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WPCNR HOMELAND SECURITY NEWS. From New York Civil Liberties Union (Edited). January 15, 2008:  Final federal regulations for implementing the Real ID Act only intensify concerns that the law would gravely threaten privacy rights by establishing a national identification system, according to an analysis by the New York Civil Liberties Union. 

The NYCLU calls on New York to join the 17 other states nationwide that have rejected the Real ID Act. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released the final regulations Friday following more than a year of delays.

The NYCLU is hosting a series of public forums to inform people of the threats that the Real ID Act poses to democratic values. A Long Island forum will take place at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 15 at Huntington Town Hall, 100 Main St. in Huntington. Another community forum is scheduled in New York City for 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan 24. at the New York Society for Ethical Culture at 2 W. 64^th St.  Forums have previously been held in Rochester and Rheinbeck.

 

“The regulations are nothing more than window-dressing for a fundamentally flawed law,” said Donna Lieberman, NYCLU executive director. “They do not address the grave harm Real ID would do to New Yorkers’ privacy and liberty. They do not change the fact that we don’t know the price tag for this dubious venture – except that it will be exorbitant and that it will divert resources from far more deserving social service and public safety initiatives.” 

On Oct. 27, 2007, Gov. Spitzer announced that New York would implement the Real ID Act just before he abandoned his plan to offer secure driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. The NYCLU calls on him to abandon the Real ID Act.

The Real ID Act goes well beyond setting federal standards for state driver’s license or identification cards. The gravest risk, according to the NYCLU, is what the regulations do not say. They include no limits or constraints upon the authority of the government to dictate when a Real ID may be required. In fact, the regulations strongly suggest that in the future a Real ID driver’s license could be required for routine transactions and activities, such as voting or applying for federal benefits. The Department of Homeland Security claims authority to expand the list at any time without congressional approval.

The federal regulations do not prohibit private sector businesses and organizations from requiring Real ID driver’s licenses for commercial and financial activities, such as renting a DVD or buying car insurance.  In short, people could not manage their lives without a Real ID card; it would become a necessity – a de facto national ID card.

The NYCLU’s critique of the Real ID law includes the following observations: 

• If implemented, the Real ID Act could establish an enormous electronic infrastructure that government and law enforcement officials – or whoever else hacks in – could use to track Americans’ activities and movements.


• The final regulations do not set rules for the security of Americans’ personal information.  The Real ID statute requires that each state provide an unspecified array of government officials in all other states and territories access to personal information stored in DMV databases – such as Social Security numbers, photos and copies of birth certificates. The Department of Homeland Security essentially leaves it up to the states to determine how to protect privacy and security. This means sensitive, personal information would only be as safe as the DMV or state office with the weakest security system.


• The law also mandates that all driver’s licenses and ID cards have a “machine-readable zone” that would facilitate tracking by the government and private sector. Real IDs would leave a digital fingerprint whenever swiped, scanned or read, which would allow the federal government, or anyone with a reader, to collect an enormous amount of information about people’s activities and interests.  Encrypting the information on Real ID-compliant driver’s licenses would reduce some of the privacy threats, but the Department of Homeland Security has refused to require encryption, fearing that it would prevent easy access to the information contained in the barcodes.


• The final regulations place no limits on what types of information could be stored in the Real ID’s machine-readable zone. Nor do the regulations prohibit third-party access to such information – meaning any business equipped with a reader could capture personal information and use it to develop customer “lifestyle profiles” or simply sell the information to other businesses or to the federal government.

“Essentially, the Real ID Act puts our personal information up for sale,” Lieberman said. “It is the equivalent of an EZ-Pass for identity thieves. Under this law, the federal government conceivably could learn what books people read, what sorts of contraception they use or what medications they are prescribed.”

• The Real ID Act imposes an enormous unfunded mandate upon the states. Despite a nearly $10 billion cost estimate, the federal government has set aside only $40 million to help states pay for implementing the law. The Department of Homeland Security has made it clear that it expects individuals and state governments to pay for the costs of Real ID.  At a time when New York is facing a $4 billion budget deficit, the Spitzer administration has estimated that implementation of the Real ID Act would cost New York tens of millions of dollars annually and require 10 new DMV offices.

