Good news from the Real ID front


It may collapse of it's own weight before it even gets started
Anush Yegyazarian has the details.

More than a year has passed since the Real ID Act of 2005 became law. And in a little over 18 months, the first new driver's licenses mandated by the legislation are supposed to debut. That may seem like a long time, but given the issues that remain unresolved, it's not. Chief among the questions: Which machine-readable technology will the new IDs use?

The Department of Homeland Security, working with states and with Department of Motor Vehicles agents, was supposed to set up guidelines on this basic but critical topic. DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff testified before Congress in September that the agency was working on the project, but gave no sense of when the guidelines might be done, or what the standards for the technology will be.

Without knowing which technology to use, states can't even begin soliciting bids from firms to produce the cards. They can't finalize deals. They can't get delivery of product, install the new equipment, train their workers, or run trials to ensure that the system is free of glitches. All that takes time, especially considering that they're government processes. And these aren't the only things that need to happen before a national ID can be implemented.

Who would have thought that the bureaucracy might work in our favor?

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - October 13, 2006 at 08:13 AM  Tag


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