The loss of freedoms continues?

Jad Mouawad writes at the NYT that a driver's license may no longer be enough for airline passengers to clear security in some states, if the Department of Homeland Security has its way the Department of Transportation will start enforcing the Real ID Act, which was enacted by Congress in 2005 following the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. 

Homeland Security officials insist there will be no more delays.

 In recent months, federal officials have visited Minnesota and other states to stress that the clock was ticking.

 The message was that while participation was voluntary, there would be consequences for failing to comply. 

"The federal government has quietly gone around and clubbed states into submission," says Warren Limmer, a state senator in Minnesota and one of the authors of a 2009 state law that prohibits local officials from complying with the federal law. "

That's a pretty heavy club."

Privacy experts, civil liberty organizations and libertarian groups fear the law would create something like a national identification card. 

Presently twenty-nine states are not in compliance with the act and more than a dozen have passed laws barring their motor vehicle departments from complying with the law, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

 The new standards require more stringent proof of identity and will eventually allow users' information to be shared more easily in a national database.

 Marc Rotenberg, the president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center,says he is concerned with all the information being available on the cards in a way that makes it more shareable and notes that the recent theft of millions of private records from the Office of Personnel Management did not inspire confidence in the government's ability to maintain secure databases. 

"You create more risk when you connect databases,"says Rotenberg. "One vulnerability becomes multiple vulnerabilities."