The Department of Homeland Security will require all U.S. residents to purchase new forms of identification for the sake of national security.
The finalized provisions to an act passed in 2005 were announced Friday. The REAL ID Act is part of the Emergency Supplemental Appropriation for Defense, the Global War on Terror and Tsunami Relief and will enhance the integrity and reliability of driver's licenses and identification cards.
The act was supposed to go into effect in 2007, but extensions have delayed the act's enforcement. States that have been granted an extension will be required to issue compliant licenses and identification cards no later than Jan. 1, 2010. All licenses and identification cards held by individuals from a state must be compliant by May 10, 2013, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Despite delay to implementation, Bobby Inman, a public affairs professor at UT, said he thinks the national ID is beneficial to all.
"I realize it raises alarms about civil liberties, but the reality is we don't know who's here," he said. "We need a national ID card."
Inman said the national ID card could ease logistical problems in such areas as voting and food stamps.
The American Civil Liberties Union has led protests against the act, saying that a national ID card will not make the country safer. The union also fears the soon-to-be-implemented system poses threats to a right to privacy.
"REAL ID needs to be repealed," the union said in a statement. "It is not only a threat to Americans' privacy, but it is utterly unworkable. After three and one-half years of efforts to implement this law, the tortured remains of the statute that appear to survive in these regulations stand as stark evidence of that fact."
The new REAL IDs will resemble current state identification cards, with a few changes.
"The physical changes vary," said Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security. "We've created a menu for states with a number of different components to choose from; they can choose from holograms to microfilaments."
The act's text does not call for specific changes to design or layout for the IDs. Each state will instead have a menu of options to choose from when customizing the state's ID.
For all states, IDs will contain a person's full legal name, address of principal residence, digital photograph, gender, date of birth, signature, document number and machine-readable technology.
Some states have expressed concern about the extra costs of redistributing new IDs to the public. However, national funding will offset these costs.
"We issued $360 million in grant research guidance to assist states," Kudwa said. "We've updated and extended the deadlines, cutting initial costs by 73 percent."
The cost to the public, however, might still be an issue. For instance, any license renewed before the REAL IDs become available will have to be re-renewed to comply with the act, Kudwa said. For some states, like Virginia, the cost to renew a license is not a factor as license renewal is free.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Public Transportation in Austin said the department is reviewing the newly released rules and had no further comment on the cost of the REAL IDs.
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