Another regulation that’s correct according to itself.
The address that you hand wrote, is used for the exact purpose as you described in your story. It’s to help return the lost passport to you. Passport holders are told to write this information in pencil. Not ink.
If you actually think that this hand written, penciled, information provided by the individual carries the same implied authenticity as an address on a driver’s license, then I don’t think I know how to respond to that.
Finding the tiniest loophole available to hand out guns based on someone’s frayed handwritten pool pass proves that it’s right to have arbitrary standards in other areas, such as for what documents you need to provide to get airplane-level citizenship.
Good lord.
But the point is that it’s not the address per se. It’s the validity of the document, which is affected by the information contained on it. I’m not trying to argue that the regulation is morally or even logically correct. I’m trying to counter one argument here:
The federal government needs your verified residency address on state IDs or they won’t accept it because they want/need your address data for… reasons. Oh, and big brother!
Just use a federally issued ID, like a passport card, and you’ll be fine. I guess. The state is still going to collect and verify your address if you want a driver’s license. So this whole notion that, “I’m going to fly with my passport instead of my driver’s license!! bwa ha ha. That will show The Man.” I just don’t get that sentiment. You’re still going to have to provide your information to the state database that is shared federally.
No. It proves that there is a necessity to standardize federally accepted ID cards. That standardization is the whole purpose of the RealID act. Once in effect, a RealID compliant ID will be required to purchase a firearm. Not just any government issued ID. You guys are all focusing on airplanes and airline travel, but this Act has ramifications and justifications that go much further than simply getting on an airplane.
I’ve never verified my address with my state’s DMV. I wrote it on the form and they accepted it, and they’ll continue to accept it if I renew to another second class license (although this would not be the case if I was getting a new license, from scratch). To get a first class airplane-qualified drivers license, I’d have to show, for instance, my passport AND some other BS like a utility bill I could whip up in Microsoft Word, even though the passport is valid for the same Real ID purposes by itself.
I wonder whether there isn’t selective enforcement.
New York started offering two levels of Real ID recently, and my license was up for renewal. I got the lower level (suitable for domestic flights and entering buildings/bases, but not for crossing borders, and cheaper) because I have a passport, which I don’t routinely carry or want to routinely carry but could use if I intended to cross borders. I came prepared with current driver’s license, passport, social security card, and two bills with my address on them.
The DMV used the first three items, but didn’t ask for proof of residence. When I asked about it, they said my old driver’s license was good enough – but the thing was over 9 years old, and while I am still living in the same place, I could have easily moved a dozen times over that time span. They had sent me a renewal notice to that address, but someone else living there could have taken in the mail and given it to me; and the instructions I found online had said to bring two recent items for proof of address, and not mentioned that one.
Possibly relevant information, and I have no idea which parts of it might apply: I am white, female, in my 60’s, live in an area in which the county seat qualifies for ‘small town’ contests, and it’s possible the clerk recognized me from somewhere (see item 4) though if so they didn’t say so.
Do you actually hold the position that information on state IDs and licenses should not be uniformly verified in order to be federally accepted as a means of identification? Do any of you actually believe that?
If you do think that they should be uniformly verified, and since they all have address on them, why shouldn’t the states be required to verify the address? I am interested in understanding this. But if really seems logical that if states are going to include information on their IDs, that information should be verified.
Those of you who disagree with this. Is it because there is some fundamental right that you feel is being violated? Or do you just think that it is too inconvenient, and not worth the trouble. Is that the argument? That the benefit to the government and society is not worth the inconvenience to the individual?
Good for you. You’ve showed them!
According toPennsylvania’s REAL ID page, you need a SS Card.
Sure. If a passport card without a verified address is federally-acceptable ID, then a drivers license without a verified address should be as well. I don’t really care that an address is printed on the latter but not the former.
If the state wants to verify the address for its own local purposes (and it might!), fine, whatever, but yes, my position is that the feds should not require the states to verify information that they themselves do not collect for their own ID cards that grant equivalent privileges.
Less than a month ago, my wife and I went to the DMV in Florida to get her license changed from Alaska to Florida. We had to jump through the additional hoops to get the RealID, but I was expecting it, so I made sure to bring her passport. We didn’t have proof of address or her SSN though. For proof of address, the agent looked into the tax system and found my property tax records, so we were good there. For the SSN, he gave her an affidavit to sign. It basically said, “I swear under penalty of perjury that this is my true social security number…” something along those lines. We left with a real RealID, star in the corner and everything. We’ll never use it to fly though, as we have passport books and passport cards and military IDs.
