Today I’ll be testifying on the REAL ID Act in a state legislature for the second time in two days. In the morning yesterday, I spoke to the Government Operations Committee of the Utah House of Representatives, along with the Committee’s Chairman Glenn Donnelson (R‑North Ogden). His resolution to reject the REAL ID Act was passed unanimously by the committee and sent to the full House.

Mid-day, I flew from Salt Lake City to Boise, Idaho to speak on a panel about REAL ID convened in the capitol building by Representative Phil Hart (R‑Athol). Today, Hart’s resolution opposing REAL ID will be heard in the House Transportation and Defense Committee.

Among the people on yesterday’s panel in Boise was Bill Bishop, Director of the Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security. You might think that a homeland security guy would support REAL ID. He doesn’t. Knowing full well he might be making it harder on himself the next time it comes time to getting grants from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, he laid out his opposition to REAL ID.

Along with his philosophical objections to a national ID, he pointed out its practical weaknesses as a security tool. You can nail down the identity of everyone and you’ll be no better off in preventing something like a terrorist attack. And as soon as you come out with a highly secure, highly valuable ID like the REAL ID, the hackers and forgers will go to work on faking it or corrupting someone in order to get it. It’s a good security practice to diversify your protections rather than creating a single point of failure like the REAL ID Act does. You might make yourself less safe if you rely on a uniform ID system for your security.

What frustrates me about this kind of guy (I say, tongue firmly in cheek) is that I had to study security and risk management for a couple of years before I understood these concepts well enough to put in my book. The Bill Bishops of the world just kinda know it. Not fair.

Summarizing REAL ID’s utility as a national security tool, Bishop said: “I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny, I don’t believe in Santa Claus, and I don’t believe in the Lone Ranger. Which means I don’t believe in silver bullets.”

We ought to take advantage of this kind of wisdom, and the obvious benefits of local knowledge — maybe by coming up with some kind of decentralized governmental structure. I don’t know how you would do that. Just putting an idle thought out there.