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The U.S. Congress may soon vote on a new "compromise" spy law that would still likely derail pending suits against AT&T and other companies accused of opening their networks to the government in violation of wiretap law.

Democratic leaders, facing intense election year pressure from Republicans and more conservative "Blue Dog" members of their own party, had said they hoped to reach an agreement on a contentious rewrite of a 1978 electronic-surveillance law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, before their Memorial Day recess.

That self-imposed deadline passed without action. The major sticking point has been whether to grant so-called retroactive legal immunity to telephone companies facing lawsuits over allegations that they illegally assisted the National Security Agency, violating their customers' privacy.

The latest proposal, which Republicans are touting as a "compromise," would shift that debate behind closed doors, allowing a secret court to dismiss lawsuits related to the president's warrantless-wiretapping program--that is, during the period after the Sept. 11 attacks and before then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales agreed to submit the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program to the same secret court for review.

In order to dismiss the suits, the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose 11 judges are appointed by the U.S. Supreme Court's chief justice, would be required only to consider whether the attorney general's "certification" requesting surveillance assistance from a communications company was terrorism-related and legally authorized by the president. That's according to a draft proposal and summary provided by Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.)'s office and discussed at a press conference last week.

"It's clear that they're giving (the provisions) nice titles, and Bond is suggesting that he's made a lot of concessions, but ultimately, the way the provisions work out is, the administration gets what it wants," Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU's Washington office, said in a phone interview. "The immunity provision is garbage."

Critics--including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which have filed legal challenges against the surveillance activities--say that would amount to a rubber stamp of sorts on any past warrantless eavesdropping.

Aides to Democratic leaders told CNET News.com that their bosses are reviewing the proposal and haven't yet taken a position on it. But civil-liberties groups say they fear that, thanks to political pressure, they will ultimately accept much what they call a "sham" compromise.

The White House and Republicans, of course, have preferred all along to give more blanket "retroactive" immunity to telephone companies. Earlier this year, they appeared poised to get their way, when the U.S. Senate voted to approve a bill (PDF) that likely would have wiped out scores of pending legal challenges against the likes of AT&T and Verizon Communications.

But the House of Representatives ultimately objected to that approach and refused to call up that bill for a vote, opting instead to narrowly approve a version (PDF) lacking so-called "retroactive immunity" for phone and Internet companies accused of wrongdoing.

The "compromise" this time around appears to involve a couple of things: Outside parties challenging the government's warrantless surveillance would be allowed to submit briefs to the secret court. There would also be an arguably lower legal standard than in the already-approved Senate bill for when court would be allowed to review the attorney general's "certifications," though civil-liberties groups said it's unclear exactly how that will work in reality.

Under the revised proposal, the secret court would also have the option of sending a legal challenge back to a regular federal court, if it--and a subsequent secret appeals court--determines the case against a phone company should not be dismissed.

There's no guarantee, however, that such a move, if it even occurred, would not result in the federal court simply throwing out the case itself. After all, appeals courts have already dismissed similar suits on the grounds that state secrets would be revealed.

And throughout it all, a good amount of secrecy would be required under the revised bill. For instance, the secret court would be prohibited from disclosing how or why it reached a particular conclusion about whether to dismiss a case, if the attorney general declared that such revelations would harm "national security."

What remains unclear is what happens next. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said he now hopes to call up a compromise bill for a vote sometime before Congress departs for its August recess. Hoyer has also said "differences" remain to be worked out among their versions, but it wasn't immediately clear what those differences are, as a Hoyer representative didn't immediately respond to requests for elaboration.

Democrats, meanwhile, insisted again that intelligence agents aren't hamstrung by the lack of legal changes so far.

"Our intelligence community has the tools it needs to keep America safe, and we are absolutely committed to ensuring that this remains the case," Hoyer said. "The Director of National Intelligence has not informed us of any degradation in intelligence collection, and we continue to call on him to inform Congress if this changes."

Computer scientists have pressed for e-voting paper trails for years, in peer reports and in testimony on Capitol Hill. Now it looks like Congress is poised to ignore this idea: forthcoming legislation will say that a backup "electronic" record is OK too.

Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Bob Bennett (R-Utah), who lead a Senate committee charged with overseeing election law, said they plan to introduce a bill in the next few weeks that would require voters casting ballots on touch-screen or so-called "direct recording electronic" machines to have the ability to verify their selections through "an independent paper, electronic, audio, video, or pictorial record." That's according to a press release that came out Thursday--a copy of the bill's text is not yet available because it's still being drafted, a Feinstein aide said.