Fair enough. I can agree that the verification of the address was not required to have an effective RealID system. Requiring uniformed standards for identifying the person, along with mandating security features for the ID cards would have accomplished the stated goals of the Act, and allowed the IDs to be functionally equivalent to a passport for identification purposes. We can agree on this.
However, I think that requiring states to verify residency is simply good practice that adds one additional level of authentication to the IDs with minimal inconvenience to the applicant. I don’t see this as warranting the level of outrage that others do. But some people are just really scared of anything the government does that involves personal identification information.
The SSN, though. I don’t know enough about the purpose of requiring it to have an opinion yet. Currently, I don’t see the need or understand why it was part of the Act. But there might be something I’m missing. I won’t dismiss it’s purpose outright as others do, though, simply because I disagree with everything the government does.
Well, I don’t really care about having an “effective RealID system.” If the law were repealed tomorrow I’d sleep perfectly soundly, and I think that if anyone really thought it was a necessity or even moderately beneficial, it wouldn’t have taken 15 (or more) years to implement it. That probably does color my view of the inconsistencies, and frankly I’m not even convinced that most of the tasks on the Real ID list should be restricted based on photo ID at all, let alone super-verified ID.
But if we’re going to have it, I’m going to at least roll my eyes at the inconsistencies.
Surely you can see the need for standardizing the quality, security, and standards of federally accepted IDs though? The alternative is demonstrated with the pool pass story–and that has been acceptable for decades.
I’m not sure I do. The fact that the TSA and the gate guards at a nuclear bomber base both work for Uncle Sam does not convince me that they should be working off of the same ID security regulations. Identical standards for both are, IMO, a good sign that one is overly strict or the other is overly lax.
How minimal the inconvenience is depends on your exact situation. For example, when my son got his NYS drivers license, he was under 21, and therefore was able to have a parent go with him to DMV and sign an affidavit that he lived with the parent (with proof of the parent’s residence). Had he been 22, he would have been screwed- he needed two documents from the following list :
Bank statement - he had this
Utility bill - nope
HS ID showing address with a report card issued within a year- nope. His high school ID didn’t have and address and he had already been out for more than a year. Even if they accepted a college ID, that didn’t have his address either.
US computer printed pay stub showing address issued within 120 days - he wasn’t working.
And the thing is, they now accept printed electronic versions of documents - but how accurate the addresses on those documents are is open to question. My daughter recently moved from NY to NJ- but it would have been very easy for her to forget to change the address on her bank account. She gets her statements, etc online. Same for cell phone bills etc. The only bills that really show any connection to an address are those that involve service to a particular address- internet, cable, electric, gas, property tax. And there are still issues with those. First, they only show a connection, not residence - if I own a building with three apartments , I might get the gas bill for the entire building sent to me at the street level store I run *. Second, it’s not terribly uncommon here for someone to not have any of those bills in their name - my son rented an apartment with three other people ( 4 bedrooms). Utilities were included in the rent, so the only person with a qualifying bill was the one who got billed for the internet service.
TBH my library did a better job of verifying my residence- although they wanted to see my license , they mailed me a postcard to come pick up my library card. At least they knew I could still get mail at the address I gave them.
*It’s not uncommon here for the store owner to own the entire building.
I quit flying a few years after 9/11 brought all the security changes.
I decided it wasn’t worth getting too the airport 2 hours early and going through the TSA circus. Bastards took my grandfather’s pocket knife that I had carried for 20 years.
Most of my trips are less than 500 miles. I can drive that in under 8 1/2 hours. Don’t need a plane and all the bureaucratic hassle at an airport.
And making people re-verify their identity and citizenship isn’t necessarily an easy thing either. Not everyone has easy access to things like birth certificates and (for people who changed their names) marriage certificates, especially elderly people. This article is about voter ID, but some of the same challenges apply here too.
Those inconveniences (marriage certificate, birth certificate, etc) are the same for a passport. I thought we were complaining about needing to show proof of address? You almost had me convinced that this was the real argument. Now you’re saying that we shouldn’t require people to prove who they are at all. That seems like the bare minimum requirement for issuing identification–verifying identity.
If you want to use your driver’s license as a Federal ID card, then you need to establish who you are, under the same scrutiny as a passport requires.
If you don’t want to use it in that manner, then you don’t need to get the RealID. Just tell your state you don’t want a RealID and get the license without the star. But don’t complain that the federal government doesn’t accept it.