Feds Revoke Citizenship at Border, Then Deny U.S. Nationality

“OBAMA: Stop Attacking Elderly U.S. Citizen Latinos in Texas”

"According to immigration attorney Jaime Diez, along the Rio Grande River in Texas, there are cases where Elderly Latinos have to relinquish their U.S. Citizenship because they cannot provide enough evidence to substantiate their birth on U.S. soil by either a hospital or a credible midwife."

Citizen, 96, refused ability to vote after showing birth certificate as ID

WUO: Dr. Orly Taitz filters Obama and America through E-verify

P.S.  No amount of identity will ever be enough.

And the Birthers may doubt your citizenship

A response to CNN reports, “CNN Birther Investigation: ‘No doubt’ President Obama was born in Hawaii.” 

By Sheila Dean 


What would life be like in America if a political group could simply doubt you out of your citizenship and subsequently, your rights? What would happen if they didn’t like: your race, your parents, your State of origin or who you were married to? If the Birthers were a smashing success, you could share President Obama’s fate.


Currently, anyone born in the United States is a citizen by right of the 14th Amendment. 

The Birther movement has exhibited relentless challenge to President Obama’s U.S. citizenship. The strategy of the Birther movement has been to displace the current United States President by annulling his birth records. A successful PR campaign has driven doubt about Obama's birth certificate into many Americans. The Birthers reject Obama’s current electronic birth record held by the State of Hawaii.   In a worst case scenario, if Obama’s citizenship was disproven, the Birther movement might call for an ex-officiated President to be expediently deported for being an "illegal alien immigrant".  We can not speculate where he would be sent, since he is an American. 

According to CNN, Obama’s birth documents pre-date the electronic records system in Hawaii.  Obama’s mother is also a US citizen, born in the Continental United States. This is still not good enough for Donald Trump and the Birthers he serves. 

Obama’s birth record contest mimics a nightmare trip to and from a Florida DMV window; where it seems no amount of identity proof will ever be enough.

The Florida DMV has become notorious for turning away women and the elderly from attaining drivers licenses or ID cards because they can’t substantiate “adequate” documentation. The State of Florida is adherent to Real ID requirements for very specific citizenship articles and identity documentation, as well as mountains of supplemental information as proof of residency.  Often proof of citizenship and marriage records pre-date acknowledgement by “updated” systems, if you have been around long enough.  Residency? Birth Certificate? Marriage Certificate? Soldier? At times this is not nearly enough for the State of Florida to give you a license to drive.

An American birth certificate is also a private identity document. Posting a copy online is not something most of us would do; yet the President has indulged the Birther community by doing so.  If the US President’s identity is compromised, stolen or misappropriated by common criminal identity thieves, the matter becomes an issue of national security.  The common risk remains.  If you repeatedly flash certain documentation enough, it will inevitably tempt identity thieves. There is risk to you through over-exposure or repeated sharing through insecure DMV databases in Real ID compliant states. 

In a best case scenario, you hope having a birth certificate and a social security card are enough to procure the gold standard for national-to-international passage, the US Passport. Surely, this would ensure your ability to sail through all inquiry into your legal identity.  However, right now, a birth certificate alone will not relieve you from the run on proof of private information to gain a passport.  The TSA and the US State Department have teamed up on an exhaustively intrusive questionnaire for passport applicants.  This may require you to prove the last 7 years of employment and status of circumcision if you are male.   

Not everyone who wants identity information deserves an answer.  It’s bizarrely disenchanting see the POTUS cave in to an incessant demand for birth certificate verification by a politically motivated group bent on his displacement.  Why would Obama go along with this type of juvenile ultimatum?  Birthers are the same type of  people who can’t be satisfied with enough evidence of ANY US citizenship- no matter how much or how often you prove it to them.

Americans aren’t required to agree, or even like, Obama’s policies or his politics. In fact, he is responsible for backing over his own civil liberties by signing the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act and continued warrantless data gathering efforts.  His Administration has a lot in common with the Birthers nipping at his heels afterall.

