Q&A: Why feds say some IDs not secure enough for air travel
Sometime in 2016 people from several states could have trouble getting on an airplane or into federal buildings because of a post-Sept. 11 law that tightened requirements for state-issued identification.
When that will happen and who will be affected won’t be completely clear until the Department of Homeland Security releases further details of how it will enforce the 2005 REAL ID Act — an announcement that could come in the next few days. In the meantime, an expert on the law says people in places such as Illinois and Missouri — where DHS this week essentially said time’s up for the states to comply — may want to get a passport.Here’s a look at the act, what it requires and why some states will feel the impact while others won’t:
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Congress approved the REAL ID Act in 2005, following a recommendation from the commission formed to study the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The 9/11 commission said the country would be safer if there were minimum standards for government-issued identification such as driver’s licenses that are required to enter federal buildings or board commercial airplanes.
The act set those standards, which include requiring applicants to provide proof of identity and legal US residency and requiring states to use counterfeit-resistant security features in the IDs.
DHS originally gave states until 2009 to make necessary changes to their requirements and technology.
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WHAT’S MY STATE’S STATUS?
At least 20 states and the District of Columbia have complied with the federal requirements, according to information posted on the DHS website.
In other states implementation has been delayed or derailed by concerns about cost, violations of privacy or overreaching by the federal government. Lawmakers in some states passed legislation opposing REAL ID; Minnesota and Missouri still have laws prohibiting them from complying.
DHS has delayed enforcement and granted multiple extensions, allowing federal agencies to continue accepting driver’s licenses from those states.
At least nineteen states have until October 2016 to either comply or be granted another extension. Alaska, California, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Carolina and Washington have extensions only through Jan. 10.
This week, officials in Missouri and Illinois said they’d been notified that DHS will not grant them another extension beyond Jan. 10. Washington received a similar notice in October.
DHS’ online map provides the status of each state at www.dhs.gov/REAL-id-enforcement-brief, though as of Thursday it didn’t indicate which states had additional extensions denied. A DHS spokesperson didn’t respond to phone messages seeking comment Thursday.
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WHAT IF MY STATE DOESN’T COMPLY?
DHS is enforcing the act in phases, starting with federal facilities such as nuclear power plants, laboratories and military bases.
That means that starting Jan. 10, federal facilities won’t accept driver’s licenses from Illinois, Missouri or any other state that isn’t approved for an extension beyond that date. (The facilities already don’t accept most licenses from Minnesota, which DHS already has deemed to be non-compliant).
The law doesn’t apply to federal courthouses, hospitals or health clinics, according to DHS, and people may be allowed entry with another valid form of ID such as a passport or military identification.
DHS has said it will extend the requirements to airports sometime in 2016, though the department hasn’t said when. It’s expected to make that announcement as early as next week, and DHS has said it will give a notice of at least 120 days before it takes effect.
That could give states such as Illinois and Missouri time to pass laws or take other steps toward implementation, possibly making DHS more amenable to granting another extension.
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WILL I BE ABLE TO FLY?
That depends on many factors, such as how DHS rolls out the airport requirements and whether travelers have other valid forms of ID.
Andrew Meehan is policy director for Keeping IDentities Safe, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that advocates for implementation of REAL ID.
He said that if history is any indication DHS will phase in the airport portion of the law, possibly starting with smaller airstrips in mid-2016 and expanding to larger airports that serve more travelers at a later date.
Meehan called it “laughable” that so many states haven’t gotten on board with the law after more than a decade. His advice to people in states like Illinois and Missouri is to get a passport.
“To be safe, don’t wait for the Legislature,” he said.
Reason #1,352 For Repealing the Income Tax
Now, the federal government is using the income to tax to hold Americans captive, to keep us from traveling outside the country.
The income tax cannot be reformed or redeemed. We need not disband the IRS, which is merely the tax accounting and enforcement bureaucracy. It is the very nature of the income tax that empowers and corrupts the collectors. Forget Lois Lerner: forget “reform.” Repeal the income tax.
And, they just gave us yet one more reason: pulling Americans’ passports.
Do we not have a Republican congress? We should demand more of them, not less.
http://www.virtualmilitia.com/2015/12/26/reason-1352-for-repealing-the-income-tax/
Agencies directed to use social media in security clearance reviews
The Director of National Intelligence will soon ask agencies to use additional sources of information when periodically reviewing their security clearance holders, according to a provision slipped into the 2016 omnibus spending bill.
