The Department of Homeland Security has decided that hoarding your Social Security data, passport info, and visa records in their shiny new surveillance system wasn't quite creepy enough. So now they want your driver's license information too, because apparently creating a "one-stop shop for citizenship checks" requires knowing where you live, work, and whether you're an organ donor.
As reported in TPM, DHS is expanding its ironically named SAVE system (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) to include state driver's license databases. Previously, SAVE was just a tool for checking individual benefit applications. Now it's morphing into something that would make the Stasi weep with envy.
The feds approached Texas in June about a "pilot program" – because nothing says "freedom" like beta-testing ways to cancel your constitutional rights. While Texas officials were reportedly "always happy" to help build the surveillance state, they're now playing coy about whether they actually handed over the goods.
Privacy experts warn this expansion could wrongly flag actual citizens as non-citizens, since driver's license numbers get reused and people move between states. But hey, what's a little voter disenfranchisement when you're building the ultimate Big Brother database?
