100-0

Today, the Senate unanimously passed an $82 billion spending bill for "Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief" (their words, not mine). This was passed last week by the House (as H.R.1268) 368-58.

"So what?" you're probably thinking. Well, the Congress buried a little surprise in there for us: H.R.418. What's H.R.418? Well, it's known as the Real ID Act, and it establishes a national ID card, but makes the states take responsibility for it. That's right - the Congress is turning state drivers licenses into national ID cards. It states that the licenses must be machine-readable, and must contain "specified data", but doesn't specify the technology or the data. Sure, most states already have 2-D barcodes and/or magstripes on the licenses. There's plenty of information encoded in there already (and only a handful of states encrypt it): name, physical characteristics, address, and the like. But it's going to get worse, and it will be uniform across all states.

Just imagine that new licenses get RFID (Radio Frequency ID) chips in them. This is certainly possible. Just imagine that licenses are encoded with information that the government feels is important, like your Social Security Number, your address history, and other information. This is the kind of stuff that gives privacy advocates nightmares.

There's no way this thing would have passed on its own, which is why it was slipped inside the larger "must pass" spending bill. Remind you of the Trojan Horse?