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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: 2, Troll) by DadaDoofy on Thursday June 05 2025, @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 2025, @12:32AM
Then we'd know they did and what they wanted.
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(Score: 4, Informative) by day of the dalek on Friday June 06 2025, @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.