The Real ID Act was originally supposed to take effect on May 11, 2008, but these regulations clearly leave the issue with the next administration. The final regulations grant states an extension, until Dec. 31, 2009, to agree to comply with the law. An additional extension, until May 10, 2011, would be provided to states that submit a material compliance checklist.  (According to the final regulations, individuals younger than 50 have until Dec. 1, 2014 to obtain a Real ID-compliant driver’s license. Individuals 50 and older have until Dec. 1, 2017.)

WPCNR THE BIG EXTRA. News & Comment by John F. Bailey. January 15, 2008:  I wrote this column in 2004. It still stands relevant today, Monday morning at 8 A.M. at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in White Plains, the man, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. will be remembered. His birthday is today.  I am not that familiar with Dr. King’s life, but I do know that he, like other great men of America who have their days, Dr. King’s name stands for a value that America holds dear.

 George Washington stands for honesty.

 

Abraham Lincoln for freedom

 

Columbus for discovery,

 

Dr. King’s name stands for Opportunity.

 

When I think of Dr. King, I think of the Selma marches, I think of Birmingham, I think of Little Rock, Arkansas, where he lead the African-American community in demonstrations asking for the right of equal opportunity in America: a seat on a bus wherever they chose; a restaurant or hotel of their choice; the right to apply for a job without being turned down because you were black. Blatant in-your-face- discrimination was publicized by Dr. King and America was shown it was not right.

 

It took fearlessness to do that. Who today has that fearlessness that Dr. King and his followers showed all of America?

 

Today, subtle discrimination denying equal opportunity, denying education, exploiting the poor and guaranteeing less opportunity are the evils that Dr. King, had he lived,  would be attacking today. 

 

When I write those sentences I just wrote, it seems incomprehensible to me that someone would deny another person that. When you think about it, it is an awful situation to think about. In the 38 years since Dr. King was murdered, the nation has come a long way in breaking down the visible barriers of racism based on creed and the color of one’s skin — and now, today, the language one speaks and where they are from. The education establishment with the exception perhaps of the Port Chester School District, as pointed out by the Journal News series on education running this week, continues to favor the English-speaking, the wealthied, and the well-situated.

 

Today the barriers to Equal Opportunity are more subtle and just as effective.

 

Barriers still exist: in the classroom. There is reluctance to deliver quality education to the black and Hispanic populations in America today. Last year, for the first time, the White Plains City School District has agreed to a pilot program of teaching English speaking and Spanish speaking students together in Kindergarten and the grades going forward. It is about time.

 

The only reason there is a concentrated effort to do so are the state achievement tests which showed the shame of our education programs for minorities. The Superintendent of Schools Timothy Connors is to be commended for pushing this program.

 

 On the other hand, there is the perception elsewhere that because your name and skin color are different, you automatically need help and are slow-tracked into remedial classes; the inclusion of the slower (read minority) children in one corner of a classroom so you can deal with the “problem children” all at once; the notion that it is all right to use millions of dollars meant for rebuilding poor performing schools with better buildings, better teachers, but is used to create educational  bureaucracies for the politically connected instead.

 

In the last ten years the products of this subtle unequal educational opportunity have been well documented and given a name: The Achievement Gap. The educational establishment invests millions in studies to fine solutions to it and they have learned a lot about it. It takes more School District heads to stand up and say like Dr. King, “we simply are not going to educate half the population any more.”  Timothy Connors, to his credit, did that last year.

 

The lagging of minority youth is blamed on the home and family breakdown. Well then you have to bring more attention to the family unit and those youngsters’ home environment, putting the education in there. It’s expensive but if you want to solve the Achievement Gap you have to do that. The City of White Plains and the School District are reaching out to do that with the Family Excell program reported in WPCNR (the only media to do so last year). How is that doing?

 

The argument that you have to speak English in the schools and learn through English is  racial superiority. Of course you have to learn to speak English, but really, Bilingual education is how we English-speakers learn another language. Port Chester has achieved this — and WPCNR pointed this out to the White Plains School Board six years ago. Why is this new?

 

Why not have teachers educate children in their own language with English simultaneously? It is proven to work in Port Chester and New Rochelle. It is time to stop the subtle prejudice that we do not want non-English speaking children in our towns and schools because they are too hard to educate and will cost us money to do that. They are children, you simply cannot throw them away because they do not speak English.

 

This discrimination Dr. Martin Luther King would find hard to take.

