Real ID Laws Are a National Catastrophe: Cato
by Jim Harper
Jim Harper is director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute and the author of the book Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood.
Added to cato.org on August 25, 2008
This article appeared in the Delaware County Times on August 24, 2008.
Pennsylvania is poised to join 11 other states that have passed laws rejecting the federal Real ID Act. Many more have objected to it.
Passed by Congress in 2005 - without any debate - Real ID is nothing more than an attempt by Congress to strong-arm the states into accepting and funding a national ID scheme. It requires states to produce new, standardized driver's licenses with machine-readable technology, and to create databases that hold copies of American citizens' sensitive identity documents. The tab for all of this is expected to be nearly $17 billion, with the state governments forced to shoulder the majority of the financial burden.
Jim Harper is director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute and the author of the book Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood.
--MORE--
Jim Harper is director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute and the author of the book Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood.
Added to cato.org on August 25, 2008
This article appeared in the Delaware County Times on August 24, 2008.
Pennsylvania is poised to join 11 other states that have passed laws rejecting the federal Real ID Act. Many more have objected to it.
Passed by Congress in 2005 - without any debate - Real ID is nothing more than an attempt by Congress to strong-arm the states into accepting and funding a national ID scheme. It requires states to produce new, standardized driver's licenses with machine-readable technology, and to create databases that hold copies of American citizens' sensitive identity documents. The tab for all of this is expected to be nearly $17 billion, with the state governments forced to shoulder the majority of the financial burden.
Jim Harper is director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute and the author of the book Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood.
--MORE--