Op-ed article for Mobile Press-Register By Deborah Willoughby
July 11, 2006
The Port of Mobile is struggling with the federal government’s new one-size-fits-all security system, which requires a $140 identity card for every port worker. As The Press-Register noted in a recent article, the Transportation Worker Identification Credential could have devastating effects on commerce at the port without doing much to improve security.
The port already does background checks and issues photo ID cards to workers. The new system creates costs, delays and rules that don’t recognize the real-world situations that states and individual ports are better prepared to address. In Mobile, that includes a large pool of day laborers who may choose construction work rather than apply for an ID card that takes up to 60 days to process. Other scenarios include cruise-ship porters who would need to go through security repeatedly during the course of a work shift, or a small operation that would have to hire more guards to escort business people or mail carriers visiting a port. The American Association of Port Authorities is asking the federal government for some flexibility to make the rules more rational and less costly without compromising security.
If the costs, delays and bureaucracy that come with the federal ID card for dock workers bother you, just imagine what will happen with the new federal ID card for all Americans. The port’s problems with the national identification card will spill over into the lives of all Americans when the Real ID program takes effect in 2008.
The American Civil Liberties Union has opposed the national identity card, called Real ID, since it was slipped into a bill and adopted without meaningful debate as an anti-terrorism measure last year. If the Real ID Act goes into effect as scheduled, states and individuals would bear the burden of expensive and intrusive documentation that would provide little or no protection against terrorism.
What are the problems with Real ID?
State governments will have to overhaul their driver’s licensing systems, buy new equipment and deal with the millions of people who will need the new cards.
Citizens will face long lines at driver’s license offices, higher fees to pay for equipment and personnel needed to issue the cards, and bureaucratic problems that will tangle up anyone who doesn’t have the necessary paperwork because of fires, floods, theft or any of the myriad circumstances that complicate our lives. For most people, the process of obtaining the new card will also mean taking time off work to wait in line at the driver’s license office.
Immigrants will face state employees who aren’t trained in complicated immigration law. People who were born in countries that don’t keep birth records, or refugees from hostile nations, may not be able to provide the necessary paperwork.
Everyone will lose some of the privacy that is a foundation of our nation. The Real ID card will serve as an internal passport that will consolidate data and make your personal information accessible -- legally and illegally -- to individuals, agencies and companies that have access to Real ID scanners.
Among the organizations that have concerns about Real ID is the Alabama Department of Public Safety, which participated in an August 2005 survey of state motor vehicle officials conducted by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. The survey showed that officials across the nation have strong doubts about whether it is possible to quickly comply with the Real ID Act’s requirement to link all state motor vehicle information databases. Alabama officials, like those in other states that responded to the survey, are worried about the cost of equipment needed to verify identification papers and to securely store the information, for example, and the cost of investigating discrepancies in Social Security numbers. Alabama officials wrote that Real ID’s provisions would have a “massive” impact on the state and be “extremely costly.”
The good news about Real ID is that there’s still time to stop it. Just as port officials across America are asking for flexibility so that anti-terrorism measures can be deployed in a rational way, Americans with a full spectrum of political views are speaking out against Real ID. As the ACLU says, we want to be safe and free.
Deborah Willoughby works for the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama in Montgomery.
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