California legislature agrees to upload driver's licenses to national database
papersplease.org
papersplease.org
>>We are choosing to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans,
This particular word, with no other specifc identities after that, takes the air out of this massive effort and gives the impression it is a localized effort.
This statement was about the specific incoming US administration that was anti-immigrant, and especially anti-Muslim. It is a localized effort, because not every place has the same problems and needs the same solutions, and hyper-generalized statements that don't call out any particular instances of a problem are meaningless.
What are the downsides of not cooperating? What is his motivation or benefits for capitulating?
Edit: Oh, ahhh I see: "Governor Gavin Newsom agreed to upload driver's license data to a national database primarily to comply with the Real ID Act of 2005 and avoid federal threats that would prevent California IDs from being accepted at airports and other federal facilities. This decision was finalized through a budget compromise with the state legislature following intense pressure from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security"
(There is only one team in US politics.)
Since the federal law requiring this was passed in 2005, it's another historically and unpopular president and fedgov.
(I am of course referring to Abraham Lincoln and the 1861 federal government)
From a state perspective, there’s a lot of benefit to exchanging this type of information across state lines through AAMVA. It reduces a lot of fraud, avoids a lot of insurance issues that cost the state taxpayers a lot of money. It has a lot of benefits to things like commercial motor carrier safety that have a direct benefit to the public.
For example, New York does direct entity to entity sharing of many driving records with Ontario and Quebec. The Canadians benefited because I don’t allow people with DWIs to enter Canada, New York benefited by keeping unsafe truckers off state highways, who were exploiting certain pools in Canadian regulations.
It’ll take a bit of time, But the long game here is that the United States will have a national ID system.
The big conflict is that states issue licenses (AB 60 in California, “green light” in other places) without regard to the ability to provide legal documentation of legal residency. Advocates fear that the sharing will be used by the hypervigilant immigration bureaucracy. States don’t enforce immigration law, but every resident of a state is at risk if people are driving around without insurance or without being subject to driving licensing laws. This also allows populations like the homeless to get IDs, But it’s being used as a punching bag by right wing commentators, rallying against illegal alien truckers and other nonsense.
It's complicated within each party, but not overall. Idealogues prefer debating other idealogues because they use the same vocabularies and that preference is why they are always fighting, they like it. But the fat part of the curve in the middle is mostly made up of non idealogues who are quietly saying "can't you just shut up and compromise, let's be practical".
The Supreme Court will do backflips to make the determination that they’re paid to make.
But there is no limit on what it might cost you to (1) obtain the required supporting documentation and (2) go to where you can submit your application at a time when they are accepting applications.
For older people and for poorer people these can be a significant problem. The fact is the for nearly all of its existence the US has not required much ID, meaning it is very hard to transition to such a requirement without disenfranchising many citizens. So far I don't think any proposal for stronger ID requirements has tried to address this.
That isn’t some accident of circumstance. The entirety of the purpose of voter id initiatives is to disenfranchise these very people.
There is a small group for whom it is literally impossible to obtain supporting documentation — this is the group that you're focusing on, but to my mind it's not that important.
There is a much larger group for whom the difficulty of obtain supporting documentation makes them statistically less likely to obtain it — and this larger group is the one targeted by voter ID laws to suppress their votes.
Because voter suppression strategies will absolutely not be abandoned, we're on an inevitable path towards national IDs.
The Federal government can't constructively require States to share the Real ID data with them, only ask politely, as that would go against existing Constitutional case law. Many States have declined to share Real ID data with the Federal government while still implementing Real ID. It is a bit surprising that California would agree to this.
It sounds like this database is the one that feeds license data to NCIC. The bigger question here is if we should be compiling and using data in the NCIC suchbas driver licenses and carry permits.
State powers are a check on the federal government (10th Amendment). States need to assert those powers to keep them.
https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/media/appendix-a-checklist-f...
Perversely, this is the consequence of misguided privacy initiatives. Government agencies are discouraged or even forbidden from sharing data. Nobody has a reliable identifier. As a consequence, every single database out there will contain your name, dob, address and probably a photo. Oh, and because there’s no identity, they need to store a bunch more data to make sure you are not a fraudster. Also, in absence of a sensible electronic identity (because there’s no identity at all in the system), all of this data is used as a shared secret. Which makes it immediately commercially useful for identity theft, once obtained. And, of course, any of these giant piles of personal data can and will be breached in some way or another by both local and remote state actors.
It’s all because “identifiers are bad” and “no sharing information”. Are you guys satisfied with the privacy situation yet?
Not that it's acceptable but federal database of drivers licenses is smallest of privacy problems these days with federal overreach
NSA never ever stopped collecting phone calls, they have been storing that data in larger and larger databases in the deserts. Now "ai" can make all that into some insane level of datamining
At least Washington state still issues UnrealID in case the applicant is not willing to pay the extra fee or cannot or willnot provide the extra documentation. I don't think UnrealIDs have to be submitted?
As I understand it, most other states rolled the extra cost into the general fee for IDs, but Washington does not like to spread costslike that.
> States aren’t (yet) required to upload pointers for noncompliant licenses or ID cards. There’s been no explicit announcement of the full live launch of S2S, but it appears that the first states are only beginning to use S2S (other than as a pilot project) this month. The DHS isn’t (yet) considering whether states have complied with the database access provisions of the REAL-ID Act when it makes its discretionary decisions whether to certify “material” compliance or “progress” toward compliance. But AAMVA, which determines the SPEXS standards, could add a requirement for upload of pointers for all licenses and IDs, not just “compliant” ones, to its specifications for system participation at any time. And the DHS will eventually have to assess actual compliance with the REAL-ID Act, not mere progress toward it. At that point, any state that wants to use S2S and SPEXS as the basis for a compliance finding will have to upload pointer records for all licenses and ID cards it has issued — even noncompliant or “opt-out” licenses or IDs.
This has the effect of creating a private national ID database, without transparency or accountability, which is kind of a worst-case scenario. (AAMVA is a private entity.)
"about all driver’s licenses and ID cards"
This isnt just about drivers. That matters. Driving a car is not a fundamental right. But access to a state ID card, something you will need to access many services, probably is.
> I think the issue isn't so much the government having control (all governments in all countries have such control and the sky doesn't fall in) but rather the nature of the government the citizens of the US permit.
Well, yes, of course. We aren't talking about the government of France or South Korea, we are talking about the US Federal government.
It would require a Constitutional amendment to transfer this authority from the States to the Federal government. Congress can't just ignore the Constitution just because it is inconvenient.