Real ID in Florida causing problems for some people
 

I'm surprised it took 2 months before the problems hit the papers,


http://www.tampabay.com/news/publics...public/1075902

There's a town close to me that does not deliver mail to physical addresses; everyone has a post office box and therefore many cannot produce two pieces of mail with a physical address.

When I lived in Mexico Beach, Florida (near Panama City) it was like that. You either got a PO Box, or had to buy a mailbox and get seperate Rural Route # with an address in another town.

Ciao,
FH

Get a drivers license in another state - specifically a non-*un*REALID state - like I did. Problem solved and you can give FL and its stupidity the middle finger - like I did.

What do you expect? That's what you get for living in a foreign country! :D

Good grief! I did not know about this. I have a FL DL, and luckily have all the proofs, but somehow I suspect it still will not be that easy. Since all the bills are in my name, how will my wife rpove her identity since she'll have nothing addressed to her. Our address anyway is a UPS store, since we don't live in FL. The voter registration clerks said, "so what?" about that when I told them, and told us to keep on voting. Somehow it seems the DL will not be so easy.

It was ok, I kept all of my Republic of Texas documents as that is the only North American country I care about! Never played the Florida ID game. (thankfully)

You could say the Florida Panhandle was a different world :D
But the Air Force paid for it and I was a young lieutenant living on the beach so "Mexico" was good ^^^

Ciao,
FH

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8830/4.5.0.138 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

Eglin or Hurlburt??

My business partner's mother, who is well into her 80's, has been caught up in this. She has been married 5 times, buried 2-3 of them, & divorced the others. DMV is insiting on death certificates, marriage licenses, & divorce decrees, along w/everything else listed in the article, in order to renew the license she's had for at least 30 yrs.

No, I don't feel the least bit safe(r) thanks to all of this :mad:

I wonder how many people are going to say "screw it" and drive without?

Enough that in the effort to make us safer it causes innocents to violate the law.

Tyndall
Mexico Beach is in the far SE corner of Bay county east of Panama City (I know more foreigners!!). The last central timezone town on the coast LOL


Thankfully, for the moment at least, Texas still allows online renewals, though there has been some controversy over the DPS checking immigration status and making the license expire the same day one's visa expires.

Ciao,
FH

Not many if we're all required to show our "papers" for more and more routine activities. :(

But the smart among us who are affluent enough to afford the fees are going to have to be vigilant about maintaining valid passports for ourselves, and our kids (from birth) since having a passport seems to avoid many of the hassle issues.

When my wife (then fiancee) moved to MA, she was going to have exactly that problem even pre Real-ID. Since I had already established the house and utilities (all in my name) she would have no lease, no utility bills, etc. You're supposed to get a DL within 30 days of moving to MA anyway, so the idea of using utility bills (or mortgage statements) is a joke, since you'll be very lucky to receive a mailed bill before the 30 days are up.

Anyway, I had my fiancee get checks printed with our address on them a month before she moved here; a checkbook suffices here for "proof of address." How stupid is that? :rolleyes: Any moron can go online and order checks with any name or address they want.

I had learned the checkbook trick when I moved to MA myself because they didn't consider my old DL + passport + apartment lease sufficient proof of identity, citizenship/status, address, and signature. I had all of those things, but no document could count for both (e.g., the passport couldn't count for both citizenship and signature.) A Social Security Card would have sufficed (by using SS card for citizenship and passport for signature), but my SS card sits in a safe deposit box and has never been shown to anyone in my life, and I intend to keep it that way. So I ended up pulling a blank check out of my wallet, using the check for proof of address, and using my lease for proof of signature. Again, how stupid is that? :rolleyes: Any moron can go online, print up a boilerplate apartment lease, and sign it.

If MA goes Real-ID wacko, I'm not sure now how my wife could "prove" she lives here on multiple documents like FL seems to be requiring. They won't count her cell phone bills as a utility bill here, and everything else is in my name. You're lucky if you get a paper bill/statement from banks or anyone else these days, and I doubt they'll accept a home-printed version. I guess she could use our car insurance policy and a W2, but I'm repulsed by the idea of giving the state and some clerk a document stating her income and liability coverage. That's really going too far in terms of privacy invasion.

Best thing for women to do in this day and age is to retain their maiden name when they marry. Or go back to their maiden name if they are divorced.

Part of the linked article: "Those who make it through this document juggernaut become Real ID-compliant and get a tiny gold star on their licenses. At some point, this will be needed to go into a federal building or to board a commercial airliner."

I renewed early last year to avoid the huge fee increase and this ID bee ess. I have 8.5 years left on my DL, but no Gold Star. :( If not me someone without a Gold Star is going to start an interesting test case when they make this phone call: "Sorry, Judge, I can't make it to your court for my jury duty today. I used my DL to sign up on the voter roll where you got my name for the jury summons, but your federal building rent-a-cops downstairs would not let me in the courthouse with that same DL."

State Big Brother already has this info. In most states don't insurance companies send info to the DMV automatically, so they know about your insurance? And the state unemployment office as well as the IRS has your income info. But in different offices, not all in front of this low level clerk at the DMV front counter who has no need to see it.

In one article last year I saw mention of the state scanning ALL the documents you bring in and storing somewhere in a big computer. Now that is a true invasion of privacy as they start your Official Komrade Dossier, and is an ID theft ring goldmine waiting to happen. :td: :td: :td:

I agree. If you point this out, will Congresscritters be moved that RealID is Anti Traditional American Family Values? :rolleyes:

(emphasis mine)

Yes they have much (not all) of the info, but your last point is what really matters. This low-level clerk has no need for all of that data, no need to store it, and creates a huge ID-theft risk by collecting it. And there's not going to be any substantial penalty for the clerk if he leaks it. The IRS has our W2 data but there are at least well-defined statutory penalties for leaking the info. And the IRS has a legal use for the information.

And I don't think states collect the liability limits on car insurance policies, just proof that you have the required minimum. (MA is actually weird because the car owner is the middle-man between the insurance company and the state and has to deliver the carbon-paper "RMV-1" form stamped by the insurance company to the RMV (same as DMV/BMV) when registering a car. )

IMO the combination of income information and insurance liability limits is particularly dangerous because it gives guidance as to who would be a good target for frivolous lawsuits.

That is true.

http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/08-140.htm

I see a developing market for adhesive "tiny gold stars."

From the news article in the first post:

How hard could these be to forge, and how would the DMV people know? Will utility bills now need to have a series of security features? Will they perhaps need to be pre-approved/pre-certified by some other government agency?

And what about those of us who get all our bills on-line?

I don't think you are in too much danger -- as long as you don't marry your partner's mother.

There isn't any actual "tiny gold star". I think they were thinking back to school days and such. :cool:

Utility bills, car insurance policy, mortgage statement - all are probably useless if one has a P.O.Box only.

But what would stop you from using someone else's and just changing the name and/or address? I don't imagine most utility bills have a whole lot of "security features."

I am not surprised this is an issue. Even here in one of God's Waiting Room cities - Tampa - they would not accept a online statement form a bill once. They issue resident parking passes for my neighborhood. For the first 3 renewals (every 6 months), they refused to take an online bill. It had to be a statement that was mailed to avoid me making on up in Photoshop (their words). Enough complaining and they now accepted them, but reluctantly. Since cable and water are included in my HOA, and mobile phone bills are always suspect, it is hard to come up with two utility bills.