Congress is on the verge of passing a bill into law that would create, in effect, internal passports allowing the federal government to track the movements of American citizens — all in the name of counterterrorism.
More than three years after the World Trade Center attack, national policy responses to terrorism remain woefully insufficient. Instead of intelligence and foreign policy (with the exception of the invasion of Afghanistan, which has yet to result in the capture of Osama bin Laden or the disruption of Al Qaeda), Congress and the administration have focused on domestic counterterrorist policies, which divide into two categories: the inadequate and the insidious. The sprawling, inefficient bureaucracy that is Homeland Security and the ineffectual and inconveniencing Transport Security Administration belong to the former. The PATRIOT Act, an anti-terror measure that is little more than a wish list for law enforcement agencies for investigation techniques that violate basic liberties, belongs to the latter.
The latest addition to this second category is the “Real ID Act,” introduced by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. According to Sensenbrenner, the bill’s purpose is to prevent terrorists from acquiring documentation that would allow them to pass as citizens and escape detection by law enforcement.
To accomplish this goal, the bill establishes federal guidelines for the granting of driver’s licenses, and requires all states to conform with the guidelines and to create databases — containing drivers’ names, birth dates, photographs, and residential addresses — to be accessible by state and federal authorities. The bill also dramatically raises the burden on asylum-seekers to prove that they were victims of ethnic or religious persecution, empowers Homeland Security to reject asylum seekers at its discretion and prohibits judicial review of actions taken by Homeland Security in erecting barriers or blocking roads along U.S. borders.
The bill has received no official hearing or debate, as it was attached by Sensenbrenner in the House to a defense spending package and will become law if it survives the final House-Senate negotiations over the spending package (which itself is assured of passage — defense spending budgets, unlike judicial nominees, are never filibustered).
Many state lawmakers have decried the bill, saying that its implementation would impose a huge financial burden on state agencies and that its three-year deadline for compliance is unrealistic. Its asylum provisions have aroused the concerns of advocates for immigrants on both sides of the aisle, including six Republican senators who have petitioned Senate majority leader Bill Frist, R-Ten., to exclude Sensenbrenner’s bill from the final package, citing concerns about those seeking asylum on religious grounds being turned away.
The most dangerous consequence of the bill is that it would create what would essentially be a national ID card. A national registry of the holders of uniform driver’s licenses would enable the federal government to track the movement and activities of any citizen at any time, for any reason. By pooling drivers’ data into a national database, the Real ID Act would transform your state-issued driver’s license, meant to enable you to verify your age and your qualifications to drive to a law enforcement officer, into an internal passport. In the process, local DMV employees would be transformed into de facto immigration agents, and the federal government would be able to determine who and who does not receive a driver’s license — and for what reasons.
Advocacy groups as diverse and disparate as the American Civil Liberties Union and Gun Owners of America have condemned the bill for its anti-federalist implications and its potential to increase the government’s surveillance of ordinary citizens in their daily lives.
Finally, the bill is dangerous because it belongs to a growing number of counterterrorist measures that attempt to subvert the rule of law. The Real ID Act would empower Homeland Security to waive all federal and state laws in order to construct barriers along U.S. borders or block roads on an ad hoc basis, without the approval or oversight of any elected official. It expressly prohibits any such action from being reviewed by the judiciary, even if it occurs in violation of anti-discrimination, workplace safety or environmental regulations.
Terrorism is a major concern for millions of Americans, and the implementation of counterterrorist policy is a vital government interest. The provisions of the Real ID Act, however, would have done nothing to prevent the World Trade Center attack. Instead, they will only expand the government’s powers to monitor and intrude in the lives of law-abiding citizens and legal immigrants, and enable federal agencies to break the law at their discretion. That is a prospect just as, if not more, alarming — and far more likely to have a substantial impact on most Americans’ lives — than another attempted terrorist attack.
Rob Hunter ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science and philosophy.
