Inappropriate. If the republican Congress has already signaled that there is no need to debate this in Congress, then you should keep your opinions to yourselves. Whaddya think this is, a democracy?

You know, the Republicans had "pieces of flair," but they made the Democrats wear them.

Article......okay, it's cut & paste .;)

http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,62182,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2

A patron walks into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender asks to see some ID. Without asking permission, the barkeep swipes the driver's license through a card reader and the device flashes a green light approving the order.

The bartender is just verifying the card isn't a fake, right? Yes, and perhaps more.

Visitors to an art exhibit at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts got more than their martinis when they ordered drinks at a bar inside the gallery's entrance. Instead of pretzels and peanuts, they were handed a receipt containing the personal data found on their license, plus all the information that could be gleaned from commercial data-mining services and voter registration databases like Aristotle. Some patrons also got receipts listing their phone number, income range, marital status, housing value and profession. For added effect, the receipt included a little map showing the location of their residence.

The magnetic strips and bar codes on the back of most state's driver's licenses contain more information than people think. The way the swipers use the information might surprise them as well: Some bars and restaurants scan driver's licenses to catch underage drinkers and fake IDs, but they're also using the information for marketing purposes.

Last year artists and producers Beatriz da Costa, Jamie Schulte and Brooke Singer built the Swipe exhibit in Pittsburgh to show what's on the cards we all carry.

To reinforce the point, they also launched a website last Monday with a free online suite of tools that lets visitors decipher the bar codes on their IDs, calculate the worth of their data and request copies of their personal files from commercial data-mining companies like Acxiom and ChoicePoint.

"We wanted to give people back their data, to empower them to prevent having their information swiped," Singer said.

While many patrons thought the museum project was fun, Singer said they were "pretty stupefied."

"We put what we thought was the least sensitive data on a monitor over the bar, showing maps and a person's name and age. But they were upset about that; especially about their age," Singer said.

"We didn't do it to offend anyone," Schulte said, "but sometimes that's the best way to get through people's defenses. We wanted them to be aware that the data was easy to get."

More than 40 states use magnetic strips and bar codes on licenses. Depending on the type of code used, some cards can store up to 2,000 bytes. In some states, a driver's Social Security number also serves as the license number, so that sensitive nugget is also on the card. And Kentucky has embedded a digital image of the driver's photo in the bar code, according to the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, or AAMVA, which sets voluntary standards for states to use when creating their licenses.

Bar codes on licenses generally make life easier for law enforcement. Police scan the cards during traffic stops to avoid scribbling the information on a citation report. They also can more easily retrieve information from the computer in the squad car.

Bars and restaurants scan the codes to catch underage drinkers using fake IDs. Convenience stores use them to verify the age of cigarette buyers. Airports, hospitals and government buildings are beginning to scan driver's licenses for security. And businesses can use driver's license records for legitimate business purposes such as verifying identities.

"But is it legitimate to then store the information and use it for marketing purposes, or however they see fit without regulation?" said Singer.

Using the information, a bar can track how often patrons come in, the hours they arrive and even identify those who arrive in groups (if the cards of friends are swiped in sequence). The bar can query, for example, how old the audience for a particular hired band was or how many were male or female.

Bars also can combine the info with sales data if a patron purchases drinks and food with a credit card. The combination of age, weight, gender and liquor sales could help a bar determine what kinds of drinks to market to which crowd.


Page 2:
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,62182-2,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1

DMVs have been selling personal info for years....add a little technology and it becomes that much more powerful.

Last I heard the ID bill was subject to lots of criticism as the cost of the federally mandated changes would be on the shoulders of the states and the "consumer".

FWIW, In NJ one can renew their license by mail or internet and go for ever w/o a photo. Many, many residents take advantage of this process. I can't imagine everyone being required to show up to an already overburdened system.

Casablanca?

How long ago was 1984? It amazes me how surprised people act when they discover just how much information about them is readily available. And it not, as this thread implies, due to either political party. It's all about money and marketing. They developed the technologies,processes, and databases; government is merely a late arriving hitch hiker.

