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more on Read it and prepare to stand on LONG LONG lines -- Senate Backs Measure to Tighten ID Requirements
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 12 May 2005 04:40:19 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: John Levine <johnl () iecc com> Date: May 11, 2005 8:35:56 PM EDT To: Ari Ollikainen <Ari () OLTECO com> Cc: dave () farber netSubject: Re: [IP] more on Read it and prepare to stand on LONG LONG lines -- Senate Backs Measure to Tighten ID Requirements
As an exercise in critical thinking, I suggest you attempt to discover ANY terminology from the REAL-ID act (HR.418) which equates to "authentic copy of their birth certificate" for driver's license renewal [ see 202(c) et al]:
Well, let's take a look:
(1) IN GENERAL- To meet the requirements of this section, a State shall require, at a minimum, presentation and verification of the following information before issuing a driver's license or identification card to a person:
(B) Documentation showing the person's date of birth.
I see that it says "presentation and verification of the following information before issuing a driver's license." The important word is verification. Birth certificates come in a zillion different forms and styles. I have the one that the City of New York gave my parents when I was born 51 years ago. It's a fragile white-on-black photostat of a page in a book, and if you look carefully you can still see the impression of a seal. My mother's is a letter from the Town of Bethel VT starting "Dear Cousin Ginny, According to the records here in the Town of Bethel, you were born ..." A friend of mine who was born in Morocco while his father was working for an engineering firm has a birth certificate entirely in French. (He's lucky it's not in Arabic.) I don't know what verification is supposed to mean, nor, I suspect, does anyone else, but that's clearly what the authentic copy of a birth certificate refers to. It is also obvious that no DMV clerk can possibly know what all of the valid birth certficates look like, so they will spend endless hours on the phone calling the issuing departments to see whether the piece of paper they are looking at corresponds to an original. Maybe if you have a passport, that also counts as documentation of date of birth, but now how are they supposed to verify the passport? Is it enough to look at it and know what a passport is supposed to look like? Do they have to call the State Department, give them the passport number, and describe the person in the picture? I feel fortunate that my driver's license isn't up for renewal until 2012, because I figure that it's unlikely to take more than about three months after this stupid law goes into effect in 2007 for the screaming from the voters to get loud enough that it'll be repealed. Regards,John Levine, johnl () iecc com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly. ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- more on Read it and prepare to stand on LONG LONG lines -- Senate Backs Measure to Tighten ID Requirements David Farber (May 12)