OKLAHOMA CITY — We here at Oklahoma Watchdog applaud Moore Republican and “anti-big-brother, anti-big-government” legislator Rep. Paul Wesselhoft for his filing of House Bill 2569 . This is an important bill which would protect “Oklahoman’s driver’s licenses from government intrusion by preemptively allowing state and local governments from tracking a person’s location or obtaining information from an individual’s driver’s license.”

This brings to mind several instances where a trip to buy alcohol at a local Target store resulted in the swiping of a driver’s license through a machine at the cash register. In July 2008, your Oklahoma Watchdog, writing for Red Dirt Report, posted a piece titled “Target-ing my driver’s license.” We spent quite a while trying to get information from Target at the Minnesota headquarters regarding the reasons why they swiped the DL’s. Still no response.

Continuing, Wesselhoft said in a press release: “Through technology, governments, corporate and private entities can track a person’s location and personal information if one’s driver’s license is embedded with Radio Frequency Indentification (RFID) chip or special ink. They can be tracked by satellites, radio towers or even through doors in buildings as one walks through them.”

Wesselhoft is responding to S. 126 1 in the U.S. Congress, the “PASS ID” act which would federalize and make state driver’s licenses into a national ID card. If Wesselhoft’s bill becomes law, notes the press release, Oklahoma could be legally exempted from having to participate in the PASS ID law. Additionally, the PASS ID would violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

Wesselhoft also noted that it is already state law that people can not be embedded with a microchip or permanent mark.

Already, commentators are favorably noting HB 2569. Stilwell resident and contributing columnist to Red Dirt Report Russell Turner wrote a column this week titled “Pets, chips and God” and notes that while it may be o.k. to microchip a pet in case it is lost, the state has no business tracking and tracing citizens. Writes Turner: “Only God should have the ability to keep tabs on us 24/7.”

Indeed.

Copyright 2010 Oklahoma Watchdog