from the if-you're-not-doing-anything-wrong-you-have-nothing-to-fear dept.
The Real ID Act was passed in 2005 on the grounds that it was necessary for access control of sensitive facilities like nuclear power plants and the security of airline flights. The law imposed standards for state- and territory-issued ID cards in the United States, but was widely criticized as an attempt to create a national ID card and would be harmful to privacy. These concerns are explained well in a 2007 article from the New York Civil Liberties Union:
Real ID threatens privacy in two ways. First, it consolidates Americans' personal information into a network of interlinking databases accessible to the federal government and bureaucrats throughout the 50 states and U.S. territories. This national mega-database would invite government snooping and be a goldmine for identity thieves. Second, it mandates that all driver's licenses and ID cards have an unencrypted "machine-readable zone" that would contain personal information on Americans that could be easily "skimmed" by anybody with a barcode reader.
These concerns are based on what happens when criminals access the data, but also how consolidating data from many government agencies into a central database makes it easier for bad actors within the government to target Americans and violate their civil liberties. These concerns led to a 20 year delay in enforcing Real ID standards nationally, and as a USA Today article from 2025 warns, once Americans' data is stored on a central repository for one purpose, mission creep is likely. If the centralized database is used to make student loan applications and income tax processing more efficient, what's to stop law enforcement from accessing it to identify potential criminals? Over the past two decades, criticism of the Real ID Act has come from across the political spectrum, with many people and organizations on both the left and right decrying it as a serious threat to privacy and civil liberties.
Much of these concerns have never been realized about the Real ID Act, but they are renewed with Executive Order #14143, signed by Donald Trump on March 20, 2025. This directs for the sharing of government data between agencies except when it is classified for national security purposes. The executive order does not include any provisions to protect the privacy of individuals.
Although Trump has not commented on how this data sharing will be achieved, the Trump Administration has hired a company called Palantir to create a central registry of data, which would include a national citizen database. Recent reporting describes a database with wide-ranging information about every American that is generally private:
Foundry's capabilities in data organization and analysis could potentially enable the merging of information from various agencies, thereby creating detailed profiles of American citizens. The Trump administration has attempted to access extensive citizen data from government databases, including bank details, student debt, medical claims, and disability status.
Palantir does not gather data on their own, but they do provide tools to analyze large repositories of data, make inferences about the data, and provide easy-to-use reports. There are serious concerns about the lack of transparency about what data is being integrated into this repository, how it will be used, the potential for tracking people in various segments of the population such as immigrants, and the ability to use this data to target and harass political opponents. Concerns about how Trump's national citizen database will be used echo fears raised from across the political spectrum about the Real ID Act, except that they are apparently now quite close to becoming reality.
Additional reading:
- Trump appears to be building an unprecedented spy machine that could track Americans (MSNBC)
- What is Palantir? The secretive tech company behind Trump's data collection efforts (Mashable)
- Former Palantir workers condemn company's work with Trump administration (NPR)
- Palantir filed to go public. The firm's unethical technology should horrify us (The Guardian)
- The Gleeful Profiteers of Trump's Police State (Mother Jones)
- Donald Trump's Reported Database Move Sparks Alarm: 'Dystopian' (Newsweek)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05, @06:52PM
good - fuck this shit up.
(Score: 1, Troll) by DadaDoofy on Thursday June 05, @07:48PM (8 children)
First of all, Real IDs are issued by individual states, not the federal government. The data is kept by each individual state, just like regular driver's license data has been over a century.
Secondly, the executive order cited in TFS concerns the sharing of data between agencies of the federal government. Nowhere does it compel, or even mention, sharing of state data.
From https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/real-id-myths-facts-2/ [centerforsecuritypolicy.org]
"Myth: REAL ID creates a national database of personal information
Fact: REAL ID requires that authorized DMV officials have the capability to verify that an applicant holds only one valid REAL ID. REAL ID does not grant the Federal Government or law enforcement greater access to DMV data, nor does it create a national database.
States will continue to manage and operate databases for driver’s license and identification card issuance.
REAL ID does not create a national database or require additional personal information on your driver’s license than is already required by most states. It simply verifies the documents an applicant presents at the DMV to confirm the individual’s identity and ensure that each individual has only one valid REAL ID.
Personally identifiable information, beyond the minimum information necessary to appropriately route verification queries, will not be stored."
