SENATE PASSES REAL ID ACT 100-0

Top Stories from AlterNet for May 11, 2005 http://www.alternet.org/

Tuesday, the Senate unanimously passed the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill, an $82 billion package that the Pentagon says will keep the war functioning until September. Most of that money will go to the Iraq war -- armor, ammunition, death benefits for families of soldiers killed in combat. But piggy-backed onto the bill -- which was a sure-thing to pass -- was a section called the REAL ID Act, a set of anti-immigrant proposals that includes encouraging bounty hunters to seek out undocumented immigrants, making asylum seekers get proof from their own government that they are being persecuted, and imposing new rules on driver's license processing -- putting us on the path to having a national ID. It's the license issue that Bruce Schneier picks up on, noting that not only is it a further encroachment on our rapidly diminishing civil liberties, but just how easily the system will be exploited.

 

NATIONAL INSECURITY CARDS
Bruce Schneier, Schneier.com

The biggest problem with a national ID program is that it
just doesn't work -- and will likely make us far less safe.
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