Comments on: State Real ID rebellion: Here to stay?

Officials representing two states that have rejected the plan rally for other opponents to raise their voices and stop the next administration from enforcing the contentious ID card rules.

[Solaris_User]

I think they should just make good on their threats.

1. Not being able to enter federal buildings. GREAT! Nothing good could ever come from you entering one of those places.

2. Ban the air travel. See how long it is before the elected body removes the federal agents at the airport. As it has been shown in court a County Sheriff has the authority to remove any federal law enforcement officials from his jurisdiction at any time, so its reasonable to believe that would apply to the TSA. Get rid of them, we don't want them, arm the pilots with handguns and go back to air port security searches.

[Solaris_User]

I think they should just make good on their threats.

1. Not being able to enter federal buildings. GREAT! Nothing good could ever come from you entering one of those places.

2. Ban the air travel. See how long it is before the elected body removes the federal agents at the airport. As it has been shown in court a County Sheriff has the authority to remove any federal law enforcement officials from his jurisdiction at any time, so its reasonable to believe that would apply to the TSA. Get rid of them, we don't want them, arm the pilots with handguns and go back to air port security searches.

[ajbright]

Alternatively they could use a passport. But here's a thing, you think making all this personal information accessible to anyone working at any DMV or federal department is fine and dandy right? Great, so when someone wanting to track down your personal information walks into a backwater DMV with $50 and buys it from the hick behind the counter - you'll be fine with that?

The great news is security couldn't actually get any worse. In the great tradition of typos and keying in information incorrectly into databases, the latest victims of the "It says you're on the no fly list, so you can't board the plane" are in fact Federal Air Marshals. Not one, not three, but hundreds.

And this is the crowd you want to trust with your personal information. Tell me, if they can't figure out that a Federal Air Marshal isn't a terrorist with all the background checks and other hoops such personnel have to jump through, what do you think the odds are for someone with a driver's license, whose data was entered by a minimum wage employee, bored crapless by entering millions of names and addresses into databases?

But don't worry, because the names in most cases weren't actual matches, they just sounded like the names on the list. Definitely a good enough reason to prevent a Federal Air Marshal from boarding a plane.

The biggest con is of course that such things as biometric ids in some way protect us. In fact what they do is put us at greater risk, because everyone that has such an ID, or something that looks convincingly like one, will be assumed to be ok and waved through.

Tell me this. If Microsoft and all their billions can't make a secure web browser or word processor, what makes you think a crony-run business in charge of creating the most complex database system ever conceived will make that secure from malware, keyloggers, trojans or hackers? Explain to me why someone only interested in how much money they can make from building such a system would even care to invest more in security than the richest company outside of the oil industry.

[Leria]

Well, the right term at the end instead of hackers would be crackers, but I agree with everything else that you said.

[kiasta]

Actually Microsoft can build a secure web-browser and word processor, they just choose not to since they are bribed by the Antivirus/Spyware/Adware companies. Why would Microsoft actually make anything secure? I mean people are stupid and for some reason enjoy wasting their money on ridiculous A/V software. But I understand what you are saying.

[HiF|yer]

"Real ID" is a $Billion$Dollar$ boondoggle. People better wake up and start calling their elected officials state and national saying NO NO NO to Real ID or soon it will be here with its waiting lines and expensive sign-up getting shoved up your gazunga.

[benjaminstraight]

benjamin straight writes: State sovereignty will overtake federal mandate on such issues. The Real ID won't float without a HUGE amount of fight.