Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Washington is fourth state to reject Real ID: 95-2 in House!

As a Washington state resident, I'm delighted to report this one:

The measure directs the state not to spend money to implement the act unless privacy and security protections have been met, the implementation doesn't place unreasonable costs or record-keeping burdens on citizens, and the state has received federal money to put the act's requirements into effect.

The bill also allows the state attorney general, with the approval of the governor, to challenge the legality or constitutionality of the act....


The Senate had already passed a similar bill, and the governor has said she'll sign it; so Washington now joins Arkansas, Idaho, and Maine as officially rejecting the current implmentation of Real ID. Estimated cost in Washington state is about $190 million over the next four years.

As the ACLU's press release points out, the overwhelming margins of these votes against Real ID show that it's a bipartisan issue.

If we can take the momentum that's being generated in the states and generate a tidal wave of comments, this should really strengthen the effort in Congress to repeal the whole act ...

jon


2 comments:

jon said...

Michael Hampton has a good post on this in Homeland Stupidity: Washington state pretends to reject REAL ID. Noting that Washington legislators have already approved a "secure" driver's license that includes an RFID chip, he suggests "the primary objection they have is that the federal government isn’t paying for it. They don’t care one bit about your privacy, despite wording in the law to that effect."

That may well be true for a lot of legislators -- at least today. One of the things we need to do is to make sure that people are aware of the other issues as well, to increase the pressure on Congress for a repeal.

jon

Anonymous said...

thank you for your comment, as i was unclear on what wa was really up to. what i read at prisonplanet.com made my head hurt.
what will done to REALLY stop real id in wa and elsewhere?

Another thing: look at freedomtofascism.com and check out THE GREAT AMERICAN TRUCK OUT this is a related cause