Here we go again. As if it were an American tradition, we will once again try to undo something we never would have done if we had all been paying attention.

No, not Iraq, which is bad enough. I'm talking about the 2005 federal law requiring all the states to institute a standardized national Real ID card (meaning "real identification card") by 2008.

Never mind that this will cost the states billions of dollars. Never mind the hassle of obtaining one from an overburdened bureaucracy. Never mind that without one you will no longer be licensed to drive a car, enter an airport or a federal building (the people's houses?). And never mind that terrorists will simply circumvent the requirement with illegally procured documents and cards.

What you should really be paying attention to is the potential for such a system to compromise your most essential freedoms.

You think I'm hysterical? Tell it to all the Nazi concentration camp victims, who were located, arrested and deported using the census data stored on punch cards in a giant Berlin database. We've already got the databases, criminal and non-criminal interchangeably. All we lack is a unifying system like Real ID to make them...real efficient.

It never ceases to amaze me that Americans make such a deal about our country being the Land of the Free. And then give away those hard-won freedoms without a closer look.

Real ID? Unreal.

Bernie Huebner

Waterville

bhuebner@adelphia.net