DHS announces extension of Real ID full enforcement deadline
dhs.gov
dhs.gov
Why is it still being pursued?
It might have made sense in 2005 with the post-2001 political climate, but it's 20 years later. We've been fine with the current IDs for so long, and the climate is not anywhere near the same now as it was then with relation to security theater.
(Ignore the reply tweet, it's an obvious Russian troll)
If you had asked "How do I know if my ID meets the Real ID requirements", the answer is very simple: "It has an image of a star on the top of the ID".
I thought that because it was a (main) Ohio airport, this will be an appropriate question but probably you are right.
>If you had asked "How do I know if my ID meets the Real ID requirements", the answer is very simple: "It has an image of a star on the top of the ID".
I was asking this question so that I can decide if it is worth getting one because I don't want to keep using my passport on domestic flights (risking it getting lost, and heache to have a replacement outside my home country).
Or an American Flag somewhere on the ID (mine is randomly next to my photo), for the few states that only issue Real ID-compatible IDs in the form of EDL/EIDs. Looking at you, Washington.
And the star can be:
> gold or black star, a white star in a gold or black circle, a white star in a gold bear in the case of California, or a white star in a gold state map in the case of Maine.
It's so absurdly complicated. As someone else said it'd be fantastic parody if it weren't real life.
You have to go to the DMV for 'real id or enhanced' so I won't be getting one anytime soon until they force it on me. I have a passport for travel anyway.
What I meant by that statement is that Washington, unlike New York, only has EDLs available as a Real ID-compliant option. There are two options: "Unreal" DL or EDL. So there is no gold star at all for some states, they just have the US flag to denote something compatible with Real ID.
Second item is an analogy.. when cash for transit here was changing to an electronic ID, the BART transit agency found excuse after excuse to delay.. later, a finance officer said in a public forum "we have a cash flow and we control that" .. much later, things changed somewhat. I believe that Federal vs State govt is simply at odds over the endless self-employment of administering these ID programs, and who calls the shots... and they should be ! Fed growth is virtually a one-way ratchet in practice.
Washington state also charges a premium for Real ID. For those who don’t fly or cross from Canada to the US, Real ID is just a waste of money.
EDL in WA will be $115 for 5 years starting in 2024. A US Passport Book is $130 for 10 years (or a US Passport Card is $30 and good for domestic air travel and land/ground to CA and MX). Why would I bother with Real ID? I can’t even renew Real ID online or get it immediately after having my photo taken. While quicker than a Passport, it takes 2-3 weeks.
I have flown twice in the past few years without ID when I misplaced my wallet. TSA made me sign a form which basically said nothing useful. Children fly without ID. It's about control not about flight safety.
which these days are likely to be citizens. See this weekend's domestic terrorism event involving power substances being shot at in North Carolina:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/attack-on-north-carolina-power-...
I think that maybe "real ID" has been delayed because USA truly has been the most free country on earth (at the cost of poorer places not near the USA). And this kind of policy diminishes people's freedom. However given the current climate scenario, as well as the current geopolitical looming war.
So that's why it's being pursued, because more chaos, less stability in the system, raises the cost of freedom, and the system has to know whose insurance premiums to raise. You gotta track and measure the people to do this (i.e. to control them).
LOL.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
It's probably safe to say that we live in a vastly different political climate today.
Alright, fine, I have my birth certificate, and I took it to the DPS.
Well I can't just walk in... I have to make an appointment online. Alright, fine...
But appointments are booked solid for 2 months.
So I guess I'm driving with an expired license until then.
Documents weren't perfect. Also you have to let the address settle after moving and getting a new id. (I.e. utility bills that aren't printed out with your address on them)
Short end of the story, I could have done an address change online quicker. Also, use my GE card as my fed id now. (Real Id)
In other words, why pay for it now, if it keeps getting pushed back, and likely will continue to get pushed back.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-licenses-identification...
Other than the hassle, is there a reason to not get the new id when license renewals come up?
Which kinda makes sense as this is intended to be a pseudo-federal ID, right?
I'm sure this means we will have RealID-compliant cards as the norm here soon.
I don't think WA will release RealID-compliant cards, they would have already since, as you mentioned, they implemented other changes to comply with the act like random ID numbers and adding the "not valid for..." text.
Most non-citizens will already have some form of RealID-compliant document, whether it's a foreign passport, green card, etc. Since the only added requirement for EIDs is citizenship, and since most non-citizens have RealIDs anyway, WADOT likely felt there wasn't enough justification to issue 6 different forms of ID to residents.
Real IDs are good for land/sea travel for CA/MX.
