alt Hacker News> I thought because of RealID made just after 9/11 all drivers licenses had to be in federal database anyway?
At least Washington state still issues UnrealID in case the applicant is not willing to pay the extra fee or cannot or willnot provide the extra documentation. I don't think UnrealIDs have to be submitted?
As I understand it, most other states rolled the extra cost into the general fee for IDs, but Washington does not like to spread costslike that.
Unfortunately, the way the system is structured, once enough states are compliant then mandating the uploading ALL DLs to the system (Real ID or not) becomes possible without additional legislation. See https://papersplease.org/wp/2016/02/11/how-the-real-id-act-i...
> States aren’t (yet) required to upload pointers for noncompliant licenses or ID cards. There’s been no explicit announcement of the full live launch of S2S, but it appears that the first states are only beginning to use S2S (other than as a pilot project) this month. The DHS isn’t (yet) considering whether states have complied with the database access provisions of the REAL-ID Act when it makes its discretionary decisions whether to certify “material” compliance or “progress” toward compliance. But AAMVA, which determines the SPEXS standards, could add a requirement for upload of pointers for all licenses and IDs, not just “compliant” ones, to its specifications for system participation at any time. And the DHS will eventually have to assess actual compliance with the REAL-ID Act, not mere progress toward it. At that point, any state that wants to use S2S and SPEXS as the basis for a compliance finding will have to upload pointer records for all licenses and ID cards it has issued — even noncompliant or “opt-out” licenses or IDs.
This has the effect of creating a private national ID database, without transparency or accountability, which is kind of a worst-case scenario. (AAMVA is a private entity.)