Groups like the Association for Computing Machinery have long advocated for use of "hybrid" systems containing both electronic and paper components, which are designed to enable independent audits and provide a backup record in the event of buggy or hacked voting machine software. Princeton University computer science professor Edward Felten, an ACM advisory committee member who studies e-voting security, said Friday that he couldn't comment on the new bill without seeing more details.

The bill's approach seems to indicate that the senators feel some sympathy toward arguments that paper trails aren't the only option for independently verifying a voter's pick and that other innovative alternatives could emerge down the line. Michael Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and consultant to the Pennsylvania government, is one such skeptic who has argued that paper ballots are susceptible to problems and rigging of their own.

The decision may also be a nod to state and local election officials who have complained about the costs associated with outfitting their machines with paper trails.

The new voting machine requirements would take effect on January 1, 2012, unless a state requested a waiver, which, if granted, would give it until the beginning of 2014.

That new deadline represents yet another delay in getting new federal electronic voting machine rules off the ground. Last year, Feinstein introduced a bill that would have required states to scrap paperless voting machines by this year's presidential election, but at a hearing last summer, she said she'd decided 2010 would be a safer bet, giving voting reform advocates and election officials more time to reach a compromise.

In addition to the new voting machine obligations, the bill would require states to do public audits of their election results. It would also establish certain security requirements for the voting machines and their software and would set up a research grant program designed to encourage development and testing of new technologies for verifying votes.

Feinstein said in a statement that the bill is necessary because "we now have a patchwork of voting systems throughout the country, including five states that use electronic voting systems but have no independent records to help ensure the accuracy and reliability of the vote, and eleven others in which large sections of their states use electronic systems that have no such independent records."

Meanwhile, 30 states already have legislation on their books requiring use of paper ballots in some fashion, according to Verified Voting, a group that advocates for use of paper trails. But other state officials have balked at the potential costs of upgrading their systems, particularly since some subscribe to the belief that providing paper trails isn't a panacea to ballot-tampering, anyway.

A U.S. Senate panel has unanimously approved a bill that would encourage federal, state, and local police to use and create special software designed to nab child pornography swappers on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to send an amended version of the Combating Child Exploitation Act, chiefly sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), to the full slate of politicians for a vote.

All told, the bill would allocate more than $1 billion over the next eight years for a broad array of efforts aimed at tackling Internet crimes against children. It calls for hiring 250 new federal agents at the FBI, the Immigrations and Custom Enforcement Agency, and the U.S. Postal Service dedicated to child exploitation cases; for beefing up personnel, equipment, and educational programs designed to combat Internet crimes against children; and for creating new forensics laboratories if the attorney general deems it necessary to deal with a "backlog" of online child exploitation cases.

"We need to give law enforcement the funds and the tools to pull the plug on Internet predators," Biden said in a statement.

An amendment adopted Thursday also adds new sections to the original bill that would rewrite existing child pornography laws. One section is designed to make it clear that live Webcam broadcasts of child abuse are illegal, which the bill's authors argue is an "open question." Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted.

It's unclear whether the changes are necessary. The Justice Department in the past, for instance, has netted guilty pleas in cases related to live Webcam recordings involving minors engaged in sexual acts.

The bill's passage follows a hearing last month at which Biden and other senators suggested they saw considerable promise in software designed to detect child pornography sources--specifically a tool called "Operation Fairplay." The so-called "comprehensive computer infrastructure" was developed two years ago by Special Agent Flint Waters in the Wyoming Attorney General's Office, where the system is still housed, and is currently being used by online child exploitation investigators nationwide.

The bill approved Thursday allocates $2 million for the attorney general to build upon that software by creating a "National Internet Crimes Against Children Data System," which would make information about ongoing cases--particularly high-priority ones--accessible to investigators nationwide and coordinate development of new software tools designed to detect alleged child predators in real time.

Through the existing Fairplay system, investigators log onto peer-to-peer file-sharing networks as any other person would and search for files containing certain keywords that are likely to indicate child pornography is involved. Then they download files--frequently videos, sometimes as long as 20 to 30 minutes, with names like "children kiddy underage illegal.mpg" and much more obscene--to their own machines. The Fairplay software allows the investigator to obtain the IP address of the file's sender and, in some cases, display its geographic location in map form.

Once armed with an IP address and date and time of the download, investigators can subpoena the Internet service provider for more information, such as name and address of the subscriber who was assigned it at that moment. It's not clear whether any wiretaps are also conducted to monitor ongoing file-swapping.