It is pretty clear I mean that WA will not issue non-EDL RealID Drivers Licenses given the context. Given that, I clearly know what restrictions exist to current WA DLs given I know what the two options are. I talk about being able to use an EDL but not a RealID document to cross land borders, so I clearly also know what you can use an EDL and RealID in terms of crossing international borders.
That’s really the price we should be comparing, because realistically people will have a drivers license or state ID that they would have had to renew. That’s also true for passports, but far more people have and use drivers licenses day to day.
The UK just bought in new ID rules for voting which bizarrely allow for things like a senior citizen rail card to be used. (it's being brought in by our conservative government for same reason as US - to disenfranchise certain voter blocks - hence why a senior citizen rail card is fine but a youth or normal adult one is not)
Yepp, Oyster 60+ Card is valid for voting, but a Student 18+ Card isn't
In the UK how do you prevent minors from buying alcohol if you don't have some sort of ID with DOB on it?
It's messy and complex at times, but in the long run I'd rather deal with a bunch of small state level bureaucracies than a giant federal behemoth that barely functions (looking at you IRS).
The DMV on the other hand is the joke in American culture about incompetent bureaucracies.
DMV is the butt of all the jokes, but atleast you can walk into a DMV office and a real person, however annoyed they might be will try to help you.
Impractical for US citizens ? yes.
Barely functioning ? The IRS will find you halfway across the world for an unpaid $20.
> Only workers in certain high-security professions, such as airport workers, were required to have an identity card in 2009,[clarification needed] and this general lack of compulsory ID remains the case today.
Hailing this as necessary to prevent voter fraud is just as preposterous as the mark-of-the-beast nonsense covered by another child comment.
The current federated system using state drivers' licenses seems fine to me, it's been functional through all of RealID's delays.
But I guess you can keep on being scared of leaking your SSN (that everyone unofficially uses as an ID anyways) and keep on using different cards depending on the state. There's a reason identity theft is so prevalent in the US, and pretty much nowhere else in the world.
That’s decidedly untrue.
https://focusonbusiness.eu/en/news/one-in-five-europeans-hav...
This is mostly due to not using a short, immutable identifier (like the US SSN) effectively as a bearer token, as far as I can tell.
Even getting a copy (or even the original!) of somebody's passport or driver's license is not enough to open a bank account or a credit card in many EU countries; in Germany, you need to actually appear in front of a bank employee (or subcontractor), personally or in a video chat, verify your identity, and confirm your intention to open a new account.
It should be easy to tell a bank to screw off when they issue a fraudulent account, it isn't the named parties fault that the bank wasn't diligent.
is that true?
I know Australia, UK, Ireland, US, don't have a national ID, while almost all EU countries do. What does it look like elsewhere?
I don't want to government to know that much about me. It has been proven over and over that less is better.
Eh. In most states you are required to get a new DL if you move. So, in fact, you have to tell the state where you live.
Whereas with a national ID, that wouldn't be tied to a place of residence.
Why would you assume that? our current substitute for a national ID (state issued ID compliant with the federal REAL ID Act) requires current address, and has higher standards for proof of address than many pre-REAL ID state IDs did.
Not really. I file my tax return and the address isn't where I live. It doesn't have to be, it's a mailing address.
Conversely, the most common state ID (driver's license) is effectively mandatory to carry at all times for most Americans because it is required to drive a motor vehicle and driving a motor vehicle is required to move around outside of major urban areas.
There are plenty of places where just a drivers license isn’t acceptable (getting a passport for instance) and requires you to play the stupid 1/2 from category A/B game.
I agree that bringing up voting is a red herring, that’s a state thing and the several states should solve that for themselves. The US federal government needs a unified ID system which was designed as a robust, centralized ID system that can then be mandated for federal agencies to use.
The state I live in (Arizona) requires proof your presence is authorized to get state ID. If you are a citizen, that means proof of citizenship. But then loop back to supreme court decision above.
That ruling doubles down on it being a state thing by saying leave citizenship (which is a federal thing) out of it. If a state creates for itself a catch-22, that is the states fault and is therefore the states responsibility to fix.
Arizona needs to stop shirking it’s responsibility to its residents and come up with a solution to this problem, just like virtually every other state has.
If SCOTUS says states can't require proof of citizenship for voter registration, how can they exclude non-citizens from voter rolls? The state hasn't created a catch-22; the federal judiciary has told the states that they effectively can't use citizenship as a requirement for voting.
I feel like I'm missing something here, because this can't be the state of things.
> We have a national ID issue which needs to be fixed.
