No Passport, no Birth Certificate:

This New Jersey story is about an 81 year old man who was born at home - like many others his age. He lacks a passport and a birth certificate, and is unlikely to get a driver's license in New Jersey. (And maybe he's too old to drive, as well.) Here's the story.

Real ID License ~= Passport

North Dakota's Department of Transportation is trying to persuade federal officials to allow use of the Real ID, which is scheduled to be implemented in all states by May 1, 2008, in travel to and from Canada and Mexico. I've argued before that there's a lot of overlap in these two documents, and we really do not need both. Here's the HeraldToday story. Here's a choice quote:

"If we go through all the same steps to issue a Real ID as would be done for a passport, then it doesn't make sense to make the people get another ID to travel," said Keith Magnusson, the deputy director for Driver and Vehicle Services at the state department.

The Real ID rules will standardize the state-issued identification standards, requiring "absolute proof of one's identity" according to Magnusson. This includes verifying documents, such as birth certificates, with the issuing state.

A charming story about Bill Catorini:

Bill Catorini has been driving without a license since January because of a Real ID problem that may affect many people. He lied about his age to get his first job, and now the birth date on his birth certificate does not match what SocSec has for him. In Illinois that menas he can't get a license until he makes SocSec fix the problem, apparently not so easy to do.

And all because Illinois is trying to play by Real ID Rules.

And Bill's not alone. We'll see lots more of this in 2008.

Farewell, Jim!

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner (Wisconsin) is in his sixth year as chairman, which must be his last. He's proud of bringing us the real ID legislation (by squeezing it into a bill to provide needed fnds in Iraq). It will be interesting to see whether his departure affects the status of Real ID.

New Hampshire says NO!

This new state law in New Hampshire seems to require the state not to cooperate with Real ID. Speaking frankly, the law's text calls Real ID a "National Identification System." The Meat and Potatoes of this law is very brief, so I will quote it here in full:

Prohibition Against Participation in National Identification System. The general court finds that the public policy established by Congress in the Real ID Act of 2005, Public Law 109-13, is contrary and repugnant to Articles 1 through 10 of the New Hampshire constitution as well as Amendments 4 though 10 of the Constitution for the United States of America. Therefore, the state of New Hampshire shall not participate in a national identification card system; nor shall the department of safety amend the procedures for applying for a driver’s license under RSA 263 or an identification card under RSA 260:21.

North dakota faces the Big $$ for Real ID:

North Dakota joins a number of states that have discovered Real ID will be painfully expensive and inconvenient. An AP Article in the Grand Forks Herald by Dale Wetzel says that "David Sprynczynatyk told the Legislature's interim Transportation Committee on Tuesday that he will seek federal aid to help defray the cost of complying with the "Real ID" law, which takes effect in 2008." And "Complying with a new federal identification law will cost North Dakota about $6 million and require drivers to bring more paperwork to renew their licenses, the state transportation director says."
The article also complains that the new system cannot be implemented in time for the deadline in 2008. Well: we knew that, didn't we? When is the DHS going to finish specifying what states must implement to comply?

Logistics, Logistics, ...

A story in the Auburn Plainsman reports problems that could either go away or get much, much, worse. Our concern today is that EVERY license issued in EVERY state will involve one or more operations on centralized federal data bases.

" These databases must also be contacted whenever a new license is issued. But these databases are overloaded and frequently shut down, sometimes for up to two hours at a time. When this happens, issuance of new licenses is delayed until the databases can restart.

Compounding the problem is the federal mandate known as the Real ID Act, which requires all states to send a query to a central database in Washington D.C. every time a new license is issued."

Now it may happen that by 2008, the pipeline to these federal data bases will become much faster and wider. Or these databases could remain much the same, and be buried under an avalanche of queries:

“In the beginning, only a few states were sending information through the pipe to D.C.,” said Col. Mike Coppage, director of the Alabama Department of Public Safety. “But because of the Real ID Act, now all 50 states have to send information down that pipe. The pipe has not gotten any bigger. When it gets to Washington, their computers lock up.”

Coppage also said to issue new licenses, the federal government requires the state to query five federal databases, and if any one of them becomes overloaded, the entire state has to wait for it to restart before any new licenses can be issued.

The databases are owned and maintained by Digimarc Corp., which won a contract to produce new licenses for Alabama in 2003. The issuance system was supposed to be completed by March 2005, but was not. Alabama has fined Digimarc $1.6 million for the delay.

And by gosh, here's Digimarc again. We may be hearing a lot about this company for the next few years; there may be a lot of Real ID eggs in its basket.