Through that process, investigators have identified more than 600,000 unique computers allegedly trafficking in child pornography and traced them to the United States. But Biden and others have voiced dismay that they're only equipped with the resources to investigate about 2 percent of those potential cases.

Updated at 12:57 p.m. PDT to add the Democratic leadership's comments.

WASHINGTON--The U.S. Congress won't be beefing up the number of H-1B visas anytime soon, the chief legal adviser to an influential Republican predicted Monday.

Proposals to raise the annual H-1B cap would sail through Congress if called up for a floor vote, but political considerations mean that probably won't happen anytime soon, said George Fishman, chief counsel to the Republican side of a U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee panel on immigration.

That's because the Democratic leadership, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has given the Congressional Hispanic Caucus "veto power" over any immigration-related bill that comes to the House floor, regardless of its popularity, Fishman said at a panel discussion here hosted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that supports an increase in the H-1B cap.

"The Hispanic Caucus sees it as a bargaining chip to get what they want, which is comprehensive immigration reform, amnesty for illegal immigrants, whatever you want to call it," Fishman said. "Until the Democratic leadership allows legislation (related to H-1Bs) to go to the floor on its own merits, that's the situation we have here."

Fishman's boss, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and has proposed an "emergency" H-1B increase to 195,000 in 2008 and 2009--the highest level since its peak between 2001 and 2003.

Still, increasing the cap is hardly a one-sided issue, with a number of Democrats--particularly those in districts with prominent high-tech companies--onboard as well.

"Democrats are committed to working together toward balanced immigration reform, including H-1B visas, and we are continuing to hold hearings in order to move this issue forward," an aide to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told CNET News.com on Monday.

H-1Bs are temporary work permits that allow foreigners with at least a bachelor's degree in their area of specialty to work in the United States for up to six years. Currently, the annual cap stands at 65,000, with an additional 20,000 for foreigners with advanced degrees from U.S. universities. This year, U.S. immigration officials reported receiving more than 163,000 petitions for next year's slots within the first five days and are no longer accepting new applications.

Seated alongside Fishman at the Heritage event were two other H-1B proponents similarly pessimistic about changes occurring this year: Kelly Krieger Hunt, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's senior manager for immigration policy, and James Sherk, a Heritage Foundation labor policy fellow. Sherk pointed to a study he and a colleague recently conducted, which estimated the United States will take in an extra $69 billion in tax revenue if 100,000 additional H-1B visaholders are allowed to work each year for the next eight years.

But those positive depictions of H-1Bs are not without controversy. During the question-and-answer session, a representative from a group called the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which supports more restrictive immigration policies, asked why the panel had been stacked with pro-H1B advocates and suggested every employer applying for the visas should be subject to a full, on-site investigation to verify its authenticity.

Although Smith's brief "emergency" H-1B bill doesn't propose new checks on the system, Fishman said his boss is aware of concerns about their abuse and wants to strike a balance. On the one hand, high-tech companies like Microsoft and Google prize H-1B visas because they say those work permits allow them to fill gaps in their operations for which there is a shortage of qualified Americans. On the other hand, some American programmers say abuse of the system has displaced American workers and depressed their wages.

There's truth to both perspectives, Fishman said, adding that the Department of Labor isn't as well-equipped to fight suspected fraud in the H-1B program as it could be. Part of the reason, he said, is that the system is based on "attestations" from employers that they're hiring employees with the proper qualifications and at the requisite wage levels, and the Labor Department "has to wait around for some to complain" before it opens an investigation, Fishman said.

"The H-1B program can and usually does operate to the benefit of both American high-tech companies and American workers," he said. "It is the job of Congress to ensure that it always does."

The entertainment industry's controversial efforts to get universities to be more proactive about policing peer-to-peer piracy have begun to spread from Capitol Hill to the states.

Earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a Hollywood-backed proposal buried in a higher education reauthorization bill that would require universities receiving federal financial aid funding to devise plans for "alternative" offerings to unlawful downloading--such as subscription-based services--or "technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity."

That otherwise wide-ranging bill won't become law until House and Senate politicians agree upon a compromise version. Meanwhile, the debate over the proper role of higher education institutions in fighting piracy has shifted to some state legislatures.

On Thursday, what appears to be the first such proposal in the country became law in Tennessee--home to Nashville, the country music capital of the world. A similar measure is currently being considered in Illinois. And California held an "informational hearing" last month featuring a Recording Industry Association of America representative, although no legislation has been introduced there yet.

RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth declined to divulge where else the industry may be planning to push such policies, but she insisted the group views new laws as a last resort.

"If we're asked to participate in conversations by lawmakers, of course we will," she said in an e-mail interview. "But we prefer to be working directly with schools on a collaborative approach to reduce theft."

Still, university administrators gathered at a policy conference in Arlington, Va., this week sponsored by the nonprofit group Educause, which represents higher education institution technologists, suggested they're bracing for the quiet appearance of new bills proposing what they view as overly burdensome and overreaching network management mandates.

"If there is a trend here anywhere, it's that these things tend to fly under the radar," Steve Worona, Educause's director of policy and networking programs, told conference attendees. "Let me alert you once again to raise the consciousness of whoever in your state is tracking (legislation)."

"Technological deterrents" vs. Copyright 101
That was the experience related by Thomas Danford, chief information officer for the Tennessee Board of Regents, a governance organization that covers 19 public colleges and universities inside the state. If it weren't for the close scrutiny of his organization's legislative committee, Tennessee universities may have been stuck with much less savory obligations related to managing peer-to-peer file sharers on their network, he said.

The original version of the Tennessee bill (PDF), which Danford said was penned by a local RIAA lobbyist, would have required universities to effectively play copyright cops on their networks. It dictated that they must employ "effective technology-based deterrents, to prevent the infringement of copyrighted works over the school's computer and network resources, including over local area and internal networks."

That requirement was problematic not only because of its cost, which Danford said was estimated at $14 million, but because many university administrators still question the effectiveness of filtering programs and other technological means designed to detect and block copyrighted works from being exchanged.

"I'm convinced that had we not had this (committee), they probably would've been able to get this through the state house before anyone caught wind of it," putting universities in the tough position of trying to fight the law after the fact, Danford said.

In the end, the Tennessee governor signed into law an amended version of state senate bill 3974 (PDF) that Danford said is more palatable to universities and addresses many of the concerns he outlined.

It requires any higher education institution in the state, whether public or private, to develop and enforce a policy that prohibits its students, staff, and faculty from committing copyright infringement. It also requires schools to make "reasonable" attempts to prevent copyright infringement on their networks if they receive 50 or more infringement notices during a preceding year, but it does not explicitly define what those steps are.

Similar legislation is pending in the Illinois state legislature, except it appears to be stricter at this point. It would require universities to "undertake reasonable efforts to install and implement a technology-based deterrent system to attempt to prevent the infringement of copyrighted works" over its networks if it receives at least 10 infringement notices in a given year. That measure has only been considered in one chamber so far.

University representatives like Educause and fair use advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation oppose mandatory use of so-called infringement suppression technologies--such as those made by Red Lambda, SafeMedia, and Audible Magic--because of the cost and perceived flaws associated with those products.

Charles Leonhardt, Georgetown University's principal technologist, told conference attendees that a coalition of 28 schools and higher education consortia known as the Common Solutions Group has vetted those three main vendors of network filtering software and came to the following conclusion: "The current products cannot stop all or even most unauthorized copyrighted material without interfering with networks essential to research and teaching on our campuses."

The solutions on the market today are undesirable because they suppress legitimate network traffic along with pirated works, degrade network performance, and are "very expensive," particularly considering their flaws, Leonhardt said.

Both Leonhardt and Ken Wada, director of IT strategic policy for the University of California at Los Angeles, said the best recipe lies not in technological fixes, but in publicizing and enforcing the university's acceptable network use policy and offering a healthy dose of education about copyright for students.

After all, it bears repeating that universities and the entertainment industry do share one major distinction, Wada said: "We're both creators and consumers of intellectual property."

The only Net neutrality proposal to encounter some measure of success in the U.S. Congress is back again for another try.

As foreshadowed at a March hearing, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) on Thursday reintroduced the Internet Freedom and Non-discrimination Act, which passed by a 20-13 vote in the same committee in 2006. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) is co-sponsoring the bill, but so far, it is not clear whether any Republicans have signed on.

Just like last time, the bill would rewrite U.S. antitrust law to prohibit network operators like AT&T and Comcast from blocking, impairing, or discriminating against "lawful" Internet content, applications, and services or charging extra fees for "prioritization or enhanced quality of service."

"The Internet was designed without centralized control, without gatekeepers for content and services," Conyers said in a statement. "If we allow companies with monopoly or duopoly power to control how the Internet operates, network providers could have the power to choose what content is available."

The five-page measure would provide exceptions for things like "reasonable and nondiscriminatory" network management necessary to keep the network running smoothly and compliance with other laws and court orders.