What issue is this? Why do we need a national ID? What purpose would one serve? Plenty of Americans go through their lives just fine without any sort of federally-issued ID. Pretty much all you have to do is never travel outside the US, and many Americans don't.
Aside from the hundreds of other cost-and-convenience reasons, eliminating the SSN (and associated fraud) would be easily worth it on its own.
Even if it were true that plenty of people get through life without a federal ID, that doesn’t mean all do. As I have said other places in this thread, the rickety machinery of federal identity replication grinds up plenty of people.
What is that issue? It is not apparent to me that REAL ID solves a real problem.
https://www.ssa.gov/fraud/#:~:text=How%20to%20report%20fraud....
This was a genuine question. It's not obvious to me why it would matter which primary key people used in their customer databases, but fraud is also not something I worry about or really even think about.
Currently your SSN is your client secret, but it’s a terrible one and we should replace it with a more robust secret. I shouldn’t be able to steal your identity by knowing a short number with minimal entropy.
What IDs are you referring to and what’s the headache? Presumably one ID is a passport. From your first sentence, I would assume the second ID is a social security number, but how does it become “out of sync” with a passport?
Get a passport as a minor, change your name as an adult, realize SSA has your wrong bday, descend into bureaucracy hell as now both name and DOB don’t match.
While I am sure the bureaucracy surrounding such discrepancies is enormous, I’m not for sure I understand how it relates to a discussion about national IDs. A passport is effectively an optional national ID, so none of these issues would be solved by a national ID.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) issues IDs at the federal level, which are applied for using state or county issued birth certificates (as well as other ways). They sometimes make clerical errors. Those errors can propagate into other federal identity databases, such as the taxpayer record system operated by the Internal Revenue Service or the passport database operated by the Department of State.
The linkages between these systems are fragile or nonexistent, and if you are not careful about manually propagating changes between them you can end up in an inconsistent state which requires court action to rectify.
Passports are often used in lieu of social security cards because people are (correctly!) leery about using their SSN directly. I know people who have no intention of traveling internationally who have gotten passports because it’s extremely convenient to have a federally issued photo id.
I have neglected to get my state's real ID since it requires me to go into a location, which are soul sucking. Luckily, my global entry card is a Real ID. It only took two years to get that one. And when I had to go in for that ID, they didn't even check my driver's license or passport for ID. They just took my picture and that was it. Pretty poor due diligence.
Funnily enough I was able to fly without an ID when I lost my license--which was surprisingly hassle-free. But I had a hell of a time checking into my hotel.
You haven’t needed it since it’s such a bad ID that if you know the number you often don’t need to possess the paper.
You can also use a birth certificate to establish right to work, so yeah it wouldn’t be required.
Of course now I just use my passport, but like many Americans I didn’t have one for many years.
Eventually I was able to track down the underlying laws that the relevant rules were based on and call the head office in Charleston who put things right, but who knows what would've happened had I not been a native English speaker.
Some of this may have changed, it looks like "8 FAM 403.1-4(D)" would've been the rule that I needed back when I did this, and it does not appear to be currently classified, but lots of other rules still are. Point is, it may not be as simple as you'd think to "just" get a new passport.
What ID is that? If you're talking about a Social Security Card, that's not ID at all. I don't think I would call it "ID but not very good", even.
Ultimately there are a lot of people who go through life in the US who never have a federally-issued ID at all. Simply never traveling outside the US will do it for most people. And there are more people than you'd expect in the US who never leave the country.
Also agree re: voting: elections are administered by states, so a federal ID is just not even necessary here. States are perfectly capable of issuing ID, as we all know. (Granted, drivers licenses and non-driving state IDs usually don't have anything to say about citizenship status. A state-issued ID serves as authentication, not authorization, where voting is concerned.)
Why are you against having a good one?
`s/is/should be/`
If I have your social security card I can pretend to be you quite effectively as many people will accept it as an ID. They don’t care that you don’t think it is one. The ones that don’t will frequently take an alternative (read: derived) that I can get with just it.
> It doesn't contain evidence that can feasibly be used to prove…
Yes. We agree, it’s a bad ID.
Though don't actually know as I haven't had one in decades.
You do have one, or if you insist you were issued one, you just don’t possess it.
At one point the lifelock guy had something like 200 W.Va licenses since in the mid-aughts they didn’t actually check to see if that SSN had a license already.
W.Va license gets you a passport. Passport gets you anything you want.
The only thing standing between you and full-blown has-a-passport identity theft is your Social Security Card.
Edit: You can intuitively prove that everywhere doesn’t require a photo ID because some piece of ID has to come first.
