Down with the data state

Plus: my interview with Rand Paul, recipe journals, and more

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, and here’s this week’s post. If you’re not already a paid subscriber, please consider upgrading to read the whole thing and support my work:

---

A take I haven’t written elsewhere

Down with the data state

(via)

As of last week, 20 years and many deadline extensions since then-President George W. Bush signed the Real ID Act into law, you must now provide Real ID-compliant documents to board domestic flights and enter certain federal facilities. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said there will be workarounds for those without the right documents, but the “additional screening” in question isn’t specified on the TSA website as of this writing, nearly a week after the requirement came into effect.

And sure, maybe you get a pleasant, reasonable TSA agent who simply “collect[s] information such as your name and current address to confirm your identity.” Or, you know, maybe you don’t!

Maybe you can’t fly, or maybe you’re detained in some stifling, windowless room. Or maybe you’re groped extra hard, or maybe you encounter agents who are simply uninterested in following their own department’s policies—policies you can’t even demand be followed because, again, the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t bothered to tell us what they are, and Noem seems a little bit busy right now.

Personally, I wouldn’t chance it.

Real ID is technically not tied to a single federal database, though its requirement of mutually accessible state databases very nearly amounts to the same thing. Nor is it required for every scenario in which you have to provide ID; here in Pennsylvania, for example, you can still get a non-Real ID driver’s license. But will that sort of thing be allowed to last? I wouldn’t be surprised if less exacting alternatives were soon phased out in the name of security.

One unambiguously good thing is this is not an involved enough system for Real IDs to have a scannable chip, like a credit card, or some kind of linked digital account. Real ID is one of many superfluous and arguably unconstitutional post-9/11 security measures, but it’s not on par with the social credit systems in China and India or Russia’s “internal passports.”

Still, being better off than people in authoritarian—in China’s case, literally communist—countries is not exactly impressive. And even that reassurance falls a bit flat when you pair the Real ID news with another recent story.

This spring, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, have all reported that the Elon Musk-headed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is building a giant federal database that will combine reams of data about the American public that was previously kept separate.