(Score: 3, Informative) by epitaxial on Thursday June 05, @08:22PM (5 children)
You should read this. https://archive.is/xYH9f [archive.is]
(Score: 2, Troll) by DadaDoofy on Thursday June 05, @11:21PM (2 children)
"314 Things It 'Might' Know About You"
Might? You mean like I "might" be the object of Taylor Swift's desire?
Why would the government even bother? If they need that data, they'd subpoena it from Google/Amazon.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday June 06, @12:32AM
Then we'd know they did and what they wanted.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 4, Informative) by day of the dalek on Friday June 06, @04:08AM
Your initial failure here is accepting that the government needs all the data they're demanding.
Your comment about issuing a subpoena to Amazon or Google is naive. The mechanism you describe requires judicial oversight. In a great many cases, the government simply issues a national security letter [eff.org] to demand information, with no judicial oversight at all.
Or you get a really intrusive survey [census.gov] from the Census Bureau, saying that the law requires you to respond and share the data they demand. Now, the Census Bureau is required by law to anonymize data, and the law says the data can't be used for any purpose other than the Census (e.g., you can't be prosecuted or denied benefits). But this requires the executive branch to follow the law and proper judicial oversight. In principle, answering intrusive Census questions should be safe, but I still don't like giving that data to the government, nor do I really trust the privacy of my data in practice.
When the government has to ask for the data it needs with a mechanism like a warrant, or agencies have to ask other agencies to share specific data they need, it is inefficient. But that inefficiency protects your liberties. For example, if you're asking the government to discharge your student loan debt because you have a permanent disability that will prevent you from repaying it, the government does need to know if you actually have that disability. Or if you're in an income-driven repayment plan, the government does need to know your income, and that probably means the Department of Education needs to get that information from the IRS. That's well and good, but that type of information doesn't need to be centralized in a single database for all citizens. Government can function just fine by sharing the data on an as-is basis, even if it makes things a bit less efficient. The increased efficiency opens up a great deal of possibilities for abuse, however.
The government collects a huge amount of data that it simply doesn't need, like its mass surveillance of people with no probable cause. It shouldn't have access to the data except when it can clearly show that it actually does need a specific piece of data, which is what happens when they show probable cause and get a warrant. And the government doesn't need to be sharing vast amounts of data between agencies, because that allows a lot more potential abuse by people who can access the centralized database. Share the data on an as-needed basis, meaning that once agency shows that it needs data about a person from another agency, and then that specific piece of data gets shared.
Sure, it's inefficient, but there's also a lot less opportunity for authoritarian behavior. And authoritarian behavior should be opposed regardless of whoever is doing it.
Currently living rent free in aristarchus' head. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 06, @04:07AM (1 child)
The commspace is full of influencers these days, as not only are mass-communication channels available to everyone...for free, no less ... formerly trusted entities have been claiming truth, yet offering no verification.
Vax Shots. Do they work? Or are they just a tool made up by the pharma industry to make us dependent on them. It was so telling to me how the government people backed up big pharma with all sorts of enforced law to compel people to accept an injection of an experimental substance that deliberately alters our genome? We saw what Thalidomide did, and some of us remember it.
I also remember how people entrusted with affairs of the same government passing legislation without reading it, " we have to pass it to find out what's in it."
Is that the mindset I trust with my well being? Do I trust those who are practicing doctors, embalmers, or those who have governmental titles, are referred to as "the Honorable" ( which is a huge rip-off right there )?
What is this about the global elite, the financial owners of damn near everything, and the "depopulation agenda" ? Any truth to it?
I don't put anything past them, but if evidence of what leadership types have done in the past is tip for what they are apt to do, well, I'm gonna look twice.
They've already tried to pull this COVID gag on me, using what used to be people of trusted decorum, but these people of so-called honor have defiled their positions.
Now, it's Palantir, and being discussed how the name originated from tales of people seeking power and corruption of those using them.
Have you seen the latest go-'round of vax named? mNexSpike? You know how medical people trace back to Latin. Look it up for yourself! What does "nex" in Latin translate to in English?
What is this? The first try didn't work?
I don't know! As Rod Serling would say as he introduced a Twilight Zone episode, what I am posting is "Submitted For Your Approval".
How this post is moderated should reveal a lot about censorship; whether another take on a hotly-disputed topic should be allowed to be examined.
I will state again, as I am posting this: I do not know the answer, but I will bring things I think deserve consideration to others, relying on other's collective wisdom, not the media control of a few interested parties, to get to the truth.
