Tennessee smacks down REAL ID
Yesterday, the Tennessee state House and Senate voted unanimously to ignore the REAL ID Act. This makes Tennessee the 16th state to do so.
If it were implemented, the REAL ID Act would force the states to issue what amounts to a national ID card. The database behind it would be more susceptible and attractive to hacking, putting everyone in the country at risk of identity theft. It runs the serious and non-trivial risk of being misused by government agencies, and it's just plain creepy to boot.
The resolution denouncing the Act says:
WHEREAS, the mandate to the states, through federal legislation that provides no funding for its requirements, to issue what is, in effect, a national identification card appears to be an attempt to commandeer the political machinery of the states and to require them to be agents of the federal government, in violation of the principles of federalism contained in the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution[.]
[...]
BE IT RESOLVED ... that the REAL ID Act of 2005 enacted by the United States Congress not be implemented by the State of Tennessee[.]
That's pretty unambiguous.
Bruce Schneier has had plenty to say on this topic, including this:
But the main problem with any strong identification system is that it requires the existence of a database. In this case, it would have to be 50 linked databases of private and sensitive information on every American -- one widely and instantaneously accessible from airline check-in stations, police cars, schools, and so on.
The security risks of this database are enormous. It would be a kludge of existing databases that are incompatible, full of erroneous data, and unreliable. Computer scientists don’t know how to keep a database of this magnitude secure, whether from outside hackers or the thousands of insiders authorized to access it.
As usual, he nails it. I'm just glad the Tennessee Lege saw fit to reject this ominous and flaky law out of hand.
UPDATE: Michael Silence has the press release here.