Your state issued driver’s license is already a de facto national ID card and has been for some time now. Any cop or other state minion from anywhere can easily find out damn near every thing any "public" [i.e. government] data base has on you instantly, and in private data bases as well, with just a few more key strokes; So why all the fuss about the Real ID Act, now?
I think it’s the boiled frog syndrome at work. People give up their liberty, privacy, and anonymity gradually and by small increments quite readily; it’s only when a big chunk gets taken, that some then object. The time for bitching about all this stuff is well past, it seems to me, because it ain’t gonna be repealed or reversed by the courts, no matter what the Maine legislature or the ACLU do.
"You have zero privacy …get over it," Scott McNealy once told a group of reporters, after being hammered by questions about privacy issues. True enough, eh? If some lawyer, cop or bureaucrat wants to know what DVDs I have rented from Netflix, or see my checking account info, or whatever-the-hell-all-else, she can easily get that information, and this has been true for some time.
So again, why now? Cui bono?