I will post AC, as I do not want my reputation on this forum to influence any comments, whether it be praise or derision. I consider both valid, as do not trust myself either, but remain open to additional evidence.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 06, @02:41PM
Dude! Dumbass sometimes just isn't sufficient to describe you. Clearly you're the type that spews shite that even you don't buy. If this is what helps you survive your miserable existence, we'll you just go ahead you poor thing.
(Score: 5, Informative) by day of the dalek on Friday June 06, @02:56AM (1 child)
I can't help but notice that you're trying to discredit concerns about an authoritarian government under the Trump Administration as "disinformation". The question is whether there's actually disinformation in the summary.
Regarding the Real ID Act, the summary I wrote clearly mentions that the IDs are issued by the states. The NYCLU article mentions a network of interlinking databases, which refers to the data being held by the states but shared. Section 202 of the Real ID Act [dhs.gov] mandates:
Federal access to the state databases is a bit more implicit in the law, but it does frequently refer to federal use of the Real ID-compliant ID cards. Regardless, this was cited as an example of what people feared would happen with the Real ID act functioning as a de facto national ID card. The NYCLU article was accurately cited as an example of these fears, though the summary explicitly says: "much of these concerns have never been realized about the Real ID Act".
Regarding the data that would be shared as part of the executive order, this was specifically quoted as being "extensive citizen data from government databases, including bank details, student debt, medical claims, and disability status". This does not mention state data, only that a large amount of data would be consolidated, going far beyond what is collected as part of the Real Act:
The relevant state databases do not contain things like bank account information, student loan debt, and medical information. Some of that would be consolidated into a single database based on the Trump Administration's plans. Although I compared it to the privacy concerns with the Real ID Act, the amount and type of data that would be consolidated in Trump's database is actually far more of a threat to privacy.
As for labeling privacy concerns as "disinformation", history has shown that the federal government has often been collecting far more data about citizens than they were willing to acknowledge. Or have you forgotten about Edward Snowden's disclosures about the NSA's activities? Measures initially implemented for the purpose of stopping terrorism, such as those in the Patriot Act, were subsequently used for other purposes like fraud and drug crimes [aclu-wa.org]. Or shall we ignore that mission creep has been a major problem in the past?
Roughly six months ago, you wrote this [soylentnews.org], suggesting that surveillance and data collection under the Biden Administration would be used to target political opponents and other people whom the administration disliked. I see you routinely criticizing Democrats for authoritarian behavior, and rightly so. When they do authoritarian stuff like conducting mass surveillance, they should be opposed. But then you make excuses when the Trump administration also behaves an authoritarian manner. If you don't want an authoritarian government, then you need to condemn authoritarian behavior regardless of who is doing it. Why do you condemn one side while giving the other an absolute free pass? If you don't want an authoritarian government, then you must oppose authoritarian behavior wherever you encounter it, whether it's from Biden, Trump, or anyone else in government.
Looking over my summary, I might have clarified or reorganized things if I edited it again today, but I resent you labeling it as disinformation. That's not even remotely accurate. But it's the double standard about authoritarian behavior that earns you a troll mod. If you're genuinely opposed to authoritarian government, and I hope you are, then you'll need to start criticizing Trump as well. That's because he's running the executive branch, and he's the person who wields a lot of control over whether we actually get an authoritarian government.
Currently living rent free in aristarchus' head. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday June 06, @10:44AM
Thank you for your careful and insightful summary.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pTamok on Thursday June 05, @07:52PM (10 children)
And this is why, ladies and gentlemen, governments should never collect more than the absolute minimum necessary information on the population - because you never know what a future government might do with it.
What the absolute minimum necessary is, is, of course, open to debate.
The Dutch government, before the invasion by the Germans in World War 2, had collected information on the religion of the inhabitants. It was not anonymised. It was repurposed by the German authorities under occupation.
Is the status of someone being a registered member of the Democratic Party or Republican party recorded anywhere? Membership of any political party other than one particular one was made illegal in Germany in 1933. Some members of one party that had got 16.9% of the vote in the 1932 German elections were arrested and were the first to be placed in the first concentration camp built in Germany: Dachau. By the end of 1933, By the end of 1933, roughly 75,000 members of that party were in concentration camps.
In addition, trade union leaders were arrested and placed in the camps.
