Cross-posted at Random Fate under “Letters from Europe“.

GRENOBLE, France – The Real ID Act was passed today by the United States Senate as an amendment of a spending bill on the war in Iraq.

While I am too much a cynic (in the Shaw definition of the term) to truly be surprised by this development, I am still disheartened.

I despise hyperbole when used in political discussions because it weakens arguments and causes a loss of credibility when the fine line between spicing up the writing is crossed into overindulgence, but it is difficult for me to overemphasize the effects that the Law of Unintended Consequences will wreak as a consequence of the enacting of this set of regulations will have.

There are two major problems with this act.

The first involves a clause that exempts decisions of the Secretary of Homeland Security from judicial review.

From the text of the Real ID Act:

(1) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive, and shall waive, all laws such Secretary, in such Secretary’s sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section.

(2) NO JUDICIAL REVIEW- Notwithstanding any other provision of law (statutory or nonstatutory), no court, administrative agency, or other entity shall have jurisdiction–

(A) to hear any cause or claim arising from any action undertaken, or any decision made, by the Secretary of Homeland Security pursuant to paragraph (1); or

(B) to order compensatory, declaratory, injunctive, equitable, or any other relief for damage alleged to arise from any such action or decision.

In other words, an appointed official, NOT an elected official, can make decisions that are exempt from judicial review.

The act appears to limit this exemption to decisions associated with “all laws such Secretary, in such Secretary’s sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section,” but I have seen more than once how passages that were written with the intent of limiting them to certain areas were interpreted more broadly because of poor writing in the law.

I suspect and fear that this will be the case in this instance as well, especially considering how the amendment/act was NOT debated in the Senate.

The second problem is related to the so-called “machine readable ID” requirement.

Ostensibly it is a requirement to discourage illegal immigration, but the effects will NOT be limited to immigrants.

Many true cynics like to say that we no longer have any privacy at all, so nothing new can be done to violate what we have already lost.

However, it has not all been linked together in a grand, government-run database, nor has our data ever been required to be in such an easily readable form.

I can see in the near future a requirement by any store or vendor to get a “read” of your ID to use a credit card or to write a check in order to “verify your identity”, and simultaneously they get easy access to your address, telephone number, Social Security number, and the other personal identifying characteristics that are required for the new ID.

Yes, they may have had access to all of this information before, but they had to at least PAY to either get the data or to have people transcribe this information into their database.

Now, no transcription is necessary, they just read the new, federal-mandated government-issued, machine-readable ID.

In other words, the United States government has just made it ridiculously easy for BOTH the government itself and any corporation to track every purchase you make that is not in cash, and for every other move you make that requires an ID.

And the requirement for a government issued ID that is easily readible will soon be ubiquitous in a vain effort to provide additional security.

Unfortunately, it has been proven repeatedly that ANY ID system can be defeated.

So, we are getting a pig in a poke, supposedly buying additional security that is an illusion with likely fatal consequences at the price of sacrificing our liberty of freedom of movement and privacy.

In other words, those who promote this bill as discouraging illegal immigration and improving “homeland security” are either fooling themselves, or they have an agenda that is darker than the one they are presenting.

I believe the answer is the former, but unfortunately the outcome will be to promote the darker agenda that is not their intention.

However, regardless of their intentions, the Law of Unintended Consequences will hold true and ride roughshod over them.

While of uncertain provenance, the saying that “the Road to Hell is paved with good intentions” became a truism in Western culture for a reason.

What exactly do you think that reason was?

I think I do not need to insult your intelligence by spelling it out, I suspect.

In the end, what is this thing we call Liberty that we claim to believe in, protect, and promote?

Around a hundred years ago, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a short story titled “A Case of Identity“.

In this story, a journalist had played a beggar in the center of the financial district in London at the turn of the 19th century to the 20th as a part of a story for a newspaper. He found the charade to be so lucrative relative to a real job that he kept up the facade for years, even after he married. His wife thought he had a job in “the City of London”, which is what the financial district is still called, until she saw him in a window when she was in that area on an errand.

He tried to hide his shame of bringing in his income by begging by maintaining his facade as an ill-appearing and ill-humored beggar, until Sherlock Holmes used his logic to peer through the deceit.

