here’s an article from the African American Intellectual History Society on #RealID as a vector for racist surveillance:

❝ The Racist Origins of the Real ID Act https://www.aaihs.org/the-racist-origins-of-the-real-id-act/

remember: since slaves were not considered people, plantation owners made it a point to make privacy a luxury; not a right.

for abusers & human traffickers, privacy is only for the authority, the oligarchs, the capitalists, not the e̶n̶s̶l̶a̶v̶e̶d̶ workers.

we need to know how #RealID is used for #ICE #terrorism.

/🧵

as i have said before, my expertise is “reading” the cultural production of peoples living in dictatorships or theocratic monarchic rule.

i do watch legacy tv for sports and one of the things that i noticed immediately in 2025, was how the Trump regime has NOT changed anything about #RealID. on the contrary, Noem has been pushing hard for it. and by that, i mean by cynically using a Black woman to normalize the surveillance that comes with it:

https://www.usatoday.com/videos/travel/airline-news/2025/05/07/real-id-explained-what-it-is-why-it-matters-and-how-to-get-yours/83481285007/

@eff @ProPublica

🧵…

@AltAltNPS Remember when all the "conservatives" freaked out about #RealID and calls for firearm registration because they didn't trust anything that looked remotely like it could create a #privacy-invading national database of citizens?

(Never mind that the Social Security Administration and IRS already had national databases of everyone with a social security number, which includes...every tax-paying citizen and therefore nearly every eligible voter.)