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After May 11, 2008, a federal agency may not accept, for any official purpose, a driver's license or identification card issued by a State to any person unless the State is meeting the requirements specified in the Real ID Act. While states can issue non-federal ID cards, they would not be accepted by the Transportation Security Administration for travel purposes, grounding those who don't carry federally approved cards.
The data required to be included in each USA ID card are similar to those required by the Serbian law, the person's full legal name, date of birth, gender, driver's license number, a digital photo, the person's address and machine-readable technology so the information can be read easily by government or banking personnel.
Each state must agree to share the data on the cards with every other state.
Supporters of the law say it does not require a "national" ID card because each state issues its own cards, not the federal government. But detractors note the cards are virtual national IDs since the federal law has dictated what data must be included and that each state must share its database with the others.
U.S. governors come out against the law, saying it is a huge unfunded mandate imposed on the nation's states.
The National Conference of State Legislatures is equally opposed to the Real ID Act, saying, "Federal legislators and rule makers are negating state driver's license security efforts, imposing difficult-to-comply-with mandates and limiting their flexibility to address new concerns as they arise. In other words, decades of state experience is being substituted for a 'command and control regime' from a level of government that has no driver's license regulatory experience."
Endtime Ministries' Irvin Baxter, a radio host, believes the national ID is a precursor to the forced embedding of radio-frequency chips under the skin.
Baxter told the Concord, N.H., Monitor: "That's where we are headed right now. The prophecy states that you will have to receive a mark on your hand or in your forehead."
WorldNetDaily's Sherrie Gossett reported that in 2003 at a global security conference held in Paris, an American company announced a new syringe-injectable microchip implant for humans, designed to be used as a fraud-proof payment method for cash and credit-card transactions.
The chip implant was being presented as an advance over credit cards and smart cards, which, absent biometrics and appropriate safeguard technologies, are subject to theft, resulting in identity fraud.
Identity fraud costs the banking and financial industry some $48 billion a year, and consumers $5 billion, according to 2002 Federal Trade Commission estimates.
Responding to the public outcry in Serbia, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica's administration, in one of its last acts in office, took the unusual step of announcing a decree before the government's session this month.
Serbian Interior Minister Dragan Jocic told the press that "due to privacy concerns raised by citizens" the new Law on Identification Cards would be modified to ensure the chips, with a digitalized photo and fingerprint, would be included only upon the card holder's specific request.
Citizens' groups and non-governmental organizations that initiated an opposition campaign after the law passed last July applauded the concession but vowed to continue the fight until the entire law was struck down.
Attorney Dragoljub Djordjevic, a founder of the group that spearheaded the anti-biometric media campaign "Life without Branding," says his organization plans to challenge the law in the Serbian Supreme Court.
On the web: www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53945
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