The so-called "REAL I.D. Act of 2005" is a U.S. federal law that imposes security, authentication and issuance standards for American state driver's licenses and state ID cards. It is one of the best evidences of the Big Brother Bush's Draconian mentality and brings America close to having to relive those chilling old movies in which the Nazi Gestapo police demand: "Your papers, please!"
Anyone who has ever stood in line at a State Motor Vehicles Agency would know better, but the U.S. Congress stupidly assigned the control and administration of this monstrous new program to just those bureaucratic agencies. The law federalizes and standardizes state driver's licenses for all 50 states, and it will result in something that has been resisted in this country for a long time -- a de facto national identity card.
And if you don't have the new ID card that the Act requires, you wont be able to board commercially operated airline flights or entering federal buildings. The Real ID Act would impose numerous new burdens on taxpayers, citizens, immigrants, and state governments – while doing nothing to protect against terrorism.
As a result, the law has caused intense opposition from many groups across the political spectrum. States such as Maine and Idaho have refused to go along with the law, but are now under threat that their citizens will suffer the consequences -- having all their citizens added to "no-fly"`lists.
My Life as Dead Man
A case in point: a couple of years ago my Social Security check stopped being deposited in my bank account. In due course it turned out the Social Security Administration had declared me to be dead. It took four months and intervention by my congressman to get this mistake corrected.
Fast forward to this week -- when I realized that my Florida drivers license was about to expire on my birthday, but that I had received no renewal notice as in the past. I went online and had to pay for a copy of my drivers license record, only to discover that my drivers license and, presumable me also, did not exist.
I went to the Florida DMV office and they confirmed that I was dead -- at least to their computers. My guess is that some interface between the U.S. Social Security computers and those of the Florida DMV passed along the erroneous report of my death, but never let them know I'm really alive, (more or less).
My Life in the Balance
So tomorrow I must go back and a DMV clerk will decide: 1) if I am alive; 2) eligible for a new drivers license, and 3) under the terms of the Real I.D. Act whether I will be able to get on an airplane. That's an awful lot of responsibility over my life for a civil service bureaucrat.
George, (Orwell, not Bush), knew this was coming and warned us. But who realizes or even cares as our precious liberties are incrementally leeched away?
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