Montana Governor claims victory over Homeland Security and Real ID!

March 21, 2008 - Montana governor Brian Schweitzer declared victory Friday after the Department of Homeland Security sent his state an extension to the Real ID act, despite his insistence Montana will never comply with a mandate he describes as a "boondoggle."

"If I were writing the headline, it would be 'DHS Blinks," Schweitzer, a Democrat, told THREAT LEVEL by phone late Friday.

Montana's attorney general sent DHS chief Michael Chertoff a letter Friday outlining the security features in Montana's current driver's licenses, which DHS threatened to reject as valid I.D. for boarding airplanes or entering federal buildings come May 11 unless the state promised to comply with Real ID.

DHS responded by interpreting that letter as a request for an extension  of the Real ID deadlines until 2010, reversing its previous position that Montana ID cards would be rejected by federal agents.

"I sent them a horse and if they want to call it a zebra, that's up to them," Schweitzer said. "They can call it whatever they want, and it wasn't a love letter."

Schweitzer emphasized that his state's licenses already contain holograms, secure digital photographs and a magnetic stripe on the back. But says he has no intention of sharing his state's residents' data with the federal government, as required by Real ID.

The information the government wants the states to keep and share in Real ID is ripe for abuse, despite the government's privacy and security promises, he said.

"They tell us our data is safe," Schweitzer said. "You tell that to the passport people," he said, referring to news that State Department employees snooped in all three major presidential candidates’ passport files.

"Do you want your government to have the ability to track where you went, how you got there and when you got home?" Schweitzer asked. "It would be naïve for someone to think this information will not be abused in the future. Virtually every decade these kinds of files have been used to violate people's privacy."