However, if the Birther movement were allowed to displace a US President for “inadequate documentation”, wouldn’t it force a weird new standard of subjectivity into the handling of United States citizenship?  What if a group of US residents decided you shouldn’t have rights?  Could they could simply launch a private campaign effort to dispell your citizenship as if it were a myth and then expect the State’s highest offices play along with it? 

Don’t be a fool.  American citizenship should not be reduced to some blithe Statist game of,“I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours”.

Just because Obama put his birth certificate online, does not mean we should give the Administration unlimited access to our private identity articles.  The President waiving his rights, doesn't require you to waive yours.

Implementing Real ID benchmarks creates hassles for Mainers

BTC - Real ID, while declared dead at the federal level, is still complicating the lives and livelihoods of license holders in states like Maine, who are moving forward with incremental identification benchmarks in compliance with the federal law.

Adrienne Bennet for WBAI reports:

Real ID Causing Real Problems

In 2007, Maine was the first state in the nation to reject the federal real i-d act. Today, the state is complying with the federal law designed to make it harder for terrorists and illegal immigrants to get government-issued identification. However, it's proving to be a nightmare for some Mainers.

Women, bureaucratic heartburn & your local DMV

For women in particular, the passage of the Real ID law, which created standardized, federal identification standards in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has made the process of documenting who they are far more complicated, frustrating and unreasonable.

Take the case of Carol Parsons' 89-year-old mother, who moved to Virginia from Florida three years ago and had a valid Florida driver's license when she came.

"She needed to show the progression of her name change, from her birth certificate to her first husband, then the divorce papers, and only then the marriage certificate to her second husband," Parsons said, of the process to get a Virginia license.

Where married women feel like collateral damage

by Petula Devorak, Metro Columnist for the Washington Post

In our security-obsessed, post-Sept. 11 world, married women are highly suspicious, especially if they are elderly.

They have been doubted, rejected and brought to tears at an alarming rate in our region's motor vehicle departments.

After I recounted the harrowing tale of Jean Earley -- 90-year-old pastel artist, minister's wife and Virginia newcomer -- and her attempts to get a state identification card, scores of others wrote to me to recount their own bureaucratic horror shows that left them red-faced.

Now, I know the DMV is low-hanging fruit. When I told my editor about the outpouring, she noted that "life's certainties are death, taxes and getting mistreated at the DMV." Only she used saltier language.

And many of the people who wrote in, including men, had deplorable stories about the way they were treated.

But I think the old rap against the DMV of long lines, unsmiling clerks and bad metal chairs has taken on a new edge.

It took Earley four visits to the Fairfax/Westfields DMV office to get an ID card. All because her birth certificate didn't have her current name on it and that, according to new state and federal laws, means it doesn't prove that she is a U.S. citizen.

For women in particular, the passage of the Real ID law, which created standardized, federal identification standards in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has made the process of documenting who they are far more complicated, frustrating and unreasonable.

:::MORE HERE:::

Op/Ed: Real ID poses big threat to Delaware freedom

Letter to the Editor for Delaware Online

Real ID poses big threat to Americans' freedom

"Your papers, please" is not a phrase that sits well will freedom-loving Americans. A national ID card system flies in the face of everything we as Americans believe in. The new Delaware "secure" driver's licenses (aka Real ID) is a national ID card. Both state and federal authorities say that these cards will not be shared by the states with the federal government. Is anyone over the age of 10 still naive enough to believe this?

Are you concerned with the security of your own identity, and who has access to it? For those of you who say "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide," consider the implications for ID theft: Many DMV employees across the country have been jailed for selling driver's license information. Consider also that the Delaware DMV routinely sells its records to anyone who pays them -- without telling you.

This information can include your license number, photo, Social Security number and birth date.

