I first obtained a Maryland driver’s license in 1963 when I was 16 years old after my father taught me how to drive a stick shift and I passed the test, the worst part of which was the parallel parking. A few months later, I passed another teenage milestone by crashing into a stopped car at a traffic light while coming home from someone’s Junior Prom. I insisted that the brakes had failed but my father’s mechanic assured him that the brakes were in proper operating order and that I probably had pumped the gas pedal and not the brakes: one of many discussions that I “lost.”
So since 1963 – with the exception of a few years when I was out of state attending school – I’ve had a Maryland driver’s license. So, to my surprise, I received a letter in May of 2019 from the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration which stated that to keep my license in good standing I was required “to present proof of age and identity, Social Security, and two proofs of Maryland residential address, in person at your local branch by June 12, 2019.” Moreover, failing to meet the new requirements could result in a recall of your Maryland driver’s license or identification card. So, at age 72, I needed to prove a number of things in order to keep a valid Maryland license which I have had for well over 50 years.
What’s this all about? Well it turns out that the validity of your license is now determined by the federal Real ID law which was passed after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Anyone who does not comply may not enter a federal building or fly on a commercial airplane.
If your driver’s license has a star in the right hand corner, you are Real ID compliant. Maryland got with the program in 2007 but apparently made its share of mistakes (indeed, apparently a million mistakes aided by the Federal government which kept changing the rules). I was given a driver’s license with a star but the May 19th letter called me back to “prove” that I deserved the star.
Essentially to merit a star, you must prove that you are a United States citizen, provide proof of the date of your birth, validate that you are part of the Social Security system and provide proof of your residency in the state where the license is issued. So I, like approximately a million Marylanders, had to bring documents to justify our star (at first the local paper reported that 60,000 Marylanders were affected but that number, in subsequent issues, was raised to 800,000 and apparently the real number was 1 million).
When the Real ID law was passed there was vociferous objection from both the right and the left. Tea Party Republicans objected on the grounds of privacy. Liberal groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, also objected and contended that the information would be “consolidated into a national database” which could be used to track individuals.
My objection is different: the numbskulls (here’s looking at you Congress) who passed this law have accomplished nothing except to saddle state governments with excessive expense and ordinary citizens with yet another bureaucratic hassle. Additionally, the law does nothing to effectively fight terrorism.
It turns out that of Maryland’s almost 5 million licensed drivers, a little over 2 million are Real ID compliant. So if you just want to drive a car, you have no need to be Real ID compliant and what it really amounts to is that you can’t fly commercial airlines without the compliant identification. (Elaine S. Povich, “Maryland Isn’t The Only State Facing Problems With Real ID,” Baltimore Sun, September 9, 2019).
Now, you might ask: “what about the terrorists?” I suspect the terrorist who wants a Real ID will be quite able to prove the necessary requirements as obtaining false identification documents is a cottage industry on the Internet.
Consider this possibility. Somewhere in the 2,000,000 Marylanders with acceptable Real ID there is a terrorist. She has secured the necessary identification information to obtain a bona fide Real ID. Now ‒ armed with the necessary identification ‒ she is able to board an airplane. Why, in God’s name she would want to do that, given the fact that cockpits are now reinforced and federal air marshals are on flights is anybody’s guess? The likelihood of a terrorist with a suicide vest getting on a commercial airliner is just a tad north of extraordinarily unlikely.
Now consider the possibility of a terrorist in the almost 3,000,000 Marylanders without a Real ID. That terrorist is free to drive around the country and free to buy the necessary components of a car bomb and ‒ while he can’t get into a federal courthouse – he can certainly park his explosive laden car next to the courthouse a la Timothy McVeigh.
Most of my friends who had to visit the MVA had about the same response. “It wasn’t so bad and I was out of there in under an hour”. My response is “that was an hour that you won’t get back and that did nothing to ensure your safety. And, by the way, how long did it take you to locate your birth certificate?”
There are many people who think the government is the problem. I am not one of those as I believe some government programs are wonderfully run and quite effective (Social Security and Medicare to name two although both are woefully underfunded). But the Real ID law is an example of politicians purporting to do something when, in fact, they are doing nothing except driving up expense and anxiety.
The response to the 9/11 tragedy has been, in the main, not particularly good: Real ID law, the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq. Politicians make frequent mistakes and citizens allow them to do so when they feel insecure. Osama bin Laden was successful – not only in killing 3,000 people on 9/11 ‒ but in making many insecure and less likely to challenge really dumb ideas.