May 10, 2005 | More Real

Kim Zetter has more on the hasty sausage-making that will likely result in the passage of the Real ID Act in her story in today's Wired News.

Hundreds of civil liberties groups, immigrant support groups and government associations oppose the Real ID Act, a piece of legislation that critics say would produce a de facto national ID card, cost states millions of dollars and punish undocumented immigrants.

Yet despite widespread opposition to the bill, it passed through the House last week and is expected to easily pass through the Senate on Tuesday.

The legislation is raising questions not only about privacy and costs but about the ways in which critical legislation gets passed in Congress.

That's because lawmakers slipped the bill into a larger piece of legislation -- an $82 billion spending bill -- that authorizes funds for the Iraq war and tsunami relief, among other things, and is considered a must-pass piece of legislation.

It's not the first time Congress has slipped contentious bills into larger legislation that is almost guaranteed to pass. In 2003, Congress augmented Patriot Act surveillance powers with wording slipped into the Intelligence Authorization Act, a bill that authorized funding for intelligence agencies. [...]

The National Governors Association, the Council of State Governments and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators are among those who say the law creates unnecessary bureaucracy for drivers and imposes hardship and undue cost on state offices.

The legislation would require all drivers, including current license holders, to provide multiple documents to verify their identity before they could obtain a license or renew one. Drivers would have to provide four types of documentation, such as a photo ID, a birth certificate, proof that their Social Security number is legitimate and something that verifies the applicant's full home address, such as a utility bill. The law would then compel Department of Motor Vehicle employees to verify the documents against federal databases and store the documents and a digital photo of the card holder in a database.

"What's the clerk in Denver supposed to do when someone provides a birth certificate from Angola?" asked Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Are they supposed (to call Angola) to check the accuracy of that?"

In the meantime, privacy activist Bill Scannell's last ditch effort to derail passage of the provisions, UnrealID, had more than 10,000 people fax their senators by noon on Tuesday (EST).

Posted by Ryan Singel at May 10, 2005 11:18 AM

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» Last Chance to Stop National ID from TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime
The Senate hasn't voted on the Real ID Act. Arthur Silber at Light of Reason says it's not too late to stop it. Rep. Ron Paul tells you why it's bad. Then Go here and fax your senator. [hat tip... [Read More]

Tracked on May 10, 2005 02:45 PM