The U.S. Government is Now Requiring a “Federal ID Number” And It Will be Put Under the Skin of the Hand-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
This is long narrative by a woman who went through a hassle trying to get a California driver’s license after moving there from Alaska. She says she was told by the Department of Motor Vehicles in California that everyone is going to have to have al Federal ID Number which will be implanted under the skin of the left hand and that nothing can be transacted with the government without it. She said she was told that all the hassle she went through getting her license was because of the new requirements for the Federal ID Number. This eRumor started appearing on the Internet in April, 2007.
The Truth:
The most incendiary part of this eRumor is the information about a number being required under the skin of the left hand—and it is false. It hearkens to several other eRumors that have circulated about people being required to have identification chips implanted into their bodies or on their right hands or foreheads, which brings up speculation about Biblical prophecy about “The End Times.”
The heart of the eRumor is about the “Federal Tax ID Number.” There is no such terminology about individual citizens but there has been legislation passed in the U.S. Congress under what was called the REAL ID act and that sought to establish minimum standards for driver’s licenses and identification cards that would be acceptable by Federal Agencies. The legislation prohibits Federal Agencies from accepting IDs for any official purposes that have not been issued based on the requirements of the act, although some states will get extensions and there will be a phasing-in period of 5-years for everything to be working correctly. The Department of Homeland Security says this is not a “National ID Card.” It is simply an attempt to establish common standards for states to issue licenses and identication cards. The licenses will be issued from each state, not the Federal government.
Driver’s licenses are accepted as legitimate ID at airports, for example, when you show up to board a flight. That means that the issuance of a driver’s license should be based on the kind of documentation that will prove that the person who is getting it is really who he or she claims to be. The 9/11 Commission recommended improving the reliability and accuracy of ID documents. The commission report said that for terrorists, travel documents are as important as weapons and that all but one of the 9/11 hijackers had some kind of identifying document, some by fraud.
Regarding the woman’s ordeal in getting her license, it is not hard to understand what she was required to provide. If you come to California from another state, a valid driver’s license is accepted as ID for a California license, but not an expired one. If your name has changed, such as through marriage or divorce, you are required to have the documentation of that change in order to either get a license or have a name changed on a license.
The part of the eRumor that says a number will be required under the skin of your left hand may have been prompted by questions about whether some of the states may want to embed what are called RFID devices in the drivers licenses. RIFD stands for “radio frequency identification” and refers to small, inexpensive chips that are increasingly used for a variety of things including identifying products in stores. It’s a high-tech electronic substitute for bar codes. An RIFD chip doesn’t require a battery and merely needs to be passed near a special device to be read. RIFD devices have also been implanted into animals for identification purposes and there is some use of RIFD devices being implanted in humans for the same reason. That led a big eRumor several years ago about a chip made by Mondex and that it was going to be used by governments to track and control its citizens. For more information about that, CLICK HERE.
Updated 4/14/06