State driver's licenses pits TSA vs states in "federalism showdown"

[Celach]

Selected summary (it's a great article though I feel guilty leaving bits out just read it all):

As soon as next year, 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. Federal officials said they would soon determine whether Transportation Security Administration agents would start enforcing a 10-year-old law that requires states to comply with a set of federal standards when issuing driver’s licenses.

Federal and state officials have been arguing for years about the merits of the law, called the Real ID Act, which was enacted by Congress in 2005 following the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Its proponents argue that it is a necessary tool to reduce identity theft and fraud, and enhance the nation’s security.

The federal government cannot force states to adopt these identification standards, but it can gain compliance in other ways. In October, it began requiring that visitors to military bases, nuclear plants and federal facilities produce a driver’s license from a state that complies with the law, or show another form of government identification, like a passport. But the biggest leverage the government has over the states is commercial air travel. The Department of Homeland Security said it would provide a schedule by the end of this year for when airport screeners would start accepting only driver’s licenses that complied with federal standards. It said that any announcement would come with a notice of 120 days before starting to enforce the law at airports.

The law sets some minimum requirements for states to follow when issuing driver’s licenses. For instance, it requires applicants to provide documents to prove their identity, Social Security number and immigration status in the United States. The new standards also require that licenses be equipped with “machine readable” technology, like a chip or a magnetic strip, to store all that personal information. Data from one state should also be made available electronically to all other states, and possibly also to federal authorities.

Marc Rotenberg, the president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said he agreed with some provisions of the law, which are meant to make driver’s licenses more tamper-proof and less likely to be counterfeited. But he is concerned with all the information being available on the cards in a way that makes it more shareable.

Instead, he said, linking all of the nation’s driver’s license records together would increase the vulnerability and potentially expose the information to more risk. 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, he said.

The REAL ID Act was passed a decade ago with a lot of delays and postponements, but the same arguments are being used then and now. Articles from 8 years ago about the enforcement delays also cite several states "have balked at the law, objecting to it largely over cost and privacy concerns."

Whats interesting is that the extensions the DHS has granted to several states came not due to their efforts to comply, but due to pressure from Congress. States choosing not to comply is allowed; their citizens then being unable to use their state IDs for air travel is not a bug of the law but the intended outcome of noncompliance. To this end states like New Hampshire and Louisiana, with laws on the books prohibiting compliance with the REAL ID Act, have had their congressional representatives lobby the DHS to grant them extensions anyway. Makes for a messy thread of logic to follow and makes it easy to just blame the TSA or DHS as 'government agencies run amok'.