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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Group Says Real ID Could Be Problem for Privacy

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Monday, October 26, 2009   

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Your driver's license and a host of other personal information could end up in a national database, and on file at the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, PennDOT, under a federal program that could take effect in the state as early as January 1. The federal Real ID Act has been in place for several years, but its implementation has been delayed. It would use federal standards to make a driver's license an accepted form of ID to board planes and to enter federal buildings and sensitive installations such as nuclear power plants.

Andrew Hoover with the Pennsylvania ACLU warns of possible dangers.

"Now, if you have a security breach with this database, with this national database, anywhere in the country, people in Pennsylvania are going to have their driver's license information vulnerable to theft."

Hoover says Real ID also means PennDOT will want more of your personal information.

"Birth certificate, Social Security card, a utility bill; Penn DOT has to store all of that on-site. That's a major problem as well, because now your important documents are stored at PennDOT."

Hoover says also that the financial cost of Real ID is substantial.

"PennDOT has estimated that Real ID will cost 120 million dollars to implement and 40 to 50 million dollars per year to maintain, and Congress has shown no appetite to fund Real ID."

More than a dozen states have opted out of Real ID, and there are bills in the Pennsylvania House and
Senate to do the same. There is a revised measure under consideration in the U.S. Senate called PASS ID,
which would remove the national database, but critics say it still has privacy and constitutional issues and
doesn't include a federal funding mechanism.






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