update to real id

http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-jh20070508.html

There's actually several different updates to the recently enacted REAL Id law. Several key points
1) The law was tacked onto a defense spending bill and was not in open forum debate or even in committee debates in Congress.
2) No federal funding is provided for the increase in bureaucracy and lost productivity, meaning most states will refuse to follow it for lack of funding (border states may be a notable exception).
3) It doesn't accomplish anything other than to conjure up images of black and white news reels of Soviet Russia or Eastern Bloc countries and the people there who need government papers to do anything at all.

There's some supposition that it might cut down on identity theft. But as I've come to understand the principle reason that that's such a common crime now is because so many people we conduct business or regular affairs with are unknown and anonymous to us. We live in such a mobile society as well that it is even easier for someone to move into a new community with assumed identities and few if any questions will be raised. At its face, it would do well for places that issue identification of any sort do some measure of verification or checking. Credit issuing agencies or the DMV barely do this, thus the reason it is so easy to commit identity theft. To say nothing of the reasons it is so easy to get away with. And in any case, most ID theft cases have little to do with one's state issued identity cards. It's usually disgruntled employees, co-workers, or family members who get hold of some discarded form or application. So the amount of discouragement it would actually provide is pitifully small.

But the supposed reasons for the actual passage of the law, the basis of it and the regulations being handled by the Dept of Homeland Security (another government excess in and of itself) were to combat terrorism. Now I will grant that someone can say just about anything is an initiative to combat terrorism and it will pass because no sensible politician wants to be described as 'supporting terrorists'. Even voting against those most unreasonable things that offer little to no effective advantages in security and counter-terrorist capability is later construed as a weak record, hence the Patriot Act and FISA courts. But issuing a federal identification paper does not restrict the ability of terrorists to commit atrocities. (This is the same circular reasoning that says that gun control will reduce crime, by definition it increases it because people who acquire illegal guns have broken the law and people who want to commit crimes anyway have another one to add to the list).

I'm really quite despondent at the level we've sunk to. The idea that government is doing 'nothing' when we as Americans have a ridiculously high standard of living and (most of us) have a clean and safe environment in which to conduct our affairs because that government is doing 'nothing'. Instead, the government is given license to expand its power in the issue of safety because people believe the government is responsible for that safety. It isn't. It is responsible for creating conditions that feel safe (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness line). Its appointed agents have duties to help us if they see immediate need and to constrain problems that it cannot always control (like say hurricane refugees). But its agents and agencies are not ubiquitous. We have the ultimate responsibilities. Maybe that is a scary thought for most, but I for one certainly wouldn't want to live in a society where I am given no powers whatsoever. Ideas like this ID card are a slippery slope toward that country.