Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker has posted the second in a series on the REAL ID Act at the DHS Leaderhip blog. I assessed his first try here.

This one raises the privacy issues with REAL ID, and it claims that privacy advocates “can’t and won’t tell you precisely how REAL ID threatens privacy.” Knowing his smarts and savvy, I’m confident that Stewart is feigning unawareness of my book Identity Crisis and the hearings in Congress that have exposed the many threats to privacy from REAL ID specifically, and national ID systems generally. He has also had the opportunity to read the DHS Privacy Committee’s report, which cited and discussed “serious risks” to privacy from the REAL ID program.

It’s true that privacy is a complex subject, and the complexity is preserved by the fact that a number of different interests are often lumped together under the “privacy” heading. But Stewart has certainly had the opportunity to read the Privacy Committee’s “framework document,” which articulates each of these interests. For a more thorough study of privacy in its strongest sense (control over personal information), he could re-read (or perhaps just read) my 2004 study “Understanding Privacy—and the Real Threats to It.”

The claim that privacy advocates won’t articulate the privacy problems with REAL ID is a shift from earlier public comments where Baker reportedly expressed puzzlement about privacy concerns with REAL ID, or his failure to understand them. One can’t be puzzled by the privacy concerns with REAL ID at one point in time and later claim that privacy concerns haven’t been articulated. There’s something else afoot.

I suspect it’s the fact that Baker gives higher priority to implementing REAL ID than to protecting Americans’ privacy. He just can’t bring himself to say so because it wouldn’t be popular or politic. (To be clear: He makes claims that REAL ID will protect privacy, but they do not pass muster.)

Baker should address the privacy consequences of REAL ID in a way that is not feigned ignorance or dismissiveness, but he should do something else first: Tell us what REAL ID is good for. The burden of proof in the debate over REAL ID is not on privacy advocates to say why not, but on proponents of the national ID law to say why.

No proponent of REAL ID, including Stewart Baker, has ever articulated how the program will cost-effectively secure the country against any threat. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security declined to articulate how REAL ID works to benefit the country in its analysis of the REAL ID regulations it issued. This is something I discussed, along with the privacy concerns, in my May 2007 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee:

The Department of Homeland Security has had two years to articulate how REAL ID would work. But the cost-benefit analysis provided in the proposed rules issued in March … helps show that implementing REAL ID would impose more costs on our society than it would provide security or other benefits. REAL ID would do more harm than good.

This is true if you assign no value to privacy at all. Americans do value their privacy and civil liberties, but the conversation should start at the beginning–with an articulation from Stewart Baker of how REAL ID provides cost-effective security.