors and legislators complain that the act is a usurpation of state authority by the federal government.

"This is going to spiral out of the federal authorities' hands," predicts Haque. "The federal government does not actually have the capacity to create the cards, so it all has to be done through outsourcing. There is no question that people who are not working directly for the government will have the opportunity to reap the benefits of access to this information."

"The problem is that there wasn't any debate, either in the House or the Senate," says Kerley of the bill's passage. "Now all of the states will be required to have certain types of information in their databases, which will have to be available to other states and the federal government overseeing them. And that information will become available to everyone." In fact, he notes, the information will be as vulnerable as the least-secure infrastructure among the 50 state governments.

Check Please!

Estimates of the ultimate cost of the Real ID Act range from $100 million to $13 billion. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the program will cost somewhere between $100 and $120 million over the next six years. But Edward G. Rendell, Governor of Pennsylvania, has stated that the cost of the overhaul would top $100 million for his state alone. Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas has called the act a "national nightmare" that will "increase the cost of driver's licenses three-or four-fold." The National Conference of State Legislatures says the act "imposes rigid, prescriptive federal mandates for state-issued driver's licenses, and prohibits financial assistance to a state unless it joins an interstate compact."

Kerley agrees that the financial burden will fall on the states. "You're asking the states to pick up a pretty hefty tab. Most estimates are in the millions to implement this new system." While some call this an unfair "unfunded mandate," Representative Tom Davis (R-VA), one of the act's outspoken proponents, asserts that the act does not require states to do anything at all to their driver's licenses - in fact, the use of driver's licenses as national ID cards is an assumption, not a mandate, of the new law. "States can do whatever they want," says Davis. "But if they want to use [state IDs] as federal IDs, they must meet our standards."

Most current estimates predict that the minimal information infrastructure for the Real ID Act will be in place around 2010. Though RFIDs are a potential component of the national ID cards, the technology surrounding RFID is at least five years away from meeting minimal security standards.

"There is no such thing as a secure transaction, to begin with," says Singh. "Even credit cards are not secure. But RFID is at least a generation or two behind credit cards and ATM cards. I know the goal is 2010, but I will be very surprised if that happens. You're looking at five to seven years, minimum, before people start feeling comfortable with it."

Security - or Secret Police?

Where will the Larry Hiibels of the world find their place under the Real ID Act? Will those who refuse to "show their papers" automatically be excluded from activities such as air travel, gun ownership, and federal benefits? "I wouldn't say we are moving to a show-us-your-papers society," says Kerley. "That's probably not coming any time soon."

Still, some experts see many problems with the Real ID Act. "This is just money being spent in the completely wrong way," says Haque. "It's just further strengthening a 'Big Brother' infrastructure that already exists, and it's creating more problems than it is going to solve."

Others, such as Singh, believe that the change is necessary to improve response time for law enforcement agencies. If there is a chance that a federal ID could thwart another attack such as September 11, then to many, that benefit outweighs the theoretical risks to personal privacy. Singh sees the Real ID as ushering in an information infrastructure overhaul, long overdue, on the part of the government. "This is going to happen, and it's a good technology," he says, "but, like all other technologies, it has its kinks, and it has its downside."

Stanley Holditch is the Editor of Insight on Aging newsletter (UAB Center on Aging), and the Alumni Gazette E-newsletter (UAB National Alumni Association).