The GDPR has the following general prohibition (Article 9):
There are, obviously, exclusions from that prohibition, but the point is that it is recognised that these are special categories of data, to be handled differently. The GDPR is not perfect, but kind of marks out the playing field.
Governments obviously need data to govern: but there should be stringent safeguards to prevent misuse of that data.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday June 05, @08:30PM (8 children)
Yes, this! That argument that "you don't need privacy if you've done nothing wrong" is incorrect. When the definition of "wrong" can be changed arbitrarily, a whole bunch of innocent people can suddenly be in trouble.
You also need privacy when you are vulnerable. You don't want enemies to know when you are ill, away from home, asleep, on the can, etc.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05, @08:54PM
Current fortune cookie confirms:
> Give thought to your reputation. Consider changing name and moving to a new town.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 05, @08:55PM
The people who are accepting this are operating on the premise of: "These are the good guys, we can trust them."
We all know what Zuckman says about people who trust him... https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zuckerberg-called-people-who-handed-over-their-data-dumb-f/ [esquire.com]
Even 80-100 years ago, the line "It's O.K. we're with the government, you can trust us" was a joke to most people.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SpockLogic on Thursday June 05, @09:40PM (5 children)
The topic title "The Trump Administration's Plan for National Citizen Database is a Massive Threat to Civil Liberties" can be easily be shortened to :-
The Trump Administration is a Massive Threat to Civil Liberties
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 05, @10:03PM (1 child)
While I agree, I also believe it's important to keep in mind that there's a sizeable minority of the US population who believes that everyone who came before Trump + Biden were just as much of a threat to their quality of life.
It's not rational, it's not defensible, it's what they believe, and they're pretty much immune to logic.
Vance recently made a statement that "everyone who ran this country before us were MORONS!" and then he went on to rant about how brittle our supply chains are and how their predecessors did nothing but make the situation worse. And, of course, now that they have gone and wrecked major portions of the economy by disrupting those supply chains (lessons learned from the COVID response, no doubt) they're demonstrating, to their followers, just how terrible all of those guys were and how it's up to them to fix the situation by making a bunch more (painful) changes. The scary part is that I can easily imagine how the MAGA base is going to lap this up like cream and double down on "their team" come next election, no matter how screwed up the economy becomes right before their eyes - they'll feel that all this is necessary to "fix what was broken..." nevermind that it wasn't broken before their guys got control, nevermind that their guys aren't going to be making anything more stable or productive for them...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 06, @11:06AM
Reactions to the above comment have been, predictably, mixed. For the detractors, let me state the: obvious?
Globalization / international interdependence is a key structural economic difference between pre and post WWII socio-economic structures.
While the world has been less than perfect for my post-Vietnam War lifetime, I prefer it tremendously to the lives of my grandparents: teenagers during the great depression, draftees into WWII.
There was nothing great about all-out war among the top-tier military powers of the 1910s and 1940s - other than the fact that they were, at the time, incapable of total annihilation of civilization as we know it.
Globalization, and so-called "brittle" supply chains - which have so far only been "broken" during Trump administrations - are a major factor in maintaining global military restraint.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Touché) by Tokolosh on Friday June 06, @03:51AM (2 children)
Should be shortened to:
The Administration is a Massive Threat to Civil Liberties
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pTamok on Friday June 06, @06:55AM (1 child)
Naw, get it correct:
The Trump Administration is a Massive Threat
Properly run administrations are not a threat. As DOGE found out, the government was a great deal more efficient than they first thought.
Of course, one can discuss what 'properly run' means. Government (in general) is not the enemy: it protects the 'average person administered' from chaos. A particular government, on the other hand, can be worse (or better) than others, but lack of government is not the nirvana/utopia that many seem to assume it is*. As someone (I don't know who) wrote: taxes are the price of civilisation.
*What would you do different to Somalia, South Sudan, or Haiti that does not involve having 'more government' in some shape or form?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 06, @11:46AM
>As DOGE found out, the government was a great deal more efficient than they first thought.
I find it hard to believe that anybody over the age of 35 with two functioning brain cells thought that the GAO is so ineffective that a quick hack by a handful of computer wizzes was going to expose the kinds of fraud, corruption and waste in the US government that the IRS allows to rage in the private businesses of the voters (in the form of tax cheats, etc.)
I don't feel the slightest bit tin-foil hatty when I say: it was a pretext for a fishing expedition, trawling for leverage / kompromat to advance the agenda through the rest of the term.
