The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP)

The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP) was born of the struggles of one tenacious survivor of domestic violence and stalking. The NCIDP continues her work with the help of many. Read more about the NCIDP...

The REAL ID Act reinforces the identity rights of individuals, including a legal identity change by the common law method, even while imposing byzantine third party documentary procedures.

Beware, however, that rogue terrorist infiltrators in bureaucratic positions may attempt to subvert their positions and arrogate the protections afforded by the REAL ID Act and, with it, the very meaning and heart of democracy and liberty. In such cases, and under such malignant misinterpretations, the REAL ID Act could lead to horrific acts of tyrannical oppression of individuals nationwide wherever such terroristic infiltrators may be. Every individual, and every honest and honorable civil servant, must stand firm against such treasonous acts of brutality against the nation and its people.

The REAL ID Act is a federal statute that in no way shape or form, in text, impairs or limits the right of an individual to remain anonymous, or to be "known as if from birth" by a chosen identity enacted by common law. No attempt to tamper with either RIGHT, and the attendant right to privacy surrounding any former identity, appears in the text of the Real ID Act.

IMPORTANTLY, the RIGHT to a common law identity change under federal law and the federal Constitution is much more clearly absolute and unequivocal, not at all muddied by the state statutes that attempt and purport to limit or control the exercise of that right. That means, in effect, that Real ID mandates unfettered recognition of a change of identity enacted by common law AND appears to force it upon all states, overriding any existing state statutes that purported to limit or control or otherwise impair the exercise of that right.

Typically, any federal law will supersede any conflicting state law, with some exceptions for laws that are more stringent, that is more strictly protective of the rights of individuals. In the case of identity, the federal Real ID act is not only superior for its federal standing, but also superior for its more stringent protections of personal rights, in this case identity rights, carried with it.

But, bureaucrats in some states overly friendly to the ideals of Mr. Kim's Pyongyang and, (and, according to reports, also infiltrating the Social Security Administration (SSA)), are patently ignoring that aspect of Real ID. This is criminal violence, and they know it, and they know that in common law, in a free society, and in a democracy, no impairment of right beyond that ENUMERATED in black letter text of legislatively enacted law may ever be imposed upon an individual. Regulations merely and exclusively regulate the conduct of an agency internally, directing how that agency meets the requirements of law WITHIN the context and boundary of ALL law.

What Real ID does do is mandate standards for "evidentiary documentation" regarding an individual's identity, beyond the primary and only true and correct documentation that an individual's own statement of it is [see Overview of Identity, and Basic Identity Terms & Meanings], and goes on to impose those requirements upon the states for issuances of state ID. Without going into the mechanics of the language, the short story is that everything is made dependent upon everything else - birth certificate, driver's license, Social Security card, passport. ALL of which is third party documentation of an individual's identity.

It becomes impossible to get one form of third party (government issued) identity documentation without the other, and it all starts with the birth certificate (or certificate of baptism in some states and circumstances).

Since the "right to be known as if from birth" necessarily prohibits disclosure of even the existence of a former identity, let alone the actual content of that former identity, and strictly relegates that former identity to the private sphere, the only way to obtain all of the other identity documents under Real ID without forcibly and illegally being made to disclose the existence of a former identity is to first get a NEW birth certificate from the state showing, exclusively and without cross-reference, that new identity. The Real ID Act made no effort whatsoever to arrogate these individual rights, in recognition of their constitutionally protected nature already held by the Supreme Court.

Issuance of a new birth certificate upon demand and without cross-reference to any other or former identity is also more consistent with the historical legal context of birth certificates, which historically were issued, revoked, changed or reissued at will by and within an aristocratic family, or by the individual personally after independence from Britain. These could and historically did include changes of identity.

It is not clarified by REAL ID whether the state in which the former identity birth certificate was issued must issue the new birth certificate upon demand, without cross-reference to the old, or whether the state demanding A birth certificate under REAL ID for issuance of some piece of third-party identity documentation must also issue the new birth certificate being demanded without any regard to the former identity and certificate. In the former, it has the effect of one state forcing compliance upon another, potentially but remotely plausible under a federal law like this, but unwieldy and problematic in practice. In the latter, a much more sensible and efficient approach that is more consistent with the historical legal context of birth certificates. More consistent still with the historical legal context of birth certificates would be issuance upon demand by any state of the individual's own personal choosing, thereby also coming into line with International law on the subject (Article 8 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child). In any event, that question must be resolved before REAL ID can even begin to be implemented in any manner - apart from tyrannical impositions of violence and injustice against the people of the nation.

Perhaps it is wiser still to return to the days of each individual issuing their own birth certificate within their own homes, and by their own simple declaration . Better still, and perhaps wisest of all, return to the foundation of liberty and keep governments out of the third-party identity documentation business entirely.