AUBURN – Imbed and imprint every Maine driver’s license.

Require the ID for every plane, bus or train ticket. Scan the information at the bank and the grocery store. Bury a chip inside, allowing the government to track folks as they drive through tollbooths.

The federally guided Real ID aims to make people safer. Yet, it scares Maine Rep. Scott Lansley of Sabattus.

“I’m not a conspiracy theorist,” the Republican legislator said. “But you’re going to be tracked wherever you go.”

Lansley, who has helped lead the drive to pull Maine out of the federal program, was one of four speakers Thursday at a public discussion aimed at building further opposition to the already unpopular measure.

On Jan. 26, Maine lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a resolution objecting to the Real ID Act of 2005. Since then, more than a dozen states have passed similar resolutions, objecting to the federal government’s plan to remake driver’s licenses into comprehensive identity repositories with detailed data on every card holder and shared information between every state.

It is forecast to cost states millions of dollars.

Proponents of the measure say it is a reasoned outgrowth of the 9/11 Commission’s report, which found that driver’s licenses were too easy to acquire by terrorists.

The new rules would make them tougher to get than passports.

Sen. Susan Collins has announced plans to delay the program, scheduled to go into effect in May 2008.

Meanwhile, Lansley has sponsored a bill aimed at blocking the program here in Maine. A public hearing on the bill is expected to be held within the next two weeks.

“We’re trying to drum up public support,” Lansley said. “We want to inform people what this means.”

He was joined Thursday by Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, George Smith, the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, and Shenna Bellows, the executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union. The meeting, attended by 11 people, was held at the Auburn Public Library.

No one spoke out in favor of the Real ID.

“Our freedoms are slipping away,” Smith said. “It’s always been a bad bargain.”

He compared the identification measure to some of the changes that were part of the Patriot Act.

“If you were a patriot, you had to oppose it,” Smith said. “It’s a serious abridgment to our freedom.”

Dunlap, who was part of a nationwide group of experts brought together by the Department of Homeland Security to to examine the Real ID plan, said it would be costly, around $185 million in five years.

And some of it might be impossible.

Though many of the details behind the idea are still fuzzy, tentative plans would make it harder to prove one’s identity before a license is issued. There has been little room left for people who weren’t born in hospitals, or, like many victims of Hurricane Katrina, may have lost such evidence.

For those people – and for people who might lose their license but still need ID – there are few provisions, Dunlap said.

“Then it’s tough nuggets,” he said.

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