The state of West Virginia will give you a (non-RealID) drivers license with a social security card and 2 pieces of mail. Card to prove your identity and mail to prove that name went with a W.Va address.
It’s an ID, issued by the Federal Government, and every American has one. Now that all the insanity and gymnastics are over can we please just make it better?
> I would still class them under "powerful fools"
Cool, but your opinion of them is irrelevant. They get to decide what forms of ID they’ll take, and they’ve decided to take this one.
> you could just write your name on an index card and use that instead
Of course you couldn’t, the rule is very clear that you can identify yourself with specifically a social security card. You’re the one pretending. Your insistence that it’s not an ID will be small comfort when someone fakes yours and used it to identify themselves as you to steal your identity.
Again. The fact that it’s a terrible form of ID is my point. It being a bad ID doesn’t mean it’s not one.
Edit: I copy/pasted my point about W.Va from one thread to another. Both say, as the law does, that it identifies you. The mail ties the identified person to an address authorized for a license (i.e. an address in the state). It’s authn vs authz.
It’s not do you, it’s can you.
It's not needed to prevent voter fraud in the US because there is very little voter fraud to prevent. What it could help with is reducing voter suppression.
Several states, claiming that it is necessary to prevent fraud (which they cannot actually find any significant examples of) have instituted voter ID requirements.
In many of these there has been a pretty good correlation between what ID they accept and whether or not the people who tend to vote for the party enacting the ID require are more likely to already have that form of ID than the people who tend to vote for the other party.
These are often accompanied by changes to how IDs are issued that make it significantly harder for many people who vote for the other party to obtain ID. For example, state IDs are often issued by the same department that issues driver's licenses. Some states, citing budget issues, have closed such offices, with the closures hitting hardest is largely minority areas, and reduced hours in the offices remaining open eliminating weekend and evening hours.
This makes it so that for many people in those areas that lost their offices getting an ID means losing a day of work or more, which many of them cannot afford and so have to give up voting.
A Federal ID that is easy to obtain for all citizens, very cheap or free, and that states are required to accept as voter ID could go a long way to helping eligible voters actually be able to vote.
This is the key point, though, and harder than it sounds. It needs to be (at least approximately) free-as-in-beer with a small time investment, while still gathering adequate evidence of identity. My best idea is to build it as an outgrowth of the passport infrastructure without the relatively onerous forms and other costs. Doing it through the post office like passports is as good an idea as any, but you need to make sure they all have (working![0]) cameras and trained personnel. Not cheap.
I'm all for the idea, I just don't want people to underestimate the difficulty, because that will make it more likely to fail.
[0] When I went to get my passport, the camera at the post office was broken. I had to run across the street to the drug store. Not fatal, but a pain, and not something you could tolerate at scale for voter id.
But it is pretty useless, I didnt renew mine with the renewal of my passport book
Can be used at bars and domestic travel and with employer verification, but not international air travel which is the main reason i would have it
In all other cases, acceptance would be based on agreements between the involved countries. In theory, any country could choose to accept any such document without an agreement, but they have little reason to do so, and it is not really compatible with paper visas. Furthermore, they should refuse it if there are unmatched conditions printed on the back of the card, like the passport cards have. The result is that they are of pretty limited use, and most countries that do use them will restrict them to specific scenarios where there are agreements in place.
Quite a lot of financial institutions will still only accept a US state-issued driver's license to open an account with them, even though they generally accept foreigners.
I've even encountered one that accepts only driver's licenses and not (also DMV-issued) learner's permits or non-driving IDs!
You need to understand that adding barriers to vote in the US has a 100+ year history of nefarious things like preventing eligible black people from voting as their primary purpose, then a firm understanding of the motives of such modern discussions falls quickly into place. Silly people who complain about "wokeness", maybe many of them here on HN, will say I'm being paranoid or outdated in that description, but the history is dark, ugly, and very real.
All through the EU, id cards are the norm. If we can do it, so can you. This whole “but think of the black people” is bs. What are you, some kind of racist? You don’t think black people can get ids?
> You don’t think black people can get ids?
Statistically, they are less likely to do so.
Edit: For me, an eye opening tidbit was this admission by a Republican strategist that the late 20th century discourse was about shifting from overt language about racism to more covert, abstract, economic talking points that are still rooted in racism. This is a left wing source but has the actual audio recording of that admission. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa... -- the takeaway is that you can't take a surface level read on a proposal and trust that no direct mention of race implies that it is not racist.
