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My sidebar informed me that the Senate unanimously passed the Real ID Act yesterday. What does this mean? CNET’s news.com.com has a FAQ available on their site. My take on it is that it calls for the creation of a national ID card, standardizing identification in our country. This is a good and bad thing.

It is good in that it will allow someone in New Jersey to easily verify identity information from a card obtained in Alaska. This is bad for just the same reason. From page 3 of CNET’s FAQ:

Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s technology and liberty program, says: “It’s going to result in everyone, from the 7-Eleven store to the bank and airlines, demanding to see the ID card. They’re going to scan it in. They’re going to have all the data on it from the front of the card…It’s going to be not just a national ID card but a national database.”

Identity theft should increase quite a bit once this is enacted nationwide. You know how Lane Bryant, Office Max and Best Buy ask for your phone number or ZIP code when you make a purchase? Most people don’t even think twice before giving up such precious information (me, included). Merchants often use such information to help target advertising for geographic areas. Now suppose the Best Buy cashier needs to see your ID card before the corporate office will allow you to make your purchase. Regardless of how I feel about privacy, if I need something now, I might just have no choice but to show my ID card. This is especially true if all merchants adopt a similar policy.

Now instead of just having my phone number or ZIP code, Best Buy will also have my full name, social security number, home address, height, weight, hair color, eye color, retinal scan, fingerprint and shoe size. OK, maybe not that last one, but check this out from the FAQ:

What’s going to be stored on this ID card?
At a minimum: name, birth date, sex, ID number, a digital photograph, address, and a “common machine-readable technology” that Homeland Security will decide on. The card must also sport “physical security features designed to prevent tampering, counterfeiting, or duplication of the document for fraudulent purposes.”

Homeland Security is permitted to add additional requirements–such as a fingerprint or retinal scan–on top of those. We won’t know for a while what these additional requirements will be.

So, ponder that while “gee-dubyah” signs away our privacy.

As an aside: Unfortunately, I didn’t know about the bill until late Monday evening. Whil I’m glad that Sen. Durbin was against it, it’s a shame he didn’t vote against it because it was attached to an Iraq spending bill.