Today, that story would be impossible. We have to repeatedly prove our identity to officialdom.

Our system is supposedly built upon the premise of “innocent until proven guilty”.

However, we now have to prove, by showing our ID, that we are not on some list of terrorist or other “undesirables” with no probable cause, with no reason other than some secret government regulation that we are not allowed to see.

Now, very soon the ID we will have to show must contain BY LAW machine readable information regarding our address, our date of birth, our physical characteristics, our Social Security number, and other details.

In other words, we now have to prove our innocence because we are assumed guilty until we verify our identity.

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The world is turned upside-down.

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How long before we have to submit to this ID being read to write a check?

How long before we have to submit to this ID being read to use our credit cards?

How long before corporations take advantage of the ridiculously easy access to the information on this ID to build up a database of our purchasing habits and other preferences for “targeted advertising”?

How long before various government agencies take advantage of the databases built up by corporations and other government agencies to make a “profile” of everyone that they can run through an “expert system” to find “undesirables” that they can then put on “no-fly lists”, “watch lists”, or even prevent them from buying guns?

This is not hyperbole.

This is reasonable extrapolation.

I despise hyperbole.

I am very good at predicting trends.

I suspect that you see the same trends I do.

One of the odd perspectives I have gained by living in Europe is a view of how Americans both distrust and trust the government excessively.

It is difficult to explain, but I will try.

In Europe (France in particular, but in lesser degrees in other nations of the EU) there is a trust in the government and the system of social responsibility (which is NOT the same as what Americans label as “socialism”) that is far beyond what I believe could ever exist in the United States in the foreseeable future.

This trust is one that the government will ensure adequate health care and retirement benefits for all citizens.

Even in the heyday of the Roosevelt era, I cannot envision that trust existing in the majority of the citizens of the United States.

I have had extended discussions with many of my European colleagues (who are from France, Germany, and Belgium, among other nations) regarding the fundamental differences in philosophy between the United States and Europe, differences that arise out of history.

How can I describe these differences without this turning into a book?

In the latter part of the 18th century, the British colonies in America had a unique experience, they were from Europe, with the associated cultural heritage, but they were not a part of Europe.

The Law of Unintended Consequences took its toll, and the United Kingdom lost valuable colonies because it was unable to see how the value of treating the colonists as equal citizens over-rode the traditions of class and Empire.

A large number of books have been written on this theme, with innumerable words dedicated to showing the blindness of those in power in England at the time. I will not attempt to add to that total here, because if it is not self-evident to you, then my argument is pointless.

In Europe, however, democracy was gained in through a far more difficult path.

I have written before about how the American Revolution was essentially a conservative “revolution”, where those fighting the British were trying to preserve their tradition of local control of taxation and other forms of government.

The government in England at the time (it was not yet the “United Kingdom”) was based upon election by the elites of members of Parliament, along with a relatively powerful House of Lords that was determined by appointments by the Crown.

In other words, not a democracy as we know it.

The French Revolution of 1789 resulted in the dictatorship of Napoleon, although the French prefer to remember it as a glorious part of their history when they dominated Europe.

The rest of Europe, well, their memories are different, and not that far afield from what they recall of Hitler.

That is not the point, however.

Ultimately, democracy came to Europe (excluding the United Kingdom) because of the depredations of the Napoleonic Wars, the wars of Empire in the late 19th century, and the wars of the first half of the 20th century that we label World War I and World War II.

In other words, Europeans have a much more recent experience of non-democratic governance than we in the United States enjoy.

In addition, they did not have Founding Fathers with an inherent mistrust of a powerful centralized government that we had the benefit of having.

So, there is not the mistrust of government that exists in the United States.

That is why the dreaded “socialism”, which was demonized by large corporations in the United States because it might give workers “uppity ideas” regarding their rights, is not the anathema in Europe as it is in the US.

However, in Europe, the thought of a machine readable, government issued ID is anathema, and even in the UK it has been an issue of vigorous national debate.

In the United States, however, it is passed as an amendment to a spending bill apparently without a second thought to the consequences.

Is there any wonder that I would like to indulge in the hyperbole I despise?

Those who have actually read this far, I applaud you, but I have one more request.

Think about the consequences, and if you do not like those that arise in your mind, write your Senators and Congressmen.