Real ID

I have a real problem with the Real ID concept. Not allowing people on planes without an approved 'real id' or a passport? Even if flying state to state when you can drive across borders without any such ID check? This smacks far to much of 'Papers Please'. DHS is fast becoming a fear mongering blight on the nation. What exactly are they trying to fix? They want to make it more difficult to get a fake ID... and yet the 9/11 folks had REAL ID's all on the up and up. The reason for which states issued them ID have not changed, students on visa etc... and will not EVER change so it doesn't matter how difficult you make it to get an ID. How 'copy proof' it is made. That isn't the problem. The problem is we have and will always have people visiting this country who will need to function in society. If you make ID a requirement to function in society you have just ensured you WILL issue said ID to the people you don't want to have it. Because you will not know who will misuse it and who will not.

Hint to those not in the know in DC. There is no such thing as an un-hackable, un re-createable ID. Why is this? It exists, therefor it can be copied. If it is done once it can and will be done again by someone else. All this is doing is racking up state budgets with a program they can't afford and placing a greater burden on law abiding citizens and stoking fear. Not fear of the enemy, fear their papers will not be in order. Fear the DHS mandated pat down will lead to a back room and someone with a rubber glove looking to probe you in places you would rather not be probed... and that will be the GOOD possibilities. The bad possibilities are that going into such a back room will begin to mean the same thing it does in other places of the world where many folks disappear. It will make people even more insular and less interested in travel which means less money spent on tourism and on and on and on. It will also make them despise their own government more and more. A trend that has been building for several decades here in the good old U S of A.

What is next? Approval required for any international travel? Border checks between states? Not allowing American citizens into federal buildings? Oh wait that last is a potential reality for any citizens of states that decide the tell the federal government to shove it on a requirement slipped into a military funding bill without proper hearing on the congressional floor... real democratic that little piece of work.

DHS, wake up and smell the shit you are shoveling. Homeland security is not about pestering the citizens of the state you are hired to make secure. It isn't about papers being in order or painful application processes. If terrorism has a book... you are following it by doing your absolute best to prove you are so paranoid about your own citizenry that you begin to turn against them, to suspect them, and in the end to successfully turn them in to the enemy... this kind of stuff is the stuff of which Revolutions are made.

No Taxation without representation. No Real ID... far fetched comparison? The air of late is starting to remind me of what I have seen of the McCarthy hearings. Are you a memeber of the communist party vrs Are you a terrorist? Why did you visit Afgahnistan? Why did you take a job in the middle east? Why did you room with a Pakistani in College?

Now perhaps you are thinking I am going a bit over the top here. Am I against the idea of having a unified ID? No not really. But we pretty much already have one in SS. There are far better ways to implement this than through state drivers licenses. If the Federal government wants a mandated federal ID then the federal government should implement and fork out for it. They have no business levying requirements on the states to do so. They have no business levying how states will or will not implement security in their borders. The Federal goverment is about EXTERNAL security and about inter state dispute. Hence Passports for international travel are fine by me. Federal requirements for ID to travel domestically? NO. If the Federal government wants to do this then it needs to have a truly open discussion on the house and senate floor on a single purpose bill... not some sneaky ass buried line item added as a last minute rider on a bill no one in their right mind was going to vote against.

When you have to 'sneak' things by then there might just be a problem. Remember this is a democracy. If people Choose to be less safe, more prone to identity theft then that is the RIGHT of the people if they do not want a particular policy in place. It is not for members of government to decide for us by circumventing the full process of government to get something they think is necesarry. My opposition to Real ID isn't to the concept of a unified national ID, it is to the underhanded, un-constitutional, and just plain unamerican way in which it has been brought about. It is due to the irrational uses the ID is to be put to and senseless reasons for justifying its existence. This will NOT stamp out fake ID. This will NOT stop underaged smoking. Nothing which has been proposed would even have denied ID to the Terrorists responsible for 9/11 had Real ID been in place at the time. So what is the damn point? I am against it because the concept and implementation and supposed purpose are damn near Orwellian in nature. Isn't that enough?