Real ID = National ID Card = SLAVERY for ALL

Adolf Hitler would be so proud. Shortly after taking control of the German government he used the Reichstag fire as an excuse to pass the Enabling Act which granted him extraordinary powers to "defend the nation against terrorism". One of the first things he did was to create the Gestapo (State Police), required all citizens to have government issued "identity papers" and required all citizens to register their weapons. Later, of course, he began tatooing his own soldiers and then the "undesireables" like the Jews, dissidents, POW's etc. The rest is history

On Tuesday, May 10th, 2005, the US Senate voted on the implementation of a national ID card system without ever debating the issue. The Real ID Act is nothing less than a Real National ID Act. The only thing left to the individual states is which pretty picture they will choose to put on the card: everything else will be controlled by Washington DC bureaucrats.

What does this mean for America?

1. Dead Cops.

The Real ID Act requires that you give your permanent home address: no PO boxes; no exceptions. What about judges, police, and undercover cops? Oops!!! Hey Senators, let's endanger our police and judges!!!

2. Stolen Identities.

Our new IDs will have to make their data available through a "common machine-readable technology". That will make it easy for anybody in private industry to snap up the data on these IDs. Bars swiping licenses to collect personal data on customers will be just the tip of the iceberg as every convenience store learns to grab that data and sell it to Big Data for a nickel. It won't matter whether the states and federal government protect the data - it will be harvested by the private sector, which will keep it in a parallel database not subject even to the limited privacy rules in effect for the government.

3. Government Spying.

Real ID requires the states to link their databases together for the mutual sharing of data from these IDs. This is, in effect, a single seamless national database, available to all the states and to the federal government.

4. Papers, Please.

With Real ID, our nation will join the ranks of the old Soviet Union, Communist China, and Vietnam by issuing its citizens a national ID card. The Machine Readable Zone may come in the form of a 2-dimensional bar code - but the Department of Homeland Security, which will be crafting the regulations implementing Real ID, has made clear that it would prefer to see a remotely readable RFID chip. That would make private-sector access and systematic tracking even more easy and likely.

This national ID card will make observation of citizens easy but won't do much about terrorism. The fact is, identity-based security is not an effective way to stop terrorism. ID documents do not reveal anything about evil intent - and even if they did, determined terrorists will always be able to obtain fraudulent documents

5. Unsafe Roads.

Once upon a time, a driver's license was a license to drive a motor vehicle. Turning driver's licenses into national identity cards will actually make our roads more dangerous: by barring illegal immigrants from getting a driver's license, Real ID means more illegal immigrants will now drive without any training or certification. Your insurance company is certain to be understanding.

What's wrong with the Senate?

The Real ID Act has never been debated on the US Senate floor. They've never talked about it in any committee. Heck, most of them haven't even read it!

In order to make a single irresponsible Congressman, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, with totalitarian leanings happy, the Senate leadership let him write the bill and then slipped it into a another bill, one that would keep our fighting men and women taken care of in Iraq and Afghanistan. Supporting our troops means making sure they come home to a free nation, not a surveillance state.

The federal law in question is the Real ID Act that was attached to a military spending and tsunami relief bill in 2005. Because most politicians are cowards, the measure flew through the U.S. Senate by a 100-0 vote and made its way through the House 368 votes to 58.

Unless states issue new, electronically readable ID cards that adhere to federal standards, the law says, Americans will need a passport to do everyday things like travel on an airplane, open a bank account, sign up for Social Security or enter a federal building.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is currently devising regulations for these federalized ID cards. One possibility is that the "electronically readable" requirement will be satisfied by embedding a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip. (They'll already be appearing in U.S. passports starting in October.)

The National Governors Association, hardly a bunch of libertarians, has called the Real ID Act "unworkable and counterproductive." The National Conference of State Legislatures wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in October, asking him to defer to states' expertise.

No doubt much of the political outcry is over money and would evaporate if the Feds wrote checks to cover the cost of upgrading state computer systems. (The governors' press release baldly admits they're "asking Congress to fund the changes required" by the Real ID Act. One taxpayer watchdog group puts the cost at $90 per Real ID card.)

That would be a shame. Privacy and autonomy are even better reasons to be skeptical of this scheme.

There are no rules governing what data that private companies (hotels, retailers, employers) will be able to extract from the Real ID when it's swiped or placed next to an RFID reader. Will information like a home address and Social Security number be disclosed? Will a federal database be alerted whenever the card is swiped or read? And can an RFID'ed license be read from 20 or 30 feet away?

"Having a national ID would promote a surveillance society that we should all dread," Jim Harper, the director of information policy studies at the free-market Cato Institute, told the state Senate committee last week.

The sad thing is that the U.S. Constitution was written to prohibit the federal government from taking such drastic steps. The long-forgotten Tenth Amendment says that powers not explicitly delegated to the Feds "are reserved to the states" or to the people.

It will cost billions, it will hassle every ordinary person (you’ll have to produce original birth certificates and such to the DMV again — and any paper that’s out of order will mean endless harassment), and the basic premise is wrong in two ways. One, the federal government can’t tell us citizens that we’re not permitted to travel, or go to court, without its permission; those are RIGHTS, not privileges. Second, the federal government doesn’t have the authority to demand that the states revise their IDs; that’s a state power. The reason the federal government doesn’t have either of these powers is to guard against totalitarian rule from Washington.

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name...and his number is Six hundred & sixty-six. (Rev.13:15-18)

Rev.14:9: And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand,10: The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:
11: And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.