The bill's introduction comes on the heels of a hearing earlier this week about a Net neutrality proposal in a competing House panel, the Energy and Commerce Committee, which traditionally engaged in turf battles with the Judiciary Committee over certain matters.

Net neutrality, of course, is the idea that network operators shouldn't be allowed to prioritize information that rides on their pipes. Advocates of legislation--including Google, Amazon.com, eBay, and a variety of consumer advocacy groups--argue rules are necessary to keep the Internet free, open, and democratic, so that small start-ups can be on a level playing field with more established companies. Network operators, by contrast, say new rules will stifle investments in new broadband networks and deprive them of the flexibility they need to keep their services running smoothly.

A bipartisan proposal to create an intellectual-property czar and impose new penalties on pirates sailed through the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday.

By a 410-10 vote, the House approved the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property, or Pro-IP, Act, which is backed by the entertainment industry and other major copyright holders. The proposal is chiefly sponsored by Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the chairmen of the House Judiciary Committee.

The bill would rewrite U.S. law to allow federal officials to seize property--including computers or other equipment used to commit intellectual-property crimes or obtained as a result of those proceeds--from people convicted of making unauthorized copies of music, movies, or live performances. In civil cases, federal agents would have to establish that there was a "substantial connection" between the property and the offense.

In addition, the bill would also create a new position, presidentially appointed within the Executive Office of the President, charged with acting as a chief adviser on intellectual-property enforcement matters. The U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative, as it would be known, appears to be modeled after the U.S. Trade Representative, which already has some intellectual-property enforcement responsibilities and puts out an annual report on global piracy.

The measure had previously drawn harsh criticism from consumer advocacy groups because of a controversial provision that would have dramatically increased fines in copyright infringement lawsuits. But that section was stripped out during a committee vote, seemingly to avert proposal-killing opposition, though the bill's sponsors said they plan to revisit the issue.

Thursday's vote may have arrived scarcely a week after the House Judiciary Committee lent its backing to the bill, but it seems unlikely to be on a fast track to becoming law, thanks to vocal objections from the Bush administration.

The U.S. Department of Justice has complained that establishing such a new White House-based intellectual-property officer is unnecessary and could undermine its traditional authority in prosecuting copyright cases.

The FBI has backed down on a secret request for information about a user of the Internet Archive digital library, thanks to a legal challenge from two prominent advocacy groups.

The case, which was brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the archive, dates to last year but only became public on Wednesday. That's because the type of request involved, known as a national security letter (NSL), is accompanied by a gag order that forbids the recipient from disclosing its existence or discussing it with anyone except his attorneys, who are also gagged. As a result of a settlement, the FBI agreed to withdraw the national security letter and to lift the gag order.

Internet Archive founder and digital librarian Brewster Kahle

(Credit: Internet Archive)

The 2001 Patriot Act and its subsequent reauthorization dramatically expanded the FBI's ability to use NSLs, which do not require a court order and are supposed to be used only in investigations related to terrorism. Investigators are able to use the tactic to obtain customer records and logs from Internet service providers, telephone companies, financial institutions, but Congress in 2006 imposed limits on the FBI's ability to use NSLs on libraries. The EFF said this is the first known case to challenge an NSL served upon a library since those legal changes took effect.

The situation with the Internet Archive began last November, when the FBI served founder Brewster Kahle with an NSL (PDF) seeking an unspecified individual's name, address, and "any electronic communication transactional records" (i.e., not the content of communications, but logs of activity) pertaining to the user. Kahle, who is an EFF board member, believed the request was overbroad and decided to challenge the query in court, handing over only publicly available documents in the mean time.

"The free flow of information is at the heart of every library's work," Kahle said in a statement Wednesday. "That's why Congress passed a law limiting the FBI's power to issue NSLs to America's libraries. While it's never easy standing up to the government--particularly when I was barred from discussing it with anyone--I knew I had to challenge something that was clearly wrong."

The Internet Archive, founded in 1996, is a repository for archived Web sites, public domain books, concert recordings, and films, among other things. It has about half a million registered patrons and, according to the EFF, does not collect IP addresses of those who submit items to the collections or of those who read, view, or listen to its collections.

The Bush administration is hardly a stranger to lawsuits targeting its use of NSLs, and its challengers have met with some success in recent years. Last fall, for instance, a federal judge ruled the surreptitious requests for information were unconstitutional. A federal appeals court is expected to hear the government's appeal next month, the EFF said.

