Real Id

The Real Id Act passed in the spring of 2005 federalized control over driver's licenses. "The act gave the Department of Homeland Security the power to set technology standards for licenses -- including the potential to require them to carry RFID chips. Requiring spychips in licenses would mean consumers could not leave home without a tracking device, at least not if they're driving. (This bill has been widely denounced by civil libertarians as creating a de facto national ID card.)" from Spychips by Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre.
Governments like to assure their citizens that surveillance will make them safer, but surveillance is more likely to ensure the security of the regime in power than to protect the citizens. Once surveillance tools are in place,’ governments are tempted to use them to identify and hassle people who oppose their rule, whether they are members of opposing political parties (think Watergate) or citizens acting for peaceful change (think Martin Luther King, or, more recently, twenty-one-year-old Sara Bardwell, a member of the group “Food not Bombs” that cooks for the homeless, who was intimidated by the FBI for protesting the Iraq War. Surveillance by the state has a chilling effect on people’s willingness to work for social change and root out abuse. In a surveillance state, people keep their heads low and conform. And, of course, that’s just how the government likes it." from Spychips by Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre.

5 Problems with National ID Cards

T.S.A. Moves Closer to Rejecting Some State Driver’s Licenses for Travel (12/28/2015)

Links to sites about RFID

11 Body Parts Defense Researchers Will Use to Track You (1/25/2013)

Buy an RFID detector and start checking the products you buy.

The Identity Project

Katherine Albrecht: Spychips (video 3:27)

US Passports include rfid devices that can disclose your personal information

Support the Identity Project, which opposes ID card requirements in the US.

Stop Real ID Coalition

National ID and Real ID Act

Real ID showdown (1/12/2008)

DHS: You’ll take a national ID and you’ll like it (5/9/2007)

Naomi Klein on Big Brother 'Democracy'

ACLU reasons to reject national id cards

Bruce Schneier on Passports with RFID

RFID used on people (7/2008)

RealNightmare

About Data Mining

A Brief History of Government Surveillance

U.S. School District to Begin Microchipping Students --Buses fitted with global positioning system (GPS) devices 16 Jun 2008 A Rhode Island school district has announced a pilot program to monitor student movements by means of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips implanted in their schoolbags. The Middletown School District, in partnership with MAP Information Technology Corp., has launched a pilot program to implant RFID chips into the schoolbags of 80 children at the Aquidneck School. Each chip would be programmed with a student identification number, and would be read by an external device installed in one of two school buses.

From the Daily Reckoning dated 6/3/06

This past Thursday, the House approved this set of rules that will force
states to issue every adult American citizen an electronic ID card. The
bill was approved by a 261-161 vote.

"Passed without congressional debate as a rider tucked into the 2005
Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Defense, the Global War on
Terror and Tsunami Relief," reports Detroit's Metro Times, "the act seeks
to have states drastically overhaul procedures for issuing drivers'
licenses by increasing the amount of documentation required to prove
citizenship or legal residency and boosting the personal information
contained on each card, including the addition of biometric identifiers
such as fingerprints or retinal scans."

As if that wasn't creepy enough, University of Washington School of Law
professor Anita Ramasastry reported in a column for CNN.com, such tags
emit radio frequency signals that would "allow the government to track the
movement of our cards and us."

"Private businesses," Ramasastry adds, "may be able to use remote scanners
to read RFID tags too, and add to the digital dossiers they may already be
compiling. If different merchants combine their data - you can imagine the
sorts of profiles that will develop. And unlike with a grocery store
checkout, we may have no idea the scan is even occurring; no telltale beep
will alert us."

What's next? Microchips implanted in our brains so that Big Brother read
our minds along with the ability to listen to our phone calls, read our
emails, and know where we are at all times.

More to come...

Short Fuse
The Daily Reckoning


Alabama's disastrous experience with Real ID.

Real ID Scorecard

Real ID will increase exposure to ID theft 

EFF comments on Real ID

National Database of newborn DNA

Signed into law April 24, 2008, the oh-so innocent sounding Newborn
Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007 establishes a national database
of newborn DNA. This law establishes collection and warehousing of
newborn DNA for scientific research and requires no parental consent
or knowledge.http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/6676
 

It's Eyes (video)

Expanding warrentless wiretapping.

Bibliography

Spychips by Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre

When Gadgets Betray Us: Robert Vamos