Yesterday a small group of Senators conducted a so-called debate in the mostly empty chambers of the Senate. Ten or so Senators complained about the inclusion of the REAL ID Act in the supplemental appropriations bill.

* They said the REAL ID Act was dangerous, poorly conceived, and unnecessary.
* They complained that the Senate had never even read or considered the REAL ID Act, but was now being "forced" to vote on it.
* They objected to the improper procedure of the Conference Committee in adding REAL ID to the appropriations bill.
* They objected to inflicting yet another unfunded federal mandate on the states.
* They spoke of the protests they were hearing from their constituents, and predicted a public backlash if REAL ID became law (THEY HEARD YOU!)

And then they voted.

All 100 Senators voted to pass the appropriations bill as well as the Real ID Act!

It will now become the law of the land.

* Now, you will now have to, provide four proofs of your identity the next time you renew your driver's license.
* You can also expect that your driver's license will include various types of private information about you, and down the road, a tracking device to follow you.
* You can further expect to have your information placed in a central database available through hackers and unsavory government employees.

Why did all 100 Senators vote for this horrible bill? There are probably many reasons, but I suspect the most powerful was that none of the Senators wanted to be accused of voting against funding for the troops.

This is a lame excuse. Even I'm amazed that not one single Senator had any courage in this instance. The Senators could easily have said for the record, "I want to vote for these appropriations, but will not do so with REAL ID attached." They could have voted down the bill (which was horrendous on its face to begin with) and made the House send back another version without REAL ID. The whole process could have been completed in a matter of days, with no harm to the budget-busting spending proposed in the appropriations bill.

But not even one Senator took this course. This is primarily because average citizens have done a poor job of letting their representatives know what they want... ...........

Copy & Paste, but at least you know your are screwed.:cool:

And then there's this:

"Real ID Act Faces Opposition

Several states are threatening law suits or even disobedience should the Real ID Act bill be signed by the President and come into effect. The Real ID Act requires states to ask driver's license applicants for a birth certificate, a photo ID, proof of Social Security number, and a document with full name and home address. Illegal aliens who won't be able to show all the proof could still get a driver's license, but it will be marked with different colors or have a different design. This type of license can't be used as an ID to board a plane or enter a federal building.

The states' main complaint is the additional expenses and work the new system will create. It will leave the individual states with a huge bill and will make getting a driver's license for law-abiding applicants more difficult.

The irony of this new rule is that everybody agrees on a better and safer system of identification with driver's licenses, but how to actually put the system in place seems to be a insoluble problem."

Kind of related.........and funny (to me anyway). West Virginia won't let Jesus Christ get a driver's license.

From CNN:
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/LAW/05/10/jesus.lawsuit.ap/index.html

Wow, they actually stipulated this stuff in the bill? No WONDER your panties are so far up your crack about this issue! :p

Seriously, such an obviously canted source telling me that I should be afraid of some impending doom and gloom event that they are obviously pulling our of thin air is majorly underwhelming. I mean, c'mon. "placed in a central database available through hackers and unsavory government employees." First off, this sentence doesn't even make sense, I'm guessing this rag doesn't employ the best proofreaders.
Oh no! :eek: They're going to put my information....in a DATABASE! Where GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES can access it? Not in my America!
What a joke! Is someone out there so out of it they think all of your federal data is in a cardfile or something? SmileWavy

I knew two things. I knew this article would hit this forum, and I knew you would be the one to post it. Hehehehe, I'm feeling pretty smart right now. Oooops, gotta go. I hear Google has a link to some information about me.

I'd like to see how they do this. "Following" can be interpreted many ways. They're (whoever they are) probably suggesting some type of RFID silliness. Let's see how the ACLU swallows this.

It would be trivial to embed RFID tech into a driver's license.

No doubt. But why? Can one write info to a RFID chip? If so wouldn't it be redundant? (IMO, magnetic strips are like VHS tape...at the absolute bottom of the technology heap.)

From what I understand one can hardly track someone using RFID technology.

RFID tags can be read at varying distances depending on the equipment being used, and can be read without the knowledge of the tag-ee.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID#Controversy

From the link:



Aluminium Foil !!!!!!!!

Will we ever hear the end of this one?:D

As an engineer supporting RFID and other RF devices I can speak from personal knowledge.