 

He would bristle at lowering standards for minorities, because he would see right through that argument, saying:  when are you going to raise the standards for my people because you don’t have to work any harder at educating them if you do not raise your expectations for them.

 

I think Dr. King would look around today and appreciate how Blacks and Whites, Hispanics and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Muslims and  other races mingle together in today’s America.

 

I think he’d observe we are all becoming more appreciative and respectful of each other. But, I do not think he would like today’s buzz word :”diversity” and our smugness about our diversity.

 

He would say that’s nice, but let’s keep our eye on the prize, to borrow the wonderful motto of the White Plains Department of Public Safety, let us treat all with integrity, professionalism, respect, and to that add opportunity.

 

Now, let’s think how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would handle the present homeless situation in White Plains. Where souls were used for political posturing and to appeal to the fears of the citizens and not their sense of fairness and justice.

 

I believe Dr. Martin Luther King if he were in White Plains today would bring the homeless 40 or so  spending nights in the woods and overflowing at 186 West Post Road at the warming shelter to breakfast with him.  He’d have them camp out in tents at Andy Spano’s house or on the island at Renaissance Square. He would not let it pass. He’d run as many warming shelters as he felt necessary and get that television coverage when they were going to be closed down.

 

Dr. King was not  only politically incorrect, but  politically uncooperative.

 

He’d introduce the “feared 40” all around to the rich and the powerful and the well-connected and show them the people whom they are treating like cruel political pawns by our leaders on the county and the city level – all over this county.

 

He’d ask each  to tell their stories at his breakfast next week. He’d prey for compassion from us the wealthy, the powerful and the decent, and the respectable to have compassion for the weak, the misdirected, the addicted and disturbed, and the mortgage-ravaged.

 

He’d ask White Plains leaders to accept the responsibility of leadership and by reaching out personally to the homeless to provide them meals and, perhaps jobs during the day, to welcome them in to White Plains somehow. To help them make a new start in White Plains in a firehouse, a church, or a vacant hospital. To challenge businesses to weave these persons into the fabric of the downtown, instead of telling them they are not welcome.

 

He’d challenge us  to step up our humanity,  as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did when no one else would 39 years ago.

 

He’d shame  the two governments, county and city, for not treating the homeless with simple human respect and adhering to the constitution, which prohibits you from being jailed for no reason – a policy incredulously being pushed by politicians who should read the constitution just once to reset their minds.

 

 

He’d ask White Plains to rise up and forgive the persons with the prison records who have done their time, and find jobs for them and through forgiveness, and respect for them,  melt away the homeless persons’ suspicions and resentments,  alleged by our “leaders.” 

 

And about our gangs: Dr. Martin Luther King would go out to the streets of Yonkers, Mount Vernon, Port Chester, New Rochelle, Peekskill – the cities where gang activity has been reported – and  speak to them about where they are going. (Perhaps he’d simply speak to White Plains youths, since we have been assured by our officials there are no gangs in White Plains.)

 

It is difficult to say Dr. King would say to the gang members of our area. But, I assure you he’d be in their midst confronting this problem and admitting it exists.

 

As we honor Dr. Martin Luther King next Monday. Ask ourselves what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would think of the way we have treated the homeless on the Warming Center issue.  What he would think about how we have “reached out?” Would he approve of the way we are working with our youth, our Hispanic population, about how dollars are being used for affordable housing and why it cannot be built faster, about how dollars are being spent in school districts whether on educating people or creating buildings or stadiums; how dollars are being spent by organizations supposedly helping the afflicted, and how they are really doing, and what are they doing with the dollars.

 

He’d excoriate the variable and below prime mortages now being foreclosed as a new form of financial redlining invented by the financial establishment to exploit. He’d ridicule the efforts of the government to “save” billion dollar financial institutions while allowing homeowners to lose their houses.

 

Would Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. approve?

  

He’d remind us that Jesus Christ chose to minister to the “hardcore” of his time. He went into their midst. He  healed them and made them fishers of men.

 

The way to honor Dr. King tomorrow  and at the “celebrated” holiday  next week is to honor the afflicted, help the troubled with dignity, not humiliate them, not shun them, not “throw them out.”

 

The way Dr. King would view our world today?

He’d observe that “we need work.”

That the lynchings and the shutting of school doors are gone, but the attitudes remain.

And he’d point that out with that his long and finger pointing right at us.

He’d say, “I still have a dream.”