State bureaucrats have converged in Washington DC for a two-day conference on REAL ID compliance. Panels cover such topics as how to get the required funding, how to meet the Act's deadlines, and how to share data across states.

One session in particular caught the eye of Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute (Full disclosure: I'm an adjunct scholar at Cato). It's a panel discussion called "Bringing your public onboard for smoothing legislative changes." The summary states that "every State DMV needs to find a way to educate their public so that they can ensure the legislature changes necessary to become Real ID compliant." The panel will also "examine how much of your (i.e., the DMV's) budget a public relations exercise is worth." Such a "public relations exercise" would presumably be conducted at taxpayer expense.

The conference is sponsored by Digimarc, Viisage, NXP, and JPMorganChase, all of whom sell the sort of high-tech identification equipment that states will need to comply with the REAL ID Act. In effect, the conference provides a forum for vendors to lobby state bureaucrats to support REAL ID implementation and to encourage them to go back to their states and lobby their legislators for "necessary" legislative changes. And presumably, most of the bureaucrats are attending the conference at the expense of their state's taxpayers.

Vendors are doubtless alarmed at the growing backlash among state legislatures against the REAL ID Act. More than a dozen states have now enacted legislation or resolutions opposing the REAL ID Act, and a majority of state legislatures have considered such legislation.

The conference's other panels aren't likely to soothe privacy advocates' concerns. For example, a Monday morning panel on implementation costs confirms fears that the national database mandated by the Real ID Act will likely be used for a lot more than tracking down terrorists. Raymond Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association, discussed additional uses for the database, including "finding fathers who aren't paying their child support" and "providing extra security for retailers using credit cards." That will certainly be convenient for credit card companies and social workers, but having so much information in one place could be a serious privacy threat if identity thieves ever got access.

Notably absent from the conference are any panels debating whether states should participate in the REAL ID program in the first place. Although some panels did focus on strategies for making the ID system more secure, there did not appear to be any speakers warning attendees that the very existence of uniform national standards and a comprehensive database are likely to make the system less secure.

Just as defense contractors thrived during the heyday of the military-industrial complex, vendors of identification equipment have prospered in the wake of the September 11 attacks. While some of the recent spending has doubtless been justified, we should worry when vendors start lobbying for new identification schemes with serious privacy problems and little or no security benefits. Lobbying activities like this week's conference are one reason that the REAL ID train keeps rolling despite serious doubts among both voters and security experts about the program's benefits.

Correction: This story was based on information provided on the conference website. However, Ars has been contacted by a representative of the National Governor's Association who says that, contrary to the description found on the conference agenda, Raymond Scheppach did not discuss using the REAL ID database for enforcing child support or authenticating credit card transactions. She said that the National Governor's Association does not advocate using the database for these purposes.