RFID tags can be both Read only or Read/Write. The amount of data they can store varies depending on the device. They can also come with encryption or be open to anyone.

RFID is unique because it is passive. There is no battery in the system. This means that it can be placed in a sealed system and have potentially infinite shelf life.

The distances involved vary with the technology. The old 125kHz is short range < 1ft in most cases. The newer 13.56MHz is mostly used for cyptology (probably what would be used in this case) and has range up to < 2ft. The latest development is in UHF (900MHz). This can have up to 15ft range.

As widebody said...There is no way to know if the tag is being read. Although I would put a money bet on the fact that there would be heavy encryption on the tag. It would not be a simple open read tag.

As far as being able to track (i.e. follow as they move from one location to another) someone with RFID in real time? Can't happen unless they have huge electronic toll both type machines everywhere you go.

This seems like a burdensome and mis-represented law.

By next week, Congress is expected to pass a new national identity law requiring anyone seeking a driver's license to provide a photo ID and birth certificate -- along with proof of state residency, a Social Security card and a secondary document, such as a credit card.

Cripes, I couldn't tell you where my birth certificate or Social Security card are, and probably don't have them anymore. Under this law, I couldn't renew my driver's license!

Some people don't have Social Security numbers, by the way. If you are a foreigner here lawfully for a non-work purpose (e.g. a foreign student, or maybe the non-working spouse of a foreigner who is working here), you are not required to have an SSN. Apparently you now can't get a driver's license either.

On the other hand, the bad guys could simply forge the documents, couldn't they?

Do you think the clerk at the San Francisco DMV has the slightest idea whether a birth certificate from Tumbleweed, OK is "authentic"? And the Social Security card isn't exactly a forgery-proof document - last time I saw mine, it was simply a printed piece of paper.

Back when I was in college, I knew guys who bought phony birth certificates and used them to get driver's licenses, so that they could drink in bars. Believe me, the DMV has no ability to catch that.

So, now, for the law-abiding among us, we have made the process of getting or renewing your driver's license a huge pain in the butt, increased the costs of the state, lengthening the lines at your local DMV, and eliminated the convenient renew by mail process that most of us use now.

How, exactly, have we made the US safer?

The claimed justification for the law is that the 9/11 terrorists showed state-issued drivers' licenses when they got on the planes. Well, guess what, you can get on a plane by showing your US passport, or your German or Russian or Saudi passport for that matter. No way to change that unless you want to make it impossible for foreigners to fly in the US - yes, let's choke off international tourism and business travel, shall we?

The fact is that this law was not really intended to protect the US from terrorism. It was intended as an anti-illegal immigration measure, and introduced by a Republican Congressman whose pet issue is illegal aliens. When he couldn't get any support for the law, he stuck it on the $82BN emergency funding bill, where it sailed through.

Now, I don't have a strong view on whether illegal aliens should be able to get driver's licenses. Probably not, but I'm willing to listen to both sides. My point is, if that is the real purpose of the law, then it should be justified on that real basis and we can all weigh the burdens of the law against the real benefits, not against the supposed benefits of preventing terrorist attacks - which this law will do nothing about.

Doesn't it bother anyone that, in Washington, the cry of "protect America" has become the trump card to get any sort of stupid pet project enshrined in law and cooked into pork? Doesn't seem to bother the government.

Replacement SS cards aren't an unobtainable holy grail.

All you need is your SS number and a photo ID, go to the SS office in your home town, fill out the paper work, and pay them for a replacement card. I can't remember if I had to pay for a replacement or not, I'm thinking it cost me $5 though, and took 6 weeks to get it.

I believe you can even get replacement Birth Certificates through either your birth state or the hospital that you were born at.

Tobster, Thanks for the first hand info. I didn't think today's current technology would lend itself to tracking, ala GPS solutions.
If the chips used to "tag" dogs are RFID I'd venture a guess that the distances you state are under optimal conditions. My experience with the pet chips is not 100% positive. Vets would frequently miss the presence of a chip after repeatedly scanning directly over the skin where it was deposited (typically in the neck area). Granted this would be in the first generation timeframe.