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Your papers, please

Last night blogger was down for service and didn't come back up while I was on. One of the things to catch up on is how a national ID card was all but signed into law (Bush is virtually certain to sign it) passed the US Senate yesterday once sponsors of the Real ID Act glued it into an Iraqi military spending bill. Set to go into effect in May 2008, anyone without such a card will be effectively prohibited from riding Amtrak or by air, opening a bank account or entering a federal building.

It's core based in xenophobia, its supporters tout it as an important homeland security tool. Attempts were made to warn the public last week but word didn't get around quickly and solidly enough to do any good. It's unlikely to make us one iota safer, but it will not only make it easier to track our every move beyond the local scene and make some contractors very wealthy, but it will also concentrate a great deal of information about each of us into a form that will become an A+ target for identity thieves. This will become even more likely if they're able to include radio frequency identification chips into these cards, so security scans can get our cards to spill the beans about us in a microsecond. Surely, no criminals will ever be able to crack the ingenious protections our government will insist upon...

(Thanks to I'm a crypt leak and probably one or two others for sending me a note about this today, btw. They turned out to be good reminders.)

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