The Threat of Real ID

If you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, or take advantage of nearly any government service.

The Real ID Act hands the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the department that was responsible for the Hurricane Katrina response, the power to set these federal standards and determine whether state drivers' licenses and other ID cards pass muster. Only ID cards approved by DHS can be accepted "for any official purpose" by the feds.

The card will contain name, birth date, sex, ID number, a digital photograph, address, and a machine-readable technology to read that data. DHS is permitted to add additional requirements--such as a fingerprint or retinal scan--on top of those. We won't know for a while what these additional requirements will be but DHS has indicated that it may require radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips which would allow your ID card to be read remotely without your knowledge. (The State Department is already going to be embedding RFID devices in passports.)

Real ID demands that all driver's licenses or ID cards have pictures that can be read by facial-recognition technology.

The Real ID Act also requires states to interconnect their databases to a national database.

The machine-readable technology embedded in your ID card will make it possible for banks, retailers, airlines, etc. to demand your ID card and to easily collect all your personal data into their systems. This will clearly make identity theft much easier. And the data collected could be sold to commercial companies such as CheckPoint which have had large amounts of data stolen by identity thieves.