Real ID vs. Pass ID And More 9/11 Report Wrangles

(I also posted here.)

To commemorate the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 Commission Report today, the Washington Post printed the following Op-Ed recently by U.S. House Repugs Lamar Smith, James Sensenbrenner, Peter King and Darrell Issa (now THERE’s a collection of wingnuts).

The subject is the Real ID Act versus the Pass ID Act; here is an excerpt…

Despite the fact that a unanimous Senate -- including then-Sen. Barack Obama -- passed the Real ID Act, several senators recently introduced legislation known as the Pass ID Act, which promises to return the nation to pre-Sept. 11 dangers.

Under the Pass ID legislation, about which the secretary of homeland security testified last week, states would no longer need to verify a person's identity before issuing a driver's license or identification card. They would not be required to resolve Social Security number mismatches; nor would they need to ensure the person does not possess duplicate or additional licenses or identification cards issued from other states.

To begin, this Wikipedia article tells us the following about the Real ID Act of 2005…

The Real ID Act started off as H.R. 418, which passed the House[4] and went stagnant. Representative James Sensenbrenner (R) of Wisconsin, the author of the original Real ID Act, then attached it as a rider on a military spending bill, H.R. 1268, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, 2005. The House of Representatives passed that spending bill with the Real ID rider 368-58,[5] and the Senate passed the joint House-Senate conference report on that bill 100-0.[6] President Bush signed it into law on May 11, 2005.[7]

So basically, what President Obama signed off on was the conference report on a spending bill with Real ID as a rider to the bill; hardly a glowing endorsement (in fact, this tells us that Obama in fact opposed the bill for the following reason)…

"I do not support the Real ID program because it is an unfunded mandate, and not enough work has been done with the states to help them implement the program."

And this Las Vegas Sun editorial tells us the following…

Since the Real ID Act was passed by Congress four years ago, criticism of this legislation to increase the security of driver’s licenses has arisen from many sources, including state governments, privacy groups and travel agents.

The federal law was passed as a response to 9/11. Its purpose was to prevent terrorists from easily obtaining false licenses, enabling them to set up bank accounts, rent living quarters and otherwise blend into American society unnoticed.

Although its intention was good, the Bush administration followed its usual pattern — quickly writing legislation and pushing it through a Republican-controlled Congress without thinking much about problems that could arise.

The National Governors Association has endorsed an alternative to Real ID that is backed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. She was governor of Arizona when that state, along with many others, protested Real ID as too expensive and unworkable from technical and privacy standpoints.

Such protests led the Bush administration to essentially punt by delaying implementation of the law until a new administration took office.

(I know – as far as Bushco is concerned, just another case of “lather, rinse, repeat.”)

More to the point (and more in line with President Obama’s comments), this tells us the following…

States have bristled at provisions of the Real ID Act that require them to upgrade their driver's licensing programs with new technology at their own expense, and that frustration is forming the nucleus of a movement to repeal the 2005 law in favor of a less expensive alternative.

On July 15, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that it would cost states an estimated $1.5 billion to update their systems and electronically verify applicants’ information.

All of this has a lot to do with why DHS and members of the National Governor’s Association (including Haley Barbour of Mississippi, Jim Douglas of Vermont, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Bill Ritter of Colorado) support Pass ID, projected to cost $2 billion as opposed to the $3.9 billion price tag for Real ID, as noted here.

Also, this release from the Department of Homeland Security tells us the progress achieved to date in complying with the 9/11 Commission recommendations, though as noted here, there are still waay too many Congressional committees and subcommittees involved with agency oversight (and believe it or not, the ability of first responders to communicate with one another during an emergency remains an issue – Secretary Napolitano and former 9/11 Commission chair Lee Hamilton claim that we’re making progress, however…hope they’re right).

And of course, what would this topic be without some corporate media hilarity, courtesy of Fix Noise here, in which talking head Greg Jarrett neglected to mention that the post of Director of National Intelligence, a commission recommendation, was not allowed to coordinate Pentagon intelligence gathering activities and related budgeting, among other misinformation (the 2004 Republican intelligence bill – actually not an oxymoron here – did not implement the other commission recommendations either; the stronger Senate bill provisions were “watered down” by the anemic House version).

Also, let’s not forget that the 9/11 Commission Report from 2004 stated categorically that “America's leaders failed to grasp the gravity of terrorist threats before the 9/11 attacks.”

…

I’m just going to let that quote “hang there,” more or less – somehow I think that is no longer the case (I hope and pray as much anyway), but more fool us if somehow it is.