The legislation creates an enhanced personnel security program, which requires that agencies develop a plan for investigating existing clearance holders, under the direction of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
Those reinvestigations must happen at least twice every five years.
“The enhanced personnel security program of an agency shall integrate relevant and appropriate information from various sources, including government, publicly available and commercial data sources, consumer reporting agencies, social media and such other sources as determined by the Director of National Intelligence,” the bill states.
Specifically, agencies should collect criminal and financial information, such as a civil legal proceeding or credit score, as well as data on a terrorist or criminal watch list and any information that is already publicly available to conduct security reviews, the legislation says.
Agencies must implement their enhanced personnel security programs either within the next five years or before the backlog of overdue periodic reinvestigations is eliminated.
The specific inclusion of social media and publicly available electronic information is key, said Charlie Sowell, senior vice president for system and software engineering solutions at Salient Federal Solutions and a former senior adviser to the Director of National Intelligence.
The term “social media” will apply to any information an employee publicly posts on his or her account.
“It’s interesting that they used publicly available and social media separately,” Sowell said. “What we call publicly available electronic information (PAEI) [is] anything that’s available online that a member of the general public could get without a subscription. It’s readily available, and social media is a part of that.”
Though the legislation generally says agencies should use social media when reviewing clearance holders, it doesn’t describe exactly how they should use it, what they should look for and how they should interpret the information they find.
Sowell said the Director of National Intelligence was supposed to issue a security executive agent directive, which would detail how the DNI expects agencies to use social media and other publicly available information in the security clearance process.
“Agencies, particularly in the Intelligence Community, have been waiting for the DNI to issue a top-cover for them to begin exploring the use of social media and publicly available electronic information in the normal clearance process, that is in the initial investigation and the periodic reinvestigation,” he said. “But frankly some agencies, which have started piloting the use of social media in investigations, have stopped because they haven’t gotten that top-cover, that policy document from the DNI that says it’s ok to use it.”
While the legislation directs that agencies use social media for reinvestigations, the DNI will still need to issue a directive permitting them to begin using that kind of information, Sowell said.
The legislation makes no mention of continuous evaluation — the practice of consistently conducting automated checks on an employee’s financial, travel and criminal history records — which some agencies have begun to experiment with.
“I’m not sure this is as practical as moving whole hog into continuous evaluation, because you’d have to set up random checks that launch for every single person at different intervals,” Sowell said. “It’s not 5 percent of the population; it’s everyone. So why not go all the way to continuous evaluation?”
Two years after its start, each agency’s inspector general will conduct at least one audit of the program using performance standards that the Director of National Intelligence developed.
Inspectors general will submit the results of their audits to the Director of National Intelligence, who will assess how well agencies are implementing enhanced personnel security programs governmentwide.
The 2016 budget also includes a resolution requiring the Director of National Intelligence to develop a plan to eliminate the security clearance backlog.
“The plan … shall use a risk-based approach to identify high risk populations and prioritize reinvestigations that are due or overdue to be conducted,” the legislation says.
That comes as the future of the federal security clearance process remains unclear.
Following multiple cyber breaches at the Office of Personnel Management, the White House mandated a 90-day review of the federal security clearance process in July. A request for proposal that OPM released in November for a workforce planning study of its Federal Investigation Services (FIS), indicates that the results of that review might be coming soon.
It’s still unclear which agency will ultimately own the security clearance process. A former federal counterintelligence official said the White House will create a new organization, the National Investigative Service Agency, which would assume oversight of the clearance process.
Other options included moving the services back to the Defense Department or keeping them under OPM’s oversight.
Previous attempts to reform the security clearance process have died in Congress.
The Enhanced Security Clearance Act, which had multiple versions and sponsors in 2013 and 2014, had marked similarities to the program included in the 2016 omnibus. It asked agencies to use publicly available information to review security clearance holders twice every five years.
http://federalnewsradio.com/defense/2015/12/agencies-review-security-clearance-holders-twice-every-five-years/
The income tax cannot be reformed or redeemed. We need not disband the IRS, which is merely the tax accounting and enforcement bureaucracy. It is the very nature of the income tax that empowers and corrupts the collectors. Forget Lois Lerner: forget “reform.” Repeal the income tax.
