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Comment by furyg3 | Hacker News Reader

> The Real ID Act created a national standard for state-issued IDs. Some states initially refused to comply, fearing that the federal government would make a national database of citizens.

The US is a weird place...

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Indeed. I'm not quite sure why people think the government doesn't already a "national database of citizens" between social security (theoretically assigned to every citizen) and taxes (ties SSN to address yearly).

For sure, and on a more philosophical level, I would think that 'knowing who her citizens are' would be on the shortlist of things a nation-state does.

Yeah, but there's knowing that a person named John Smith is a citizen, and knowing that John Smith lives at 123 Maple Way in Sometown, State, that he is currently an organ donor, that his face is a partial match to faces sighted at at least 3 crimes, that he flew out of the country 14 times last year, and that he currently owes $43,578 in back taxes as a result of some unreported contracting work.

The latter kind of knowing is what we're afraid of, especially the database of faces.

To be honest, nearly all of that sounds perfectly reasonable information for the federal government to have. Trusting the card being presented to you by the person making the identity claim is a fundamentally flawed idea that has always been mitigated with technology (stamps, seals, holograms, etc) which is all now irrelevant. You tell me you're "John Smith", I look it up. Even current forms of ID use biometric data (a photo & DOB) to validate the claim. I would certainly hope the government would know that John has left the country X times and owes Y in back taxes, as that's their job to know. Address and organ donor status are IMHO silly things to put on an ID card, (you don't need to live somewhere to be John, or have decided what your organ donor status is), but don't strike me as dangerous things for the federal government to know.

How this information is disseminated within the federal government or between states sounds like an excellent debate to have, as does the discussion about due process for suspects... but 'should the government be able to know who it's citizens are' is a silly one.

Organ donation I can see, and maybe the facial matching. But international border crossings and tax status seems like exactly the sort of thing the government should know.

The real ID act created a data sharing system between all the states of everything encoded on your driver's license, including picture. the picture is then fed into facial recognition software which is used in a variety of places. A while back a Chinese national was working with a dataset in an opaque federal "fusion center" before abruptly quitting and flying home to China, woops https://www.propublica.org/article/lizhong-fan

> social security (theoretically assigned to every citizen)

Participation in the Social Security program is optional.[0]

[0] https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10023.pdf

That database doesn't yet include everywhere you go for example (hopefully)... Governments would love it if your online activity would need to be tied to a national ID for example...

The initial draft of the Minnesota State House's ban on Real ID compliance [0] specifically objected to a few aspects of the law:

- "the security and well-being of the people of Minnesota," which I believe references long-standing American objections to national identification schemes. Some context in [1].

- "to avoid unneeded expense to the people," referencing the fact that the federal government offered no funding to offset the cost of implementing Real ID.

- "to preserve the principles of federalism embodied in the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution," which speaks to concerns that the federal government was usurping rights reserved for the states, and thus challenging the fundamental, federated structure of the nation.

The final text of the bill [3] omits those specific complaints, but I found they shed light on the political context around the bill. Ultimately, it was passed 133-0 in the Minnesota House, and 64-1 in the Minnesota Senate.

[0]: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?number=HF1438&vers...

[1]: https://epic.org/privacy/id_cards/

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_...

[3]: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/laws/?year=2009&type=0&doctype=Ch...

The issue wasn't/isn't databases as much rather creating a compulsory national ID card. Requiring a federal ID that people have to carry at all times for many purposes is the concern..."your papers please" echoes totalitarian regimes.

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