See here, in the comments, for how the REAL ID debate rages on. Personally, I resent having had to get this done. A lot of the complaints are about how this just adds another layer to a system that's already rife with abuse. REAL ID, too, will end up compromised.
As one commenter wrote:
A point about document integrity: Until the late 70s, U.S. citizens could travel to the Caribbean and return to the U.S. without a passport; a voter's card was valid proof of U.S. citizenship. Jimmy Carter fixed that, though. Also till the late 70s, Social Security cards could be issued to nonimmigrant aliens like students so they could open bank accounts while they were in school in the U.S. The cards were endorsed "Not Valid For Employment." Jimmy fixed that, too; under his regime, the cards could still be issued, but the endorsement was done away with. So I can't wait for Real ID to get compromised till it becomes worthless, too. But it'll be fun while it lasts.
Ron Paul on Real ID just before it passed the House decades ago along with the Patriot Act. Ron Paul was right. pic.twitter.com/djnJCpRffk
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) April 15, 2025
I never asked you about this, but I always wondered why you felt you needed to get a Real ID, since you can still travel with a passport. (And how often do you fly within the US? I think the last time I flew domestically was when I was in the US for a year during my sabbatical back in 2017.) Was it just because you wanted to renew your license anyway and you figured you would get the Real ID as part of the process? Or was it mandatory to get the Real ID if you wanted to renew your license?
ReplyDeleteOriginally, my buddy Mike was the one who prompted me to get it. He said REAL ID would be a "requirement" from May 7 onward. I thought about it and decided to go through the extra rigamarole (and it really wasn't that much extra rigamarole) despite misgivings. At the time, it seemed (in a good way) like an extra layer of security. The more I think about it, though...
DeleteTechnically, you don't have to have a REAL ID to fly domestically: you can use your passport (or just drive). But that's what stuck in my craw: my feeling is that, as a US citizen, I shouldn't have to have a passport to fly from state to state; a simple driver's license, without REAL ID, really ought to be enough. But now, even a driver's license isn't sufficient: you have to have a license plus a REAL ID if you're not using your passport. So from my perspective, it's an array of unpleasant choices. Since I really don't want to have to flash a passport when traveling state to state, I'd rather have the REAL ID. Least bad of all the bad options.
But the Instapundit commentariat is right: it amounts to a national ID, and the people it's meant to stop (from voting or traveling illegally) will simply find other means to keep acting illegally. This is an inconvenience for law-abiding people, not for people who already flout the law. As Ron Paul cautioned in the video, there's also no limit as to what data will get stored on a card that has REAL ID—biometric or otherwise. And the new license's makeup makes your information available to unscrupulous data harvesters with RFID scanners. Hence my mention of Faraday bags.
You know, there are times when I think it'd be better to pull up my stakes and move somewhere that I can live totally off-grid. Is that even possible these days?
I guess I'm so used to using my passport to fly that it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to use it when flying domestically. It also doesn't hurt that my passport is the only valid form of ID I have left to use when I'm in the States anyway.
ReplyDelete(Funny side story: When I was in Albuquerque for a conference last year, a bunch of us decided to go out to a bar and they were carding everyone at the door. I obviously didn't have my passport on me at the time, but I did have my Korean 영주증, so I handed it to the guy. I think he was used to just glancing at the ID, glancing back up at the individual, and then handing the card back, but the Korean must have thrown him for a loop. His eyes darted back and forth between the card and my face probably half a dozen times before I realized that bouncer.exe had stopped working. I briefly contemplated saying nothing just to see what would happen, but eventually I had pity on him and pointed out my birth date. He just shrugged, handed the card back to me, and let me in. The place turned out to be way too loud and obnoxious, and I ended up leaving after about five minutes.)
As for living off-grid, that is indeed possible, although I guess it depends on what you mean by "off-grid." Most people use that term to mean that they are not connected to utilities like power, water, sewage, etc. And, yeah, you can still live like that. A lot of people do. But I suspect by "off-grid" you mean the way Jason Bourne would be off-grid. I guess that's probably possible, too, but you would lose access to almost all of the social safety nets you have now. I don't know how long you would survive (no shade on you--I don't know how long any of us who aren't Jason Bourne would survive).
It could end up being a short, happy (or nasty and brutish) life.
DeleteI used to watch a few Alaskan, off-grid shows featuring true natives. For all their talk of living their ancestral ways of life, they wear modern, and Western, mass-produced clothing, drive vehicles with internal combustion engines, utilize grocery stores, and hunt with high-caliber armaments that are definitely not produced by themselves. The ones who are closest to being truly off-grid are migrants to Alaskan looking to escape to simpler times or running to escape their demons.
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