It is somewhat reassuring to see the Musk-Trump alliance melt down, as predicted early on. Too bad that didn't happen sooner, and more widespread throughout the cabinet.
>*What would you do different to Somalia, South Sudan, or Haiti that does not involve having 'more government' in some shape or form?
You might spin it that you would replace the current "government" of those places with a smaller, lighter touch, more democratic organization that suppresses warlords and organized crime. Purpose of the democratic component? To domestically define: "what is crime, and how will it be suppressed?"
What you need to recognize about places like Haiti is that organizations like the Tonton Macoute [wikipedia.org] and FRAPH are de-facto governments, and in the 1980s /1990s they operated not only inside Haiti, but also on Haitians living outside Haiti in places like Miami and New York - terrorizing / abusing them wherever they were.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Tokolosh on Friday June 06, @03:46AM
"Once you've built the big machinery of political power, remember you won't always be the one to run it."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday June 05, @10:34PM (1 child)
It's a parallel construction thing.
We've already got this, have had it for a very long time, and they're NOT going to get rid of the old system no matter how much squealing there is about the new system.
Now that there's a public version of it, it'll magically be implemented in like two weeks, because this is not their first rodeo.
You see this overall gameplan sometimes when other technology gets declassified. Differential cryptanalysis was kind of like that. The secret version existed in the 70s, the public version made ridiculous fast progress in the 80s, in the 90s they admitted they had the 70s version all along.
"We totally pinky swear we never did a SQL join on those tables" All that's changing is a very high level politician has made it politically correct or possible to discuss or complain about the SQL JOIN statement that's been used for just about forever. At the low levels nothing is going to change, its not like Trump's announcement made MySQL invent the JOIN statement LOL.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 06, @12:55PM
Thank you, came here to write something similar. I'll add: Lexis-Nexis has been around for much longer than common use of the Internet, but it seems most people haven't been paying attention.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday June 06, @02:40AM
The risk of the government using software to generate a detailed profile of every person in America was a known problem since at least the 1990's, when the Clinton administration set up a system of secret wiretaps on specific people's Internet activities.
In 2001, it escalated with the Patriot Act which included among other things on the FBI's dream checklist the ability to monitor citizens' activity first and get a warrant later if they felt it would be useful. And of course if they didn't find anything incriminating, they were supposed to delete the information, but for some reason that part never worked properly ...
In 2003, this escalated further with a project called Total Information Awareness, which attempted to do exactly what was announced here: Compile a giant database of everybody in the world or at least the USA and as much as they could learn about what they were up to. Guilty or not. The nature of this project was made even more evident by putting convicted felon John Poindexter in charge of it. It was so bad that Congress got sick and tired of the bad press and defunded it, so the three-letter agencies just changed the name of it and moved it under different line items and kept going.
In 2006, we learned that AT&T had a space in their facilities known as Room 641A where the NSA was intercepting all communications that traveled along that segment of the Internet backbone, and there were good reasons to think similar intercept points at a bunch of other locations.
And ever since, we've occasionally gotten leaks about mass data collection by the FBI and NSA, and also hints of that data being used on a regular basis for purposes not at all related to law enforcement (e.g. agents using this information to spy on their ex's). Of course, anyone who leaks is violating the laws about classification, because the rules are, in effect, that the government can watch us but we can't watch them.
More recently, a giant data center was built near Salt Lake City that a lot of watchdogs suspect is intended to store, among other things, the primary copies of all the data they are putting into this database. At this point, all that's changing is the inputs and processing algorithms.
So while the public admission that they're now going to use whatever Palantir has for this purpose is new, what's not new at all is the goal. This level of surveillance has been the wet dream of authoritarians since at least World War II. And since genuine certified Nazis were recruited into the United States intel agencies in 1945 and helped form their practices, that influence has always been there, all the way through J Edgar Hoover to modern times.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 06, @07:00AM
... "The Trump is a Massive Threat to Civil Liberties"
--
You have the right to remain dead.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Sunday June 08, @06:37AM
They talk like these "bad actors" were a bug instead of a feature.
Why do you think they're doing this? Because they WANT to be able to violate your liberties! The US is turning authoritarian, and this is another step along that walkway.
Don't delude yourself by thinking that if you just brought it to the attention of the people involved that they'd say "ooh, sorry, I never knew! Can't have violations of civil liberties!"
The authoritarianism is the POINT.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti