PORTLAND -- Today the Department of Homeland Security issued a list of demands to the state of Maine that exceed those placed on any other state in the country. DHS granted waivers to every state in the country including Montana and South Carolina, which did not request waivers, as well as all sixteen other states who have passed resolutions or legislation in opposition to REAL ID. The demands include a establishment of a costly facial recognition surveillance system that government studies show doesn't work, proof of legal status or a scarlet-letter license scheme, and participation in the SAVE system, which only fourteen states in the country are currently doing according to the DHS website. Research on the DHS website reveals that DHS granted waivers to a variety of states that have not met and have not indicated any intention to meet these demands.

"Department of Homeland Security is playing election-year politics, trying to force Mainers to adopt a host of anti-privacy measures that DHS has not required of every other state in the country," said Shenna Bellows, Executive Director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union. "Department of Homeland Security with the approval of Senator Collins is proposing to punish thousands of Mainers for failure to comply with a law that no state is required to implement until 2014. Governor Baldacci and the Legislature should stand firm in protecting the privacy, pocketbooks and security of Mainers in the face of these unreasonable demands"

Legislation at the national level is pending to repeal the REAL ID. On the Senate side, Senator Daniel Akaka has been joined by Senator John Sununu (R-NH), Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), and Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) in promoting the S. 717. On the House side, Maine Congressman Tom Allen has been joined by 34 co-sponsors on H.R.1117 to repeal the REAL ID and replace it with the joint rulemaking procedures for drivers' license standards advocated by the 9/11 Commission.

Legislation on the state level in opposition to the REAL ID is currently pending in Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, and Wisconsin. The repeal REAL ID legislation was motivated by privacy and cost concerns about surveillance components of the REAL ID program including the facial recognition surveillance system that DHS demands Maine implement in its letter. Facial recognition systems are built on computer programs that analyze images of human faces for the purpose of identifying them. In a 2002 study, the government's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), for example, found false-negative rates for face-recognition verification of 43 percent using photos of subjects taken just 18 months earlier, for example.

"Department of Homeland Security is whipping up fear around immigrants to push through a costly surveillance system that is not only hugely expensive but that government studies have already shown simply won't work," said Zach Heiden, MCLU Legal Director. "REAL ID makes us vulnerable to bureaucratic error, identity theft and abuse of power by the government on a grand scale."

In addition to participation in the facial recognition surveillance system, the federal government is suggesting that Maine require everyone in the state to prove their legal status. This was one of the DHS demands despite the fact that they granted waivers to five other states who do not meet this requirement. Security experts like Margaret Stock, Esq. an Assistant Professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point have suggested recently that excluding undocumented immigrants from the drivers' license system undermines security by taking all of the undocumented out of the largest law enforcement databases in the country, the drivers' license system. The Department of Homeland Security is further suggesting that Maine participate in the System for Alien Verification Electronically, a system that only fourteen states in the country are using according to the Department of Homeland Security website. If Maine does not implement these requirements, the federal government has demanded that Maine establish a scarlet-letter license or two-tiered license system to clearly mark the license as "not for official purposes."

"Every other state who has opted out of the REAL ID has received a free pass from the feds in the form of a waiver with few or no conditions," said Bellows. "The gift from the Department of Homeland Security to Maine is a scarlet-letter license."

Seventeen states in total have passed resolutions or statutes to reject the REAL ID national identification card system. Nonetheless, all of the other sixteen states have been granted REAL ID waivers. Montana and South Carolina did not request waivers but were nonetheless granted them.

The REAL ID law was passed as an amendment to an Iraq War and tsunami relief supplemental spending bill in 2005 without debate or an individual vote. The REAL ID repealed a joint rulemaking process to establish national standards for drivers' licenses that had been recommended by the 9/11 Commission.

The DHS letter to Governor Baldacci is available upon request.

Shenna Bellows
Executive Director
Maine Civil Liberties Union
401 Cumberland Ave., Suite 105
Portland, ME 04101
www.mclu.org