Here we go again with Big Brother, also known as the federal government, trying to gain more control over us.

Despite the countless incidents of identity theft in our country, the Bush administration is pushing for the Real ID program to replace our current driver’s license as a form of identification. The plan is for these forms of identification to be required at airports instead of our current driver’s licenses.

Under the plan, states would have until 2011 to require its citizens to submit a digital photograph, birth certificate and other information to the department of motor vehicles. I guess there will be no hiding from the federal government. Even worse is that the federal government plans to make state and local governments pay for the program. Some cost estimates are in the neighborhood of $23 billion.

Both of Montana’s senators, Max Baucus and Jon Tester, got it right in press releases that stress the harassment of such a program.

Baucus said, “We need to be serious about fighting terrorism and keeping this country safe, but we don’t need to do it by jeopardizing Americans’ privacy and creating another bureaucracy. This reaffirms that Real ID needs to be repealed. It’s time we look at realistic ways to defend our homeland that don’t include shifting unfunded mandates onto Montana. Real ID is a really bad idea.”

Tester commented, “From the start the Real ID Act has been a fancy way of saying ‘national identification cards’ and it’s a textbook Washington boondoggle. The people of Montana have spoken. They don’t want a Big Brother program that will infringe on their privacy and they certainly don’t want to foot the bill.”

Being Americans, we believe in our freedom and this is another attack of those rights. There has to be a better way to improve security than simply harassing honest, hardworking Americans.