The Mark Of The Beast: Is federal Real ID Act for your own good? Not really
Pastor Dale Morgan
The Mark Of The Beast: Is federal Real ID Act for your own good? Not really*
June 17, 2007
BY TIM O'BRIEN
"He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and
slave, to receive a mark in his right hand or in his forehead, so that
no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of
the beast or the number of his name." -- Revelation, 13:16-17
We are now less than a year away from the deadline for states to comply
with the federal Real ID Act.
By next May 12, all state-issued driver's licenses and ID cards must
include your personal information, signature and a machine readable zone
to contain all the data. That may be either a credit card type swipe
strip or a Radio Frequency Identification tag, called an RFID chip, like
those used to track products and identify lost pets via low-power radio
waves.
Though maintained by the individual states, the information will be
mutually available among them, as well as to the federal government,
effectively creating a national database accessible from tens of
thousands of locations throughout the country.
It is true that under the U.S. Constitution the federal government has
no authority to impose a national identity card. The 10th Amendment
explicitly declares that all powers not delegated to the federal
government "are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
But Big Brother is not so easily frustrated in his determination to
watch you (for your own good, you understand). So state-issued driver's
licenses that are not Real ID compliant will not be accepted by the
federal government as valid identification for any purpose including
boarding a flight, receiving Social Security or opening an account at a
federally chartered bank. In other words, the federal government has
made it "so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark" of its
national ID.
But the good news -- for those of us who still harbor the quaint notion
that we ought to be presumed innocent until there is, at minimum,
probable cause to believe otherwise -- is that we are seeing the biggest
10th Amendment showdown in nearly a century and a half.
Thirteen states have enacted resolutions or legislation opposing Real
ID. Hopefully, Michigan will do so, too.
The sad thing about all of this is that the whole premise upon which the
Real ID is founded -- that verifying an individual's identity will
somehow prevent terrorism -- is demonstrably false. In point of fact,
only two of the 19 9/11 hijackers would not have qualified for a Real
ID. And, in any case, none of the rest bothered to use false ID.
TIM O'BRIEN is executive director of the Small Government Alliance, a
statewide, nonpartisan, independent, political action committee.