As for increasing the security of America, consider the card itself. A single national ID is an exceedingly valuable document, and accordingly, there's greater incentive to forge it. No matter how unforgeable we make it, it will be forged. Such an ID is a dream come true for terrorists. The government has spent so much time telling us how secure these IDs are that they will be accepted without question. There is more security in alert guards paying attention to subtle social cues than bored minimum-wage guards blindly checking IDs.

It is also questionable how well ill-trained state DMV employees will be able to spot fraudulent documents, such as out-of-state birth certificates or licenses.

Also, if a DMV employee determines that your documents are fraudulent, where do you turn for redress? Of course, if they're typical government employees, showing them a portrait of Benjamin Franklin might smooth things out.

Wes M. Jones, Wilmington

FLOGGER: Startling Incompetence at ANSI Standards Group

National ID Bashing with Cato's, Jim Harper

I have always regarded standard-setting organizations as serious players who take care to keep slightly boring the work of establishing uniformity in products and protocols. But a press release from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) may cause me to reassess.

“IDSP Issues Report Calling for National Identity Verification Standard” is the release, and it’s bristling with error and malformed policy assertions. IDSP is the “Identity Theft Prevention and Identity Management Standards Panel,” an ANSI subgroup.

Take this doozy:

[T]he Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (IRTPA) and the REAL ID Act of 2005 require verification of identity prior to the issuance of birth certificates and driver’s licenses / ID cards, respectively. However, the IRTPA regulations have not yet been released even in draft form and the REAL ID regulations do not provide practical guidance on how to corroborate a claim of identity under different circumstances.

Folks, REAL ID repealed the identity security provisions in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. (It’s a good bet that regulations for a repealed law aren’t going to move out of draft form for a very long time, eh?) And REAL ID does not require verification of identity prior to issuance of birth certificates. What could that even mean?! “Hey you—little baby—let me see some ID before I issue you your birth certificate.”

The release repeats the tired mantra that 9/11 terrorists got U.S. identity documents—”some by fraud.” The 9/11 Commission dedicated three-quarters of a page to its identity recommendations—out of 400 substantive pages—and neither the commission nor anyone since has shown how denying people U.S. identity documents would prevent terrorism.

Are there needs for identity standards? Of course. And there are a lot of projects in a lot of places working on that. If an organization doesn’t know the law, and doesn’t know how the subject matter it’s dealing with functions in society, I don’t know how it could possibly be relied on to set appropriate standards.

ANSI should take a look at this subgroup and see if its work is actually competent. Judging by this press release, it’s not.

DHS Cybersecurity budget numbers are in

$397 million for agency's internal information security needs awaits Obama's signature

COMPUTER WORLD

The amount set aside for DHS cybersecurity spending next year looks "about right" said Karen Evans, former de facto federal CIO under the Bush administration. The amount is meant for internal DHS operations only and is consistent with increases provided to other departments and agencies, she said. Cybersecurity spending across the government for 2010 is projected at about $7.5 billion, or about 10% of the total IT budget of $75 billion, she added.

The $43 billion appropriations bill included similar increases in other technology areas. A budget of about $1 billion, or about $75 million more than 2009, was approved for the DHS's department of science and technology, which conducts research on such areas as cybersecurity and air cargo security.

The bill also provides an additional $91 million on top of a previously approved $60 million for a massive data center migration and consolidation effort underway at the DHS. The consolidation is part of a move by the DHS to build a new 4.5 million-square-foot facility in the Washington area. Obama's economic stimulus package, which passed earlier this year, provided another $248 million for planning, design, IT infrastructure, fixtures and other costs related to the consolidation.

The Senate bill also extended the DHS's online employment eligibility verification program, called E-Verify, by three years and allocated $137 million for operating the system and for improving its reliability and accuracy. Opponents of E-Verify had claimed the system was too buggy and error-prone to be used as the federal government's primary tool for employment verification.

