LOS ANGELES - The U.S. Senate is expected this week to affirm the anti-privacy, anti-asylum, anti-property rights bill known as Real ID attached to an appropriations measure to fund the war in Iraq and tsunami relief. The ACLU of Southern California soundly opposes Real ID.

The House of Representatives approved the controversial measure last week. By all accounts its passage in the Senate is imminent and the Real ID Act will likely be enacted without being scrutinized in any hearings or debate.

"It is a terribly disappointing measure and a blow to all of our rights," said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California. "This sweeping legislation rolls back asylum laws, attacks immigrants and sets the stage for a national ID. Congress is remiss in its duty to slip such major changes to immigration laws into a funding bill for the military without debate or discussion."

Real ID denies the persecuted safe haven and places undue burdens on permanent residents and citizens alike. Because the House sent the Real ID Act to the Senate as part of a "must pass" appropriations measure for the war in Iraq and tsunami relief, Congress failed to carefully consider and review its provisions.

The act violates the spirit of international law by allowing government officials to demand asylum seekers to obtain written "corroboration" from the very governments or militant groups who persecuted them.

"The Real ID Act will unnecessarily harm immigrants," said Ranjana Natarajan, staff attorney for the ACLU of Southern California. "Refugees will be sent home to face persecution and torture because of this law. In some cases the act would even eliminate the right of people facing deportation to have the court review their case."

Real ID will also standardize the information collected by all 50 states for driver's licenses and requires states to link their databases together for the mutual sharing of data from IDs. This will create a single national database, which has its own inherent security risks, and transforms licenses into national identity documents. The unfunded legislation will also make roads less safe by barring undocumented immigrants from obtaining driver's licenses, something 11 states have allowed in the name of public safety.

"Despite deep public opposition over the years to a national identity card, and Congress's unwillingness to even consider the idea directly, our security agencies have now gotten what they want as proponents have succeeded in pushing through Congress a thinly disguised national ID," Ripston said.

Because religious freedom is one of the most basic principles protected by our Constitution religion flourishes here in America.

In fact, more than 85 percent of Americans identify with a religion (according to a 2002 Pew Research Council Poll), and more than half of Americans of an extraordinarily wide range of faiths regularly attend services. America is home to more than 1,300 religions and more than 360,000 churches, synagogues and mosques.

The ACLU has defended the right of evangelical preachers to pass out literature on the Strip in Las Vegas and to preach on Washington state sidewalks. We have defended a Nebraskan church facing eviction by the city of Lincoln. We have defended the right of those who want to perform baptisms in a public park. We have defended the right to include religious yearbook messages on behalf of a Christian high school valedictorian. We have defended the rights of students to distribute candy canes with religious messages.

We have defended religious freedom innumerable times, but when a city or a county puts a religious emblem on its seal, it is violating this country's principles of religious freedom. And, it sends a disquieting message that the government favors one religion.

The founders of this country knew what they were doing. They knew that religion would thrive if they made sure government wasn't allowed to interfere by establishing or promoting one single state religion especially since this country has been a haven for many who have come here to escape governments with one state-sponsored religion.

Many groups and individuals fight daily to protect these important civil rights and civil liberties issues. The American Legion's call to change the Civil Rights Attorney Fees Act, 42 U.S.C. Section 1988 is a retaliatory measure based on misinformation aimed at hobbling a number of non-profit organizations, including the ACLU, that protect all people's civil rights and civil liberties. Attorney fees go to the prevailing party and without funding, the rights of all Americans would be severely curtailed.

We encourage and stand up for freedom of expression including healthy debate, but the Constitution is clear. It protects individuals from any and all attempts by the majority to curtail the liberties and rights of individuals. The ACLU exists to defend and secure those rights.

SACRAMENTO - A new bill that puts California at the forefront of efforts to guard the privacy rights of its residents cleared a major hurdle Tuesday when it was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee with strong bipartisan support.

The Identity Information Protection Act of 2005 (SB 682) zeros in on the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. It would prohibit identity documents issued by the state from containing an integrated circuit or other device that can broadcast an individual's personal information. The bill was introduced by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), and is supported by a diverse coalition of privacy, women's and conservative groups from throughout the state.

The bill now heads to the Senate Committee on Appropriations and then moves to the Senate floor for a vote.

"I think we're one step closer to a thoughtful, rational policy approach on this issue in California," said Simitian. "We're hoping to protect individual privacy, personal safety, and financial security. My goal is to ensure that state and local government will be part of the solution, not part of the problem."

"We believe goods should be tagged, not people," said Pam Noles, a policy associate with the ACLU of Southern California. "California's laws must keep up with the pace of technical advances so residents can be protected from the privacy threats represented by inappropriate use of this powerful and useful technology."

Long in use in the manufacturing, distribution and retail industries to track goods, RFID tags are also widely used in toll booths, inside pet id tags, and even seismic sensors used to collect data in land prone to earthquakes. But the escalating use of RFID in everyday lives poses a threat to the privacy and civil liberties individuals. All matter of personal information can be embedded in these chips - an individual's name, address, telephone number, date of birth, social security number, fingerprint and photograph, which can then be easily captured using scanners widely available off the shelf. Secret and remote reading of this critically personal data broadcasting from the chips puts an individual at risk of identity theft, tracking and surveillance by the government, stalking or even kidnaping.

The legislation was introduced in February, about a month after controversy erupted in a small Northern California town over mandatory use of RFIDs to track student movements at an elementary school. Parents had no idea their children had been tagged with chipped badges that carried the student's name, photo, grade, class year and school identification number.

The bill is supported by a variety of women's groups, civil rights groups, domestic violence prevention groups, business organizations, and conservative organizations including the Capitol Resource Institute, the AARP, The California Alliance Against Domestic Violence, the Statewide California Coalition for Battered Women, California NOW, and the California Commission on the Status of Women.