And, they just gave us yet one more reason: pulling Americans’ passports.
Do we not have a Republican congress? We should demand more of them, not less.
http://www.virtualmilitia.com/2015/12/26/reason-1352-for-repealing-the-income-tax/
Agencies directed to use social media in security clearance reviews
The Director of National Intelligence will soon ask agencies to use additional sources of information when periodically reviewing their security clearance holders, according to a provision slipped into the 2016 omnibus spending bill.
The legislation creates an enhanced personnel security program, which requires that agencies develop a plan for investigating existing clearance holders, under the direction of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
Those reinvestigations must happen at least twice every five years.
“The enhanced personnel security program of an agency shall integrate relevant and appropriate information from various sources, including government, publicly available and commercial data sources, consumer reporting agencies, social media and such other sources as determined by the Director of National Intelligence,” the bill states.
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Agencies must implement their enhanced personnel security programs either within the next five years or before the backlog of overdue periodic reinvestigations is eliminated.
The specific inclusion of social media and publicly available electronic information is key, said Charlie Sowell, senior vice president for system and software engineering solutions at Salient Federal Solutions and a former senior adviser to the Director of National Intelligence.
The term “social media” will apply to any information an employee publicly posts on his or her account.
“It’s interesting that they used publicly available and social media separately,” Sowell said. “What we call publicly available electronic information (PAEI) [is] anything that’s available online that a member of the general public could get without a subscription. It’s readily available, and social media is a part of that.”
Though the legislation generally says agencies should use social media when reviewing clearance holders, it doesn’t describe exactly how they should use it, what they should look for and how they should interpret the information they find.
Sowell said the Director of National Intelligence was supposed to issue a security executive agent directive, which would detail how the DNI expects agencies to use social media and other publicly available information in the security clearance process.
“Agencies, particularly in the Intelligence Community, have been waiting for the DNI to issue a top-cover for them to begin exploring the use of social media and publicly available electronic information in the normal clearance process, that is in the initial investigation and the periodic reinvestigation,” he said. “But frankly some agencies, which have started piloting the use of social media in investigations, have stopped because they haven’t gotten that top-cover, that policy document from the DNI that says it’s ok to use it.”
While the legislation directs that agencies use social media for reinvestigations, the DNI will still need to issue a directive permitting them to begin using that kind of information, Sowell said.
The legislation makes no mention of continuous evaluation — the practice of consistently conducting automated checks on an employee’s financial, travel and criminal history records — which some agencies have begun to experiment with.
“I’m not sure this is as practical as moving whole hog into continuous evaluation, because you’d have to set up random checks that launch for every single person at different intervals,” Sowell said. “It’s not 5 percent of the population; it’s everyone. So why not go all the way to continuous evaluation?”
Two years after its start, each agency’s inspector general will conduct at least one audit of the program using performance standards that the Director of National Intelligence developed.
Inspectors general will submit the results of their audits to the Director of National Intelligence, who will assess how well agencies are implementing enhanced personnel security programs governmentwide.
The 2016 budget also includes a resolution requiring the Director of National Intelligence to develop a plan to eliminate the security clearance backlog.
“The plan … shall use a risk-based approach to identify high risk populations and prioritize reinvestigations that are due or overdue to be conducted,” the legislation says.
That comes as the future of the federal security clearance process remains unclear.
Following multiple cyber breaches at the Office of Personnel Management, the White House mandated a 90-day review of the federal security clearance process in July. A request for proposal that OPM released in November for a workforce planning study of its Federal Investigation Services (FIS), indicates that the results of that review might be coming soon.
It’s still unclear which agency will ultimately own the security clearance process. A former federal counterintelligence official said the White House will create a new organization, the National Investigative Service Agency, which would assume oversight of the clearance process.
Other options included moving the services back to the Defense Department or keeping them under OPM’s oversight.
Previous attempts to reform the security clearance process have died in Congress.
The Enhanced Security Clearance Act, which had multiple versions and sponsors in 2013 and 2014, had marked similarities to the program included in the 2016 omnibus. It asked agencies to use publicly available information to review security clearance holders twice every five years.
http://federalnewsradio.com/defense/2015/12/agencies-review-security-clearance-holders-twice-every-five-years/
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