REAL ID, REAL PROBLEMS

The Department of Homeland Security has pushed back deadlines and eased requirements for Real ID, but without more clearly addressing how personal information will be protected and how the program will be paid for, the effort to set national standards for driver’s licenses and identification cards remains unworkable.

By extending to 2017 – 16 years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks – the deadline for compliance with Real ID and touting its identity theft protection benefits, the department has put national security aside as it searches for other reasons to press ahead with national license standards.

Instead, Congress should re-examine the program, which 17 states including Maine have opted out of, and decide if there are better ways to reduce identity fraud and therefore improve security. Their first order should be to remove penalties for states that have not committed to comply with the law, which would forbid people in those states from using driver’s licenses to board airplanes beginning this May. Since no states will be compliant by then, this punitive approach is not warranted.

Although the Department of Homeland Security has long touted the Sept. 11 terrorists’ possession of U.S. driver’s licenses as a reason for the national standards, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap points out that the 19 men were issued visas by the U.S. government. Without visas to be in the U.S., the driver’s license issue becomes moot. By this reasoning, if the U.S. government did a better job of screening visa applicants – federal agencies had flagged some of the men as terrorist risks – the states would not now be forced to spend billions of dollars on new licenses and procedures.

It is a persuasive argument.

Sen. Susan Collins, who succeeded in delaying Real ID, praised the department for further slowing the process, but worried the cost, privacy and other concerns remained unaddressed in rules issued last week. “The department will need to consider just how much security Real ID actually provides if several states are not participating in it,” she said.

Rep. Tom Allen goes further and suggests the whole program be repealed and replaced by a more comprehensive approach to improving identification documents. He calls for a panel of experts to do this work. Such a committee was created on the recommendation of the 9-11 Commission but was disbanded by Congress in favor of moving ahead with Real ID.

It may be time to back up. The rules issued by the Department of Homeland Security last Friday give states until December 2017 to complete the issuing of Real ID-compliant driver’s licenses. By drawing out compliance, the department says it reduced the cost of the program from nearly $15 billion to about $4 billion, an estimate many states say are much too low.

The cards, usually seen as a machine-readable driver’s license, would be needed not only for driving but to board airplanes, do business with the federal government and open a bank account.

Besides cost, opponents of the standardized identification program fear that Real ID will result in a national database, which the federal government may not be equipped to protect.

With so many issues yet to be addressed, the Department of Homeland Security rules – and especially the punishments that begin this year – are premature.