From this

Secretary Michael Chertoff, head of the Department of Homeland Security, announced a set of final revisions to the controversial Real ID Act in a press conference this morning. It's not clear at this point how extensive those revisions truly are, but it is clear that DHS feels that the rules are now in their final form and that the period for discussion, revision, and dispute is now over...

Chertoff first addressed privacy advocates by declaring, "We are not going to have a national database." Rather, Real ID will link databases together with a unified query service, in a manner that enables them to function as a de facto national database. (See the difference?)

"This is a great teaching moment on the challenges of really reconfiguring our society so that we can take reasonable steps to secure ourselves in a way that is nevertheless consistent with our civil liberties and our prosperity," Chertoff said in the Q&A session following the announcement.

I hate to side, even slightly, with the ACLU on this, but it would certainly be nice if there were no Real ID. It's unfortunate that "civil libertarians" from the ACLU have worked to both enable illegal immigration and try to undercut other ways to fight terrorism.