Meanwhile, in what appears to be a reaction to the growing opposition to the program, funding for the controversial Real ID initiative was cut back 40% from $100 million to $60 million in 2010.

Real ID, launched during the Bush administration, requires states to meet new federal standards for issuing driver's licenses. It also requires links to driver's license databases around the country.

Concerns Surface About Some PASS ID Amendments

BTC-  The PASS Act is a new legislation.  In every new potential law there are dynamics for unintended consequences and nuance that need to be explored.   

Even for watchdogs like us, we are still discovering problems for both privacy and civil liberty. Initially we thought the PASS Act's pilot program was a "good idea".   That was until we learned it was supplemental development for States to play into a centralized hub. Poorer states like Mississippi can't afford to build their own versions of fusion centers.  So the federal government would give them money for the build, with all the strings attached.  

Anti-national ID Governor's, like Mark Sanford,  found fault with the potential run on personal information in the pilot program's hub development.   In this Privacy Digest article, more reservations are bubbling to the surface over exactly how much integrity the privacy considerations had in the PASS Act.  We managed to gather that it wasn't that big of a change from Real ID.

Concerns Surface About Some PASS ID Amendments

c/o Privacy Digest -MacRonin

Last Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee agreed on several amendments to the PASS ID bill [S. 1261] andsent the legislation on to the Senate.

Let’s take a look at some of the changes:

• Exceptions to the anti-skimming provision:

A key privacy protection we support in PASS ID restricts the collection and use of information scanned from the machine-readable zone on your driver’s license or ID card. However, in response to the concerns of retailers and other third party users of driver’s license information, the committee introduced an amendment that directs the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to issue regulations establishing exceptions to this anti-skimming provision.

While CDT recognizes that there are legitimate uses for data scanned from licenses, we are concerned by how broadly some of the proposed exceptions are described. The FTC can and should protect the privacy and security of cardholders even under these acceptable uses; otherwise, we risk gutting the anti-skimming provision entirely. As a general matter, the privacy protections the FTC could build in to protect this information will only be more effective if Congress provides specific statutory guidance now for addressing the types of secondary uses of specific information we are most concerned about.

In particular, allowing third parties to store information to “prevent consumer fraud” without building in limits on how long information can be stored and how it could be further shared, aggregated, and used would create a massive loophole in this otherwise much needed protection. We have seen how bars and sellers of tobacco products have collected information from licenses and ID cards ostensibly to verify age, but then go on to use and share that information for marketing and other purposes—often with no notice to the cardholder.

Just as worrisome is the very real possibility that states will begin to store much more information in the machine-readable portion of driver’s licenses than what is already visible on the face of the card, including data elements like race or ethnicity. Given the potential for abuse and misuse of such sensitive information if stored and aggregated, CDT strongly urges further limiting any exemptions to only information that is also visible on the face of the card.

• Boarding a plane without a PASS ID-compliant driver’s license or ID card:

The committee struck language from the bill that would have prevented individuals from being turned away at the airport solely on the basis of failure to present a PASS ID-compliant driver’s license or ID card. While the stated justification behind this change is to preserve the status quo—that is, maintaining the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA’s) discretion to deny access to airplanes for good reason—the status quo isn’t so great from a civil liberties standpoint to begin with. There is scant transparency around how TSA officials exercise this discretion, leading to potential abuse or discrimination in its application while offering no redress for those whose rights may be violated. Keeping such policies secret also doesn’t inspire much confidence in the flying public that we are any safer for them since there is little ability to assess their effectiveness or relevance.

• Funding the digitization of “breeder documents” and birth record verification:

The amended bill also now requires birth records to be verified with the issuing agency no later than six years after the final regulations are issued, so long as the electronic system enabling such verification (i.e., the Electronic Verification of Vital Events (EVVE)) is up and running by that deadline. The bill also provides funds to states to digitize remaining birth records and connect state records to the electronic verification system.

