This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, May 18th, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Department of Homeland Security has never made good on the real ID law's threat that

Transportation Security Administration agents

would refuse airport access to travelers from recalcitrant states.

But the threat remains in many states are inching toward putting their residents into the national ID system.

Edward Hasbroke is a consultant to the identity project at PapersPlease.org, who spoke following

a Cato event on Real ID last week.

Why is it so important that people be allowed to continue to travel or board commercial

airlines without showing a specific government-issued form of ID.

The problem with the demand for ID isn't in the card itself or in the database of identities per se but that the reason to

require the showing of ID is as an enabler for surveillance and control.

I mean requiring people to show ID makes sense

only if you have a database essentially a surveillance database of other

factoids about these people and if you're using that to make a decision

based on the identity and the dossier that you're keeping about everybody that's linked to that identity as to whether you're going

to allow them to proceed or what you're going to do to them.

So it's not just about not showing ID. It's about opting out of a system of pervasive warrantless suspicionless surveillance of all travelers and a essentially pre-crime predictive system of using those

databases about our past behavior including our

right to make decisions about whether to let us exercise our right to travel in the future.

The federal government thought they had an ace in the whole

when it came to getting states to comply with Real ID and spending the money

...