The petition
The REAL ID Act is a bad law passed under false pretenses. It was rejected three separate times by the U.S. Senate, and was only passed because it was added to a larger bill containing disaster relief and funding for Iraq. The Senate didn't want it, and the American people don't want it either. But the Republican majority leadership in Congress imposed it on us, and so now we have to fight to get it repealed.
The REAL ID Act creates a centralized federal database of personal information about all Americans. Decisions about the exact nature and scope of this program will be made by unelected bureaucrats in the Executive Branch. It seems inevitable that biometric information and electronic tracking tags will be included at some point. No one intends a bad use for this system today, but it is inevitable that it will be used in bad ways in the future.
We are promised increased personal security in return for laying this new "foundation stone" for the creation of a future police state. But those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither, and will have neither.
Many good arguments can be made against REAL ID, but they all reduce to one overpowering truth. The more information government has the less it seems to know. The more power government has the less it seems able to accomplish. Big Government doesn't work. The federal government needs to do less in order to accomplish more. Small government is focused government. We need smaller government, not a massive new federal identification system.
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