The ACSBlog tells us that the REAL ID Act of 2005, which establishes a national database of personal data based on state drivers license and ID records, could put domestic violence victims in harm's way. According to Melissa Ngo of the Electronic Privacy Information Center's (EPIC), REAL ID "would create a national database with the personal data of 245 million license and state ID cardholders, yet there is still no plan for adequate privacy and security safeguards."
(UPDATE: I blogged about this two years ago... and the legislation is just as bad as it ever was. --Ann)
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Gah!
What a bad, bad idea.
In this day and age, I don't understand how a program like that starts to get traction without privacy and security concerns being pretty much one of the first areas for discussion. Information storage, access, and manipulation are such tremendously important issues, and it blows my mind that someone out there is thinking "Hey, I've got a great idea- lets gather all of this personal data together in one place without any efforts to safeguard privacy concerns and without any thought for people with confidentiality concerns!"
I just want to say that posts like this are why I love Feministing. I would have been opposed to this kind of thing anyway on the basis of privacy violations, but the intersection between those violations and the potential harm to be done to victims of domestic violence never occurred to me, and I'm very grateful that you pointed it out.
At the great risk of revealing that I am actually a Luddite in (err mixing my metaphors I know) the proverbial sheep's clothing, I can manage to link to neither's the EPIC pdf. nor yours. Any chance of getting a copy sent to agentoso12@yahoo.com? I will then forward it to my old coworkers in the L.A. City Attorney D.V. Unit. This seems extremely serious.
Thanks for pointing this out. It not only threatening to women who are involved in domestic violence situations, but I have to say women and men in general. One of my exs (who btw could be put in jail for statutory rape) recently got my information and I have been extremely disturbed by that. I'm an open person when it comes to giving my information out. But I don't like that someone can just search my name or look in a credit card database and literally find out everything about me using only my name and area, and that they can then use that information to intimidate me. Putting such information in a national database is a scary thought.