Update: See my follow-up, covering the actual text leading to these suggestions. It's not quite as bad as suggested. It still ain't great.

If the following is actually correct, the Department of Homeland Security is even more worthless than I could have imagined.

UnRealID.com:

The Department of Homeland Security has finished their proposed regulations for implementing the Real ID Act and has sent them to the Office of Management and Budget for approval.  The publication of DHS's REAL ID regulations will follow shortly.  The compliance guidelines are almost one year overdue.

According to a still-secret several hundred-page dossier sent last week by DHS to the Office of Management and Budget, DHS considered three ways to implement the REAL ID Act:

Plan A: Order the individual states to find a way of communicating data to one another.  This idea was given short shrift by DHS, who dismissed it out of hand.
Plan B: Have DHS build a centralized database for the states to query before issuing REAL ID-compliant drivers licenses.  This idea was also rejected.
Plan C: Have a private data aggregator act as the central database.  This is the plan advocated by DHS.  The plan calls for the outsourcing of all drivers license and ID card checks to a private corporation, who would then charge the states for each check performed.  DHS head Michael Chertoff personally ordered this option to be chosen, according to a senior administration source.

One would hope that this would be the final nail in the Real ID coffin, and this would surely bring about swift introduction of the Akaka-Sununu Identification Security Enhancement Act of 2006.

Given the poor data protection histories of the commercial data aggregators, not to mention their incredibly poor histories of data matching, the very idea of them being called upon to manage aggregation of all of the drivers databases sounds more like a cruel joke. There may be more interesting issues.

To begin with, the Real ID Act doesn't call for a large database of driver's license data. In order to issue Real ID-compliant driver's licenses, states must:

(12) Provide electronic access to all other States to
information contained in the motor vehicle database of the
State.
(13) Maintain a State motor vehicle database that contains,
at a minimum--
(A) all data fields printed on drivers' licenses and
identification cards issued by the State; and
(B) motor vehicle drivers' histories, including
motor vehicle violations, suspensions, and points on
licenses.

Driver's license database information is commercial information owned by the states. This is clear from Reno v. Condon:

The motor vehicle information which the States have historically sold is used by insurers, manufacturers, direct marketers, and others engaged in interstate commerce to contact drivers with customized solicitations. The information is also used in the stream of interstate commerce by various public and private entities for matters related to interstate motoring. Because drivers’ information is, in this context, an article of commerce, its sale or release into the interstate stream of business is sufficient to support congressional regulation.

There were already some questions hanging around (most dismissed by commentators) about the Constitutionality of allowing the federal government to require states to grant other states access to their own commercial items without compensation in order to comply with the Real ID Act. Permitting commercial data aggregators to take possession or ownership of that state property without compensation is somewhat more egregious. As things now, those aggregators would be forced to purchase that information from the states; at least in that instance, the coffers of the states are gaining something to help cover the maintenance of that data. Under this plan, it would seem plausible (especially if the aggregators "accidentally" released the information into the public domain) that the states would simply be forced to give it away. This may raise greater Constitutional questions about those portions of the Real ID Act.

It makes the security aspect even worse.

It likely removes the (feckless) Privacy Act and the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act from the mix.

In short, I'm currently even a bit skeptical that even the inept Department of Homeland Security could proffer a suggestion as ludicrous as this one; I can't wait to see the actual proposed regulations to find out if it's true.

First of all.. I didn't know that if I posted to the blog it would show up ON THE FRONT PAGE OF HAVERKAMP.COM! I thought I had some seperate sub-url page. I don't intend to continue to muss up the neatness of your logically reasoned posts with my gibberish.

As for this current post... Gah! Plan C makes me want to hurl. (Plan C: Have a private data aggregator act as the central database.) Unbelieveable yet entirely consistent with what I've come to expect from This Administration.