I think what Atwater predicted in this clip somewhat came true. Enough time has passed that young people have unironically embraced the dog whistles as idealized abstractions about small government and economics, states rights or federalism, without realizing they used to be dog whistles and not genuinely held when popularized.
Holy shit mate, do you hear your self? This is literally 13/52 talk.
Black people can get ids, they should get ids, just like everyone does in every other civilised country. I honestly can’t understand how anyone can oppose such a simple and natural thing.
> Minority voters disproportionately lack ID. Nationally, up to 25% of African- American citizens of voting age lack government-issued photo ID, compared to only 8% of whites.
I did not make up the statistic.
I do not endorse it or wish it to continue, but numerically, that is what it is. This is probably the largest reason one side of the American political spectrum, the one who would benefit from lower racial minority turnout, supports tightening the laws.
In tight elections like we routinely have, that statistical disparity can be enough to alter electoral outcomes.
"Studies of the effects of voter ID laws on turnout in the United States have generally found that such laws have little, if any, effect on turnout." [0]
"A 2014 study from the University of Iowa found no evidence that strict voter ID laws reduce minority turnout.[127] A 2012 study found that, although the Georgia voter ID laws lowered overall turnout by 0.4%, there was no racial or ethnic component to the suppression effect." [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_identification_laws_in_t...
I don't agree with everything ACLU says or does either. I don't start accusing them of conspiracy theories. I feel like pockets of HN are much more pro right wing conspiracy theory vs. just one year ago.
Anyway, the Wikipedia article you link to also has my argument represented, too ... Maybe read more of it.
It ceases to be "conspiracy theory" when it the "theory" is supported by facts.
They can get ID cards.. but they are less likely to. There are all sorts of factors involved in that, which are lamentable but we won't be able to solve overnight. Taking away voting rights will probably not help us get there either.
There is literally no functional difference between using racial statistics to argue for segregation or against id cards. The only difference is, you like one policy and dislike the other.
Do you know of any state that even has or is proposing "strong ID requirements" in the first place, because most of the Voter ID Laws I have seen passed have very very weak ID Requirements, often not even requiring offical government ID, instead accepting all mannar of types if ID including school issued ID's, Libary ID;s (if they ahve a photo), some even accept employer made ID's
All states that have voter ID laws also include a provision to get Free State Issues ID's so there is no cost requirement.
> ID requirements have been used for centuries in the US to disenfranchise
Because something was bad in the past, implemented in a different way, with different terms, under a difference society does is not a justification for opposition today.
>>If you know of a specific way
Some of the reforms / requirements I would like to see for voting
1. Week Long Voting including at-least 1 Sat and 1 Sun separated by 5 days.
2. In Person only unless provided a medical or other reason they can vote in person
3. if we are to have "ballot harvesting" Ballot collection only by certified, sworn and bonded person. A program akin to something notary public, and the collector must sign or otherwise identify their collections on the outside of the secure envelope, collections will be recorded and made part of the public record showing how many ballots each collector collected, and for what voter
4. Work with private partners to provide more polling locations, I am unclear why every Walmart, is not a polling location as an example
5. Remove all political parties from the ballot. We vote for people, not parties.
that is just a start
Everyone wants a state ID such as a driver's license to open bank accounts online.
This Real ID deadline has made it a massive pain to get a California DL and of course California doesn't allow exchange of a Canadian Provincial DL unlike the reverse.
I presume you’re taking about address proofs. The secret is that they aren’t so strict about it. Change the bank or credit card address nearest to issuing next statement. Then just sign up for Google fi and use whatever address. When I needed to change an CA drivers license address to a friends while living abroad for a bit, getting these two proofs took me under a week. And my friends address was where I wanted any correspondence to go, so I considered the change genuine for my situation
Good enough for real ID.
I actually had to argue with him and give him reasons why I wanted it before he would allow me to get it.
There is no automatic reason that Real ID would even be required to vote, since voting is left up to the states anyway. If the state says you can use a business card to vote then you can.
because we prefer to own things. it's always been all about whose is what. that's what any national ID says: "this person belongs to country which issued their passport".
but then, if I am really a free human being, why must I be treated as my country's property?
17 years of delay for a star. So much $$$ spent to get a star on IDs
When will REAL ID be enforced?
The REAL ID Act was passed by Congress in 2005, and the enforcement of its requirements for state-issued driver's licenses and identification cards began in phases, starting in 2016. As of October 2021, all states are now compliant with the REAL ID Act and have implemented the required security measures for their driver's licenses and identification cards. This means that, in most cases, you will need to have a REAL ID-compliant driver's license or identification card to board a domestic flight or enter certain federal facilities, such as military bases and federal courthouses.