One of the government success chronicles at the state level has been the reformation of the driver's license application and renewal process. The endless DMV lines of the past fueled public hostility toward government, so state run DMV took action in making the process shorter and less of a hassle. When I renewed my Driver's license it took thirty minutes, but the REAL ID Act of 2005, which is scheduled to take effect in 2008, will completely trash the DMV progress. The REAL ID will create a system that will not only return us .to the darker days of three hour waits, but could increase those waits to a few days or even a week just to fill out an application request.

It's going to be pure Hell thanks to the Department of Homeland Stupidity

Since the Department of Homeland Stupidity issued proposed REAL ID regulations, states have been justifiably rebelling at the unworkable rules and regulations with guarantees to make trips to the DMV more Kafkaesque.

REAL ID sets regulations that are demanding US states to use when issuing driver's licenses and identification that individuals would need to fly on a commercial plane, enter a federal building, open a bank account, and any other activities in which the federal government is involved. States are not obligated to comply with the act, but the Department of Homeland Stupidity will definitely make citizens sorry that their state is refusing to comply when citizens can't board an airplane, collect Social Security checks or receive federally funded US citizen earned benefits.

Sound too far fetched?

As detailed in a Governing magazine cover story titled REAL Nightmare, the DHS rules require state DMVs to verify the legitimacy of documents like birth certificates and utility bills that individuals must present to obtain a REAL ID.

The immediate problems that I see in this are going to be for the people who have changed their names due to
Marriage
Domestic violence
Victim protection / former violence with the possibility of being found & harmed again
They were given a unbearable birth name

These individuals will have to locate court papers of the name change to be included with the birth certificate. Some of those court documents could be fifty years old - what happens if those documents are no longer available?

For argument sake, lets just say that most of the US won't have a problem presenting this documentation. Using that argument, the 'verify the legitimacy' verification process would require enormous increases in state personnel and US tax dollar spending on new technological capabilities, while forcing drivers who now receive their renewed licenses in the mail to come into the DMV offices carrying all of the documents to be verified right there in front of you. This will create a funnel like rat race of 30 million people headed to DMV offices around the country over the next five years and increasing the workloads of those departments by approximately 132 percent.

The overall additional cost to the states is estimated to be between $10.7 billion and $14.6 billion, plus an additional $7.8 billion to be paid directly by individual ID applicants.

In and of itself, the decision of some states against participating undercuts its feasibility. If someone born in a state that has opted out of the system applies for a REAL ID in a state that does comply with the act, there would be no way for the DMV to verify that individual's birth certificate. There's no national database of birth certificates, and many states have only paper records that have not been converted into electronic files. If states can opt out of REAL ID, the whole thing becomes an exercise in futility.

The new system is very unlikely to be any help in deterring terrorists. The REAL ID regulations include an exemption for individuals who do not have access to the original documents required to obtain an REAL ID. So that's one loophole for bad guys to exploit. More importantly, the creation of mammoth new databases that would be required of states presents additional opportunities for identity thieves, including the would-be terrorists.

There's very little reason to believe that the Department of Homeland Stupidity 's REAL ID will do anything to make the US safer, which was the professed underlying principle for the law. No! This is just a cloud cover for what the law really is - a repression developed from this era's Wannsee Conference

The Surveillance Society