REWIND REAL ID

Sen. Susan Collins last week persuaded the Department of Homeland Security to agree to a substantial delay in requiring REAL ID, the planned new and improved identification card. The delay is welcome. It could give officials time to work out the program’s cost – states, understandably, don’t want to pay for it – and to reopen more basic questions about how personal data will be managed and secured and how the act could be applied to federal documents.

Maine is just one of many states to have legislation that rejects the current form of REAL ID. The Collins bill would reconvene the panel that made recommendations on this issue and review problems raised by the states, the standards for protecting constitutional rights and civil liberties and the security of the electronic information, among other issues. (The issue of the federal government imposing costs on states, it is worth noting, was replayed this week in Augusta as the state tried to impose homeland security costs on protesting municipalities. Tax revenues are one area where government security is already sufficiently fierce.)

One of the federal panel members, Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, says not only is the REAL ID delay needed to work out immediate problems with states, but that a much broader look at documents is required. He points out, for instance, that while states would take on added responsibilites because of REAL ID, the federal government is not required to adhere to the same rules, so that passports, visas and Social Security cards would be obtained as they have been traditionally.

Second, states are nervous, with reason, about how vital records will be managed and accessed. Who will have access also matters, and how documents would be verified remains a question.

Who thought that when the first Social Security numbers were issued that they would be used for everything from banking records to student identification? Whatever eventually comes of the REAL ID program may become a standard means for Americans to identify themselves, and for officials and businesses to identify non-Americans.

The federal government hasn’t fully thought this program through yet, and until it does, states are right to be worried. Congress should want to revisit the issue and to ask much larger questions about what security means and how it would be improved while also respecting individuals’ rights and ensuring that the information the federal government wants collected is safely held.