In addition, the FBI has taken heat two years in a row from the Department of Justice's inspector general--and, by extension, members of Congress--for misusing its NSL powers, including making attempts to seek and get information that would otherwise require a court order. The FBI says it has since instituted more internal checks on the process.

The police agency on Wednesday was quick to defend its actions in the Internet Archive case and the NSL approach more broadly. Here's a snippet from a statement released by spokesman John Miller:

"The information requested in the National Security Letter was relevant to an ongoing, authorized national security investigation. National Security Letters remain indispensable tools for national security investigations and permit the FBI to gather the basic building blocks for our counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations. Internet Archive voluntarily provided publicly available information to the FBI, and identified for the FBI that information it possessed which was not publicly available. Internet Archive's refusal to disclose this information formed the basis of its civil suit, which the parties have now resolved through settlement."

Attorneys for Kahle said they considered the settlement a great victory. But they again voiced concern that untold numbers of improper NSLs have gone unchallenged because of their secretive nature.

"It appears that every time a national security letter recipient has challenged an NSL in court and forced the government to justify it, the government has ultimately withdrawn its demand for records," Melissa Goodman, an ACLU staff attorney who worked on the case, said in a statement. "In the absence of much needed judicial oversight--and with recipients silenced and the public in the dark--there is nothing to stop the FBI from abusing its NSL power."

WASHINGTON--Politicians from states opposed to the U.S. government's Real ID plan had one message on Wednesday: It's not too late to turn this ship around.

Democratic Senator Jon Tester

(Credit: U.S. Senate)

Mark Sanford, the Republican governor of South Carolina, and Jon Tester, a Democratic U.S. senator from Montana, on Wednesday delivered a now-familiar bruising to the controversial national driver's license standards, which they criticized as an unfunded mandate that passed with no formal debate in Congress, posing threats to U.S. citizens' privacy and states' authority.

Now that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has extended deadlines for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the rules have essentially been punted to the next administration. That "baton passing" stage is a key opportunity to continue rebelling against the rules, the two politicians told a packed auditorium at an event sponsored by the Cato Institute, a free-market think tank that opposes Real ID.

"With a broad-based group, we can make some changes, but you need to be active, you need to be vocal, you need to be talking to your folks," Tester said.

Tester is one of the sponsors of Identification Security Enhancement Act, which would yank Real ID and replace it with a "negotiated" rulemaking process that was proposed before Real ID was glued onto an emergency Iraq war spending bill that passed unanimously in 2005. At a hearing last week, some senators indicated they'd be pushing for that proposal's enactment into law, although a timeline is unclear.

Sanford, for his part, is worried that many people are "sleeping through" the debate and urged opponents to help awaken them to the problems that he and other state officials see with Real ID. He charged that the plan is "the mother of all unfunded mandates" (with an estimated $116 million price tag for his small state), will force his state's residents to endure long waits at the Department of Motor Vehicles, meddles in states' governing powers, and requires interlinked databases that could offer "one-stop shopping for every computer hacker around the world."

Homeland Security, for its part, argues that more secure driver's licenses and identification documents are necessary to prevent terrorists, identity thieves, and illegal immigrants from committing wrongdoing, and it views Real ID as a pathway to that end.

The department has always characterized Real ID as voluntary, but when the rules kick in, state residents won't be able to board airplanes or enter federal buildings unless they present without a compliant identification card, driver's license, or U.S. passport. The first wave of requirements were originally supposed to kick in May 11, but any potential airport chaos has been postponed until at least the end of next year: The agency has since opted all 50 states and the District of Columbia deadline extensions for beginning to come into compliance with Real ID--whether they requested them or not.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford

(Credit: South Carolina Governor's Office)

South Carolina is one of eight states that has passed legislation prohibiting implementation of Real ID--and it also falls into the category of states that vowed to stick by that position, Sanford said. (Ten other states have passed resolutions opposing Real ID, and two more--Arizona and Alaska--may be joining the rebellion soon.)

In late March, Sanford sent a letter (PDF) to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, in which he said he could not authorize the state to comply with Real ID and outlining a list of concerns with the policy. The governor recounted receiving a "bizarre" response: an effectively unsolicited deadline extension.

Sanford suggested he'll continue to uphold his state's law rejecting Real ID and indicated Homeland Security's behavior is nothing more than politics as usual. "There's a real tendency in the political process to kick the can," he said. "Everyone wants to have a reasonably good day. The idea of having a meltdown on a policy or proposal that you're responsible for is not exactly an idea of a good day."