Six more groups join anti-Real ID public comment coalition

Another six groups have joined the anti-Real ID public comment campaign -- bringing the total so far to 49. The list continues to grow in diversity, with groups like Asian American Justice Center and Citizens' Council on Health Care as well as "the usual suspects" like Center for Democracy and Technology getting on board. The Privacy Coalition's page will continue to track new groups as they join; we'll tryy to get members from the various groups to guest-blog here, so stay tuned!

jon

43 organizations announce campaign to solicit comments!

Today forty-three organizations representing transpartisan, nonpartisan, privacy, consumer, civil liberty, civil rights, transgender people, and immigrants have joined to launch a national campaign to solicit public comments on Real ID.

Our media release is up on the Privacy Activism site, and the Privacy Coalition site is tracking the announcements of all the groups involved -- as well as providing links to our instructions for filing comments, along with EFF's and the ACLU's. Here are a couple of excerpts:

"The breadth and diversity of the opposition is real testimony to how harmful Real ID is to so many different communities," said Deborah Pierce, Executive Director of PrivacyActivism.org and one of the founders of the Stop Real ID Now! activism campaign. "By getting people and groups who are usually excluded from the debate involved at the grassroots level, we can stop Real ID."

"The Real ID Act of 2005 turns our state driver's licenses into a national ID card, costs over $20 billion dollars, infringes privacy, and imposes major burdens on taxpayers, anybody renewing a driver's license, seniors, immigrants, transgender people, and state governments -- while doing nothing to protect against terrorism," said privacy activist Jon Pincus, another founder of the Stop Real ID Now! activism campaign. "This commenting process is a great chance for the American people to tell DHS and Congress the Real ID Act is a bad law that needs to be repealed."

The timing of this announcement, right before the webcast, is perfect ... it should give a lot of momentum to the last week's drive for comments.

So please, forward broadly!

Deborah

PS: see the comments for the list of groups who are initially joining -- and we're expeecting more!