^∞Fouroboros

Bruce Schnier : REAL ID

The United States is getting a national ID card. The REAL ID Act (text of the bill and the Congressional Research Services analysis of the bill) establishes uniform standards for state driver's licenses, effectively creating a national ID card. It's a bad idea, and is going to make us all less safe. It's also very expensive. And it's all happening without any serious debate in Congress.

I've already written about national IDs. I've written about the fallacies of identification as a security tool. I'm not going to repeat myself here, and I urge everyone who is interested to read those two essays (and even this older essay). A national ID is a lousy security trade-off, and everyone needs to understand why.

Aside from those generalities, there are specifics about REAL ID that make for bad security....

Go read. It's good and sensible stuff. (I'm not digging on Bruce, but isn't it amazing how low the bar for "sensible" has become in the last 5 years?) As per usual, we have many folk practicing without a license in our halls of government (apolitically speaking), and when they aren't patently making up security and intelligence theory and practice (speaking specifically about certain parties here), they're running around banging a coffee can claiming This'll work! This'll work!

Natch, if you have at least one opposable thumb and have been out of school at least 35 minutes the species should be readily obvious to you. If so, you can add your two cents to what is a sneaky bit of legislative hey, a bee! over at unrealID.com. You can scribble your scrant and a bit of your zip code n stuff to prove you're not writing from Albania and out pops a fax, not email, to your public servants. Here's mine:

Senator,

I'm writing to urge a full, public debate on the Real ID Act submitted by Senator Sensenbrenner.

Senator, speaking as the product of four generations of military service to this country, I can only say that so sweeping a shift in American principles of freedom and individual privacy makes the Real ID Act an affront to my family's service and to their oaths to preserve and protect the Constitution. That The Senate would so stealthily piggy-back Real ID onto an appropriations bill vital to our military's ongoing viability is the ugliest of ironies.

As a marketing company owner who counts several security organizations as clients I'm more than familiar with the "creative" uses that business, or individuals, can find for even widely dispersed personal citizen information. But for elected officials to introduce a government-mandated, aggregated dossier on every man, woman and child in America in perpetuity, well that smacks of self-defeat or special interest motive and, yes, gross surrender of the Democracy we claim as an example to the rest of the world.

Real ID is a bad idea. RFID chips and other assorted whiz-bang being mentioned in a National Identity Card's various iterations make it a deadly bad-guy tool also: with the simplest of knowledge, or just a few hundred bucks and readily available technology, any criminal-minded individual or group could sweep a crowd of innocent bystanders at a movie or mall. Presto: The Frank Smith family of 123 Oak Street (hey, rich zip code!) is going to be watching Lord of the Rings 5 for the next two and a half hours -- let's go rip them off. Or let's lie in wait and kidnap them. Or maybe take the little girl.

Is that what we want? What you want? Because those kinds of details--and news stories--will flow like a river, whether by RFID chips being surreptiously and easily scanned, or simply from a lowly convenience store carelessly swiping cards as a form of check cashing ID, then selling their list to all comers. And it will happen, Senator. It happens with all the previously "safe" and "foolproof" systems--systems like Choicepoint's. You know this. I know this because I help businesses climb out from under the failures regularly.

Unintended consequences, Senator, from the natural urge to seem to be doing something--anything--about a problem.

You will soon be asked to consider funding the replacement of all those silver bullet Homeland Security solutions hurredly acquired, also with little debate or perspective, shortly after 9-11. Recently, the GAO says the Congress and DHS bought many pigs in a poke. And that we are LESS safe today. Real ID is the same--the impression of an answer. And the appearance of "commitment" to security.

There ARE plenty of other solutions to securing America's safety, most of which are cheap and cheerful, requiring thought, awareness, and spadework not technology--nor abdication of our founding priciples. Security based on ID as presented by Senator Sensebrenner is a loser as judged by serious security practioners with no commissions or politics in the game. And the politics of the game are self-evident to the businesses and business leaders I associate with. They too, take this stuff seriously.

If the above leaves you unconvinced, Senator, consider that in the end voters will want to know, as will I: If you can lose democracy's most precious possessions--tens of thousands of votes--with technology panaceas in the form of crashing and insecure voting machines with no paper trail and only "oops!" for an explanation, why should I trust you, or any government official, with MY most precious possessions: My identity and my family's safety?

Please, Senator, show your wisdom and throw out an anchor on Real ID. Insist on public debate. Lead. That is the price of mine and my family's vote.

Thank you.

Your constituent,

Mark Brady

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Mandrake: (deferentially) Condition Red, sir, yes, jolly good idea. That keeps the men on their toes.

Ripper: Group Captain, I'm afraid this is not an exercise.

Mandrake: Not an exercise, sir?

Ripper: ...It looks like we're in a shooting war.

Mandrake: (politely irritated) Oh hell. Are the Russians involved, sir?

Ripper: ...It just came in on the Red Phone. My orders are for this base to be sealed tight, and that's what I mean to do, seal it tight. Now, I want you to transmit plan R, R for Robert, to the wing. Plan R for Robert...It looks like it's pretty hairy...Now last, and possibly most important - I want all privately-owned radios to be immediately impounded...They might be used to issue instructions to saboteurs.

Well I've been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo and that's the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a set of earphones." -Maj. T.J. "King" Kong