A major threat to your privacy is looming, and it could signal the beginning of a national ID system.

Later this year, the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles will undertake the massive job of scanning and archiving personal documents showing proof of age, identity and address.

These documents would include birth certificate, Social Security card, military records or any other official federal or state documents. In effect, a national online data base would be established. The Department of Homeland Security wants the system in place by 2018.

Listen to Walt Mack’s Commentary Here

Empowered by the Federal Real ID Act passed by Congress a decade ago, all 50 states are to establish and share a data base containing a digitized record of its citizens’ legal documents.  If you comply, you will receive a gold star on your driver’s license.

If you decline to provide the required documents, you will get a driver’s license stating in bold letters, “NOT FOR FEDERAL IDENTIFICATION.”  What that means is you will be turned away from boarding an aircraft, or entering a Federal facility.  A bar code will be affixed to each license so you might even be asked to swipe your card when cashing a check, picking up a prescription or entering a government building.  And all of these activities can be easily tracked within the data base.

Are you concerned? You should be.  Hackers, criminals and foreign powers like China would have a field day harvesting  personal data from millions of Americans.  Any governmental agency would have easy access to the data base as well. Is this the coming of George Orwell’s nightmarish 1984 with Big Brother watching?  It certainly sounds like it.

 

— Walt Mack