You are invited to join us for a meeting of the MIT/EC3 Real ID Forum.
The Real ID Act (RIDA) was passed into law in the fall of 2005. Since that time there has been anxious anticipation of the rules to be written by the Department of Homeland Security. Those rules have now been published and the public comment period is in progress. It is your turn to respond to these rules and we will be taking comments and contributions concerning any questions or issues you believe need to be addressed with the rules or the Act.
Following are details about the MIT/EC3 Real ID Forum to be held on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 from 1:30 to 5:00 Eastern Time.
What: Discussion on the Real ID Act and Rules: Overview of the key issues, problems and prospects; Short facilitated discussions on key topics (Governmental: draft rule/NPRM process, Congressional activity, state government activity; Putative Federation, etc), Policy and Legal (Privacy, Information Awareness and Sharing, State v. Federal jurisdiction for licensing functions, civil liberties implications, public/private partnership pro/con, etc), and Technology/Operations (Card requirements, one-driver-one-license implications for batch processing and tracking people, encryption, unique numbers for card holders, etc) and Next Steps (future scenarios in various economic sectors that might use Real ID to authenticate individuals, i.e. healthcare, eCommerce, eGovernment, eLearning, etc).
Why: The concept of a national identity system comprised of standard state issued federally regulated cards would have been politically and socially impossible before the attacks of 9/11. However, as a measure to combat terrorism, the Act was passed with no debate in the Senate, with many key public policy questions and concerns remaining under-explored or completely unanswered. To what extent, if at all, can the Real ID Act actually realize the promise of curtailing identity fraud, increasing personalization and transactional efficiency and enhancing law enforcement and intelligence ability to keep us safe? If so, will the the impacts on privacy, civil liberties, centralization and federalization of state government licensing processes, operations disruptions at DMV and other citizen-facing friction points and the direct monetary costs to individuals and government at all levels, worth it the benefits – if any – that can reasonably be expected? Using the good offices of MIT as the convener for Such We intend to compile a record of the contributions from the day to help inform the larger national dialog and will also make that record available to the appropriate Congressional Committees as they consider the need for repeal or reform of the Real ID Statute as well as to the Department of Homeland Security as it considers comments on their draft rules under the existing statute. We also intend to pass the information back to key state government policy setting organizations such as the National Governor’s Association, the National Association of State Legislatures and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. The proceedings will also be available on the MIT website: http://ecitizen.mit.edu for general public education.
Join us in person, on a conference call or online. Please register at http://ecitizen.mit.edu and then use the email addresses at the top of this page to request participation information.
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