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Maine’s role in postponing a National ID card discussed

Maine Civil Liberties Union president addresses students about the RealID act and its implications on a national level

By Amanda MacCabe

Posted on Nov. 05, 2007, at 12:00 a.m.

The President of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, Shenna Bellows, spoke on campus Thursday about what she called the growing surveillance society in the United States.

“Many of the things that are happening in isolation may not be shocking on an individual level, but when you start looking at the pattern of changes . one begins to get very alarmed,” Bellows said. She emphasized that it is important to review the Fourth Amendment, which is held as the cornerstone of Americans’ right to privacy, and passed wallet sized copies of the Bill of Rights to the audience.

Maine has led the nation to deter the RealID, a national identification card. The implementation of the RealID bill was postponed in March of this year until 2009. The RealID bill was passed attached to a military funding bill, meaning it wasn’t debated on the floor, said Bellows. She went on to say that in response, Maine passed a statute making it illegal for the secretary for state to implement the RealID.

“There is going to be a clash between federal law and state law,” Bellows said, “I’m optimistic about the outcome. I don’t think the Feds have a leg to stand on in this one.” Since Maine’s decision, 17 other states have opted out of the RealID plan.

“The idea that Google has the capacity . to be monitoring words in your e-mail messages and then tailoring the advertising to that, it’s not so far fetched to imagine other scenarios.” Bellows went on to describe the capability of scanners in public settings that may be able to read RFID chips in passports and then send unwanted mail and advertisements to the address scanned based on where the individual has been. These chips are designed to store the same personal information printed in the passport, plus a digital photograph that can be used for facial recognition. Passports with RFID chips are currently being issued by the State Department and began in August 2006.

“Anyone with a handheld scanner can read the information that is embedded in these chips,” Bellows said. The State Department has taken steps to prevent the information from being “skimmed” in this way, including a system similar to a PIN on a debit or credit card and a shielding material on the front cover that further inhibits the transferal of information from a distance.

She said there was an “Orwellian view of society that these possibilities seem perhaps paranoid or purely hypothetical until individuals start expressing how they’re being harmed,” and until individuals come forward, things won’t change.

Bellows addressed six trends that go hand-in-hand to create the growing surveillance society in the United States. She noted rapidly changing technology, the weakening of federal privacy laws, the war on terror, the judicial system narrowing the interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, overreach of the current administration and corporation’s drive for profit in new surveillance technologies as part of these trends.

These changes have led to National Security Agency programs of secret warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, she said. A current bill in Congress would give authority for government officials to monitor phone calls with a “blanket warrant” which does not specify who is being monitored and when, where or why they are being targeted. It also provides immunity to telecommunications companies who participate in forwarding information about consumers to the government from any wrongdoing. This would void a current lawsuit being battled in California that involved Verizon and their alleged role in assisting the NSA by providing the Defense Department with phone record information from Maine residents.

Verizon, which may be purchased by a company called FairPoint, said that if the sale goes through, it cannot be held responsible for any privacy violations. The MCLU has urged the Maine Public Utilities Commission to make privacy protections a condition of the sale in the wake of Verizon’s alleged privacy violations.

“We need strengthening of our privacy laws. We need to be talking to members of Congress,” Bellows said.

“When the National Security Agency surveillance program was made public, the Bush administration actually argued that the surveillance wasn’t covered by the Fourth Amendment because it wasn’t human beings, it was computers,” Bellows said. “They were arguing that until it is actually an individual person who is reviewing that data, that’s when they needed to get the warrant.”

“I’m not going to downplay how serious we think the threat to privacy is,” Bellows said. “We’re really at a decision point.”

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.