Privacy and anti-spying advocates are concerned about the upcoming enforcement of a federal law mandating a Real ID-compliant driver’s license or identification card to board domestic flights and access certain federal facilities.
Beginning May 7, 2025, anyone 18 years and older who plans to fly domestically or visit certain federal facilities will need a Real ID or another acceptable form of identification. Travelers without either will not be permitted through the security checkpoint.
Alternative forms of ID, listed in detail, include a valid passport, passport card, Global Entry card, Department of Defense ID, or permanent resident card (Green Card).
The driver’s license or state ID card is marked with a star or other symbol depending on the state, reported USA Today. All 50 states, all five U.S. territories and the District of Columbia will enforce the Real ID by the deadline.
The Real ID Act was enacted by Congress in 2005, after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. According to Alejandro Mayorkas, the former Secretary of Homeland Security, the act is about ensuring that the American public can travel safely.
Implementation of Real ID enforcement has been delayed multiple times due to the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the ability to obtain a Real ID driver’s license or identification card, and subsequent backlogs, according to DHS.
However, concerns are being raised about the new ID requirements.
To go deep into what’s really behind this ID warrants a look back 20 years, or further, said Hamid Khan, an organizer with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition.
“Since then, as we have seen, we need to look at the Real ID Act in the same trajectory, when we within 6-1/2 weeks saw the Patriot Act,” Mr. Khan told The Final Call.
The Patriot Act was passed by then-President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001, and granted the government broad powers to conduct searches, wiretaps, electronic and computer eavesdropping, and granted wide access to financial and other information held by individuals and businesses, including lists of materials checked out from public libraries.
Within two years came the Intelligence Reform, Terrorism Prevention Act in 2004, then the Real ID Act in 2005, and on and on, said Mr. Khan. “This is a continuation of expanding and tightening the mass surveillance of the national security police state,” he argued.
At that time, he recalled, people were fighting back against the proposed Terrorism Information Prevention System, which would require postal workers, truckers and many others to call in suspicious behavior and similar things, all moving parts of the expansion of the national security police state, he said.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has also raised concerns about the Real ID Act of 2005.
“If fully implemented, the law would facilitate the tracking of data on individuals and bring government into the very center of every citizen’s life. By definitively turning driver’s licenses into a form of national identity documents, Real ID would have a tremendously destructive impact on privacy.
It would also impose significant administrative burdens and expenses on state governments, and it would mean higher fees, longer lines, repeat visits to the DMV, and bureaucratic nightmares for individuals,” the organization posted on its website, aclu.org.
The Real ID, as seen in Europe and other parts of the world, is an effort toward having a national ID card, according to Mr. Khan. However, federal officials say it is a common misconception that states design their own cards independently, but, follow federal security standards and that the Real ID program is unrelated to voter ID laws or requirements.
“Some deny it, but Real ID is emphatically a national ID. It is national in scope, knitting together diverse state systems into a system uniform with respect to its data elements and behind-the-scenes information sharing.
It is used for identification. And it is practically required, as driving legally is conditioned on having a state-issued document,” stated Jim Harper, author of “Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood.”
In his May 2014 policy analysis, “REAL ID: A State-by-State Update,” Mr. Harper indicated that the plan was to, within three years, see the state motor vehicle bureaus issuing IDs in compliance with federal standards. States rejected the unfunded federal surveillance mandate, but many quietly began moving forward with compliance.
People were absolutely against national ID cards, given the history of surveillance, spying, infiltration and intelligence information gathering, said Mr. Khan. “It’s like (the) tip of that White supremacist policing knife. This is how people are traced and tracked and monitored, and their movements looked at and (to) see what’s going on,” he said.
Stop LAPD Spying labels the tactics of “the stalker state,” he continued. “It is basically that the whole infrastructure and the architecture has been created where information is gathered, it is saved, it is shared.
It is uploaded into systems, and it’s shared completely within public sector, private sector, law enforcement, corporations, private businesses, and on and on and on,” said Mr. Khan.
Those directly impacted will be the same communities, particularly those who are considered or who are a threat to this White supremacist system—Black, Latino, migrants, immigrants, the poor, and more, he argued.
“We can see now the Real ID becoming like a repository of a lot of our personal information, a lot of what we do, a lot of understanding of our habits. So, this becomes another piece, a key element, within the broader stalker state,” he added.
This change will further impede the mobility of undocumented persons, since verification of legal residency status, lawful permanent residency or temporary lawful status in the U.S. is required for eligibility, according to Bea Abbott, a human rights investigator and geography student at the University of Kentucky.
In “The Racist Origins of the Real ID Act,” Ms. Abbott emphasized that it is important not to position efforts to control and surveil Black mobility as firmly as in the past.
“Wide-spread White supremacy and its corresponding laws and law enforcement agencies in the U.S. still actively work to control, surveil, harass, and impede Black mobility.
Whether it be through police pullovers, stop and frisk policies, or racist vigilante responses to Black people simply moving about in their everyday lives—IDs and law enforcement registries still form part of a larger state apparatus that works to surveil Black mobility and endanger Black lives,” she wrote.
Homeland Security claims that the federal government does not maintain a national database and that each state retains control over its data.
According to Mr. Khan, not having a Real ID would impact people from their finances, employment, health care, housing, and everyday existence. He called it a gift to corporations, as well, based on open bottom lines and profit-making through such accessibility and information sharing.
Ultimately, the Real ID will lead to the criminalization of those already unjustly and heavily policed and people simply must work to stop it, argued Mr. Khan. “There are so many different nodes of these things where we are constantly traced and tracked and monitored,” he said.
For example, social media monitoring, license plate readers, body cameras or cell phones, so the fight back is to map out a strategy, because it cannot change, be reformed, or tweaked, Mr. Khan explained.
