Opinion by Sen. Warren Limmer (Maple Grove), republished from USA Today:

After witnessing the destructive abuse by Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, which aggressively monitored citizens in order to preserve totalitarian control, Americans are totally justified in opposing a national ID card — an opposition that may finally be overridden.

If you’re concerned about proving your legal status, possibly exposing your Social Security number or providing a digital photo, which allows checking with facial recognition software, you are not alone.

The Real ID driver’s license provides a chilling combination of personal data access and endless surveillance opportunities.

In addition, if you’re opposed to any records that satisfy “any other purpose the secretary of Homeland Security determines” (without congressional approval) being digitally included in your driver’s license, and then shared with government employees in every other state in the country, your opinion is not wanted. The Real ID Act has been passed, and the feds are on a rampage to make every state comply. They will even stop citizens from boarding airliners or entering federal buildings to pressure your state legislators to succumb.

To protect civil liberties, both liberals and conservatives ranging from the ACLU to the CATO Institute have been united in opposing the Real ID Act. Likewise, the program will cost American taxpayers at least $11 billion over five years.

It’s never a good idea to store personal data in large centralized databases, since once they’re hacked, all records can be exploited. And government databases are hacked continuously.

Most important, before we create a surveillance platform that can, and most likely will, be expanded, it is time for a course correction.

Congress must repeal the authority it gave to the secretary of Homeland Security to expand the uses of Real ID. Only Congress, not political appointees, should have the power to expand surveillance authority, while we as a people hold them accountable.

Warren Limmer is a Minnesota state senator, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and author of a 2009 law prohibiting Real ID compliance by the state.