Many a soul has resisted the national call to accept REAL ID in place of most states’ standard driver’s licenses. Every state is in compliance with the federal mandate, though not every driving licensed citizen needs to be. Those concerned about giving more information to the Feds to archive have friends in every state, including Maine.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to cut off Mainers’ ability to get federally compliant identification cards that critics say compromise privacy.
A bill submitted by Rep. Laurel Libby would end Maine’s Real ID program by repealing the underlying statute authorizing the state to issue the special identification cards, which were introduced to increase security on airlines and at federal buildings after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“It’s expensive. It puts Mainers’ privacy at risk. It doesn’t protect us from terrorism. It can fool us into thinking we’re more protected than we are,” Libby said.
I can’t say what the odds of success are for this legislation, but sometimes, you must propose a bill to raise awareness.
Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who pushed back on Real ID as a former state lawmaker and former leader of the ACLU of Maine, said this week that civil liberty advocates helped improve the law by convincing Congress to scrap plans for a national database and allow states to maintain those records while also allowing states to issue their own state IDs cards to residents who want them.
Maine’s law does not force anyone to get a Real ID. Residents can still receive noncompliant state identification cards if they want them, but they would need to bring extra forms of federal identification, such as a passport, when taking domestic commercial flights or entering a federal building. Otherwise, they won’t be permitted to pass through security.
I do not believe that New Hampshire requires it either, but I can find no proposed legislation to roll it back. And while the TSA isn’t enforcing the rule until May of 2027, other states could move to undo it and, with enough momentum, end the thing altogether.
Privacy matters, and while not everyone takes unnecessary data collection seriously (schools, businesses, hackers), the COVID “thing” heightened awareness of health privacy and the intrusive state. The rise of what people call AI also motivates conversations about your private business and your data.
Given how hard it is not to have a digital footprint as more recent generations embrace this modern truth, opposing Real ID may seem a bit old-fashioned. But is it? It’s a recent innovation, just like the TSA, whose tentacles need to be restrained.
Maine’s bipartisan pushback on REAL ID is a pleasant surprise, given the state’s drive to the political left so who knows, maybe they’ve started something.