This change takes us one step back towards REAL ID, which required birth certificate verification through the EVVE system. While the bill gives the DHS Secretary room to make sure any such system includes adequate privacy protections, EVVE still centralizes highly valuable personal information and would become a magnet for internal fraud and identity thieves.

• Abbreviated rulemaking timeline:

Finally, the amended bill authorizes DHS to issue an interim final rule to implement PASS ID, bypassing the full Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) process. While there is considerable pressure from many corners to not delay implementation of PASS ID, this change is curious considering the contentiousness of the REAL ID debate of the past four years. Taking into account the concerns of affected stakeholders from the outset of the program seems imperative to help avoid the same kind of impasse that REAL ID has engendered.

CDT is concerned about these changes and will work with members to address them as this issue moves to the floor. Stay tuned for more updates as the bill moves forward.

CA Eats the Chip ; MN Rally on "Dangerous ID"

Does anyone remember when California joined the Real ID rebellion? Just a fad.

California's crime of cosmetic-do-nothing-politics strikes again. Just left of Lou Dobbs- the manual air pump for Real ID Act's plastic inflatable immigration policy - you will find the freshly passed piece of crap also known as California Senate Bill SB60. The Democrats who greenlighted this gem of a bill have cleared the way for DHS to store Californian's identity documents if they want any kind of a license. You have no idea how much this is going to suck.

Which Flavor: Fascist-lite or PrimoFascism?

People who go along with this bill are going to have the option of submitting their documents into a database or not. It is the middle of the road for people who are sorta playing ball with Real ID. It doesn't really help the stave off the development of fascist products for California, it just redirects it. They are still going to dump billions of their tax dollars into developing the databases but at least you have a choice of bypassing identity theft and being sorted with non-citizens OR submitting your social and birth certificate into a database where more than likely you will have your identity stolen. For Californians more concerned with restoring infrastructure and education with taxes, it leaves them holding the bag. For Californian's struggling with identity security it gives them a way out, but they'll more than likely be harassed like an illegitimate citizen. For undocumented workers, nothing will change. They will supply falsified social security numbers and birth certificates and drive away with no rights, still beholden to a greedy jerk paying slave wages and living under the radar. For idiots who crave convenience and security over their civil liberties, by forking over their documents to the DMV they will have their identity sold to the highest bidder and begin their worst nightmare, only to be relived again and again.

Here is your salty moment of truth. DO NOT ACCEPT ANY VERSION OF REAL ID ACT COMPLIANCE. Stand on the 10th Amendment. Everyone in this scenario gets a raw deal except the tech contractors and those who benefit from identity trafficking.

I am so tired of this neo-conn schlock. It inspired me to think of Lou Dobbs and his grating and incessant immigration polls. So we here at BeatTheChip decided to do our own poll on Lou Dobbs.

IN OTHER NEWS....

In today's Washington Times, The Lord's most conservative newspaper on this special planet we call Earth, there was a report of a RON PAUL SUPPORTER handing out literature to Stop Real IDs. STOP AND LOOK!!

Ron Paul enthusiasts cheer alternative agenda for GOP

ST. PAUL, Minn. | Rep. Ron Paul's "Rally for the Republic" pledged to bring the Republican Party "back to its roots" on Tuesday, drawing about 10,000 at the Target Center in downtown Minneapolis.

Mike McHugh, a Republican activist and Ron Paul supporter from Virginia, handed out information on the pending Real ID Act, asking supports to refer to it simply as the "Dangerous ID."

Mr. McHugh thinks the card would open the door for massive identity theft by creating a federal database that would be vulnerable to hackers.

"I am not a conspiracy theorist," Mr. McHugh said. "But this will allow people's movement and information to be tracked."

An overall optimism was shared by rally attendees as they cheered for their hero. In between speakers and musical entertainment, clips of Mr. Paul flashed across the screen, quoting Hope for America.

Mr. McHugh was undaunted by the meager media coverage, saying, "There is no such thing as a lost cause."