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day of the dalek [soylentnews.org] writes:

The Real ID Act [wikipedia.org] 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 [nyclu.org]:

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 [usatoday.com] 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 [whitehouse.gov], 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 [nytimes.com], which would include a national citizen database. Recent reporting describes a database with wide-ranging information about every American that is generally private [yahoo.com]:

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.com] (MSNBC)
• What is Palantir? The secretive tech company behind Trump's data collection efforts [mashable.com] (Mashable)
• Former Palantir workers condemn company's work with Trump administration [npr.org] (NPR)
• Palantir filed to go public. The firm's unethical technology should horrify us [theguardian.com] (The Guardian)
• The Gleeful Profiteers of Trump’s Police State [motherjones.com] (Mother Jones)
• Donald Trump's Reported Database Move Sparks Alarm: 'Dystopian' [newsweek.com] (Newsweek)

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