Privacy, Costs May Be Death of Real ID Act

Thursday, January 8, 2009 8:24 AM
By: Dave Eberhart

Long plagued by cost and privacy concerns, the intrusive Real ID effort to mandate secure national identification cards for Americans could be on its last legs.

With his nomination of Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano to run the Department of Homeland Security, the agency tasked with implementing Real ID, President-elect Barack Obama may have signed the controversial program’s death warrant. As governor, Napolitano has been a vocal opponent of Real ID and she signed a bill barring her state from implementing the Act

Napolitano said she signed the bill into law because a lack of adequate federal funding makes Real ID “just another unfunded federal mandate,â€