Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 18:47:25 -0500 To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> Subject: The New National I.D. Card Is In Your Wallet Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"< http://www.privacyfoundation.org/commentary/tipsheet.asp?id=53&action=0 >
POSTED: 1/23/02 The New National I.D. Card Is In Your Wallet
By Stephen Keating Executive Director Privacy Foundation
The debate over a national I.D. card has quietly shifted to a powerful, interconnected bureaucracy: state motor vehicle agencies.
Earlier this month, a representative of the agencies responsible for issuing some 200 million driver's licenses proposed taking the lead in creating a de facto national I.D.
"When you look at the expense of improving what we have already versus implementing a new national I.D. document, the hassle and expense just don't compare," Nathan Root, standards director for the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) < http://www.aamva.org/ >, told the Associated Press. "It would be a better idea just to work with what we have."
Unfortunately, Root's analysis doesn't go to the root of the question. To decide as a society that it's necessary to institute a national I.D. card, we first need to thrash it out in the public square, the press, state legislatures, and in Congress. And, if we decide that our driver's licenses should become that I.D., then we'll tell the motor vehicle agencies where to jump and how high.
"This is not an issue to be decided by 50 un-elected bureaucrats," Oklahoma State Senator Jim Dunlap said this week. "There's a democratic ideal known as state's rights, and this proposal blatantly ignores this practical and constitutional principle."
Dunlap is also the chairman of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the nation's largest bipartisan association of state legislators.
State legislators should tackle this issue because it could easily become a political football that Congress buys and punts. It's not hard to imagine an election-year scenario whereby Congress disburses tens of millions of dollars in public money to help motor vehicle agencies develop "secure" driver's license technology - including biometrics and database linking - without addressing the issue of whether that constitutes a national I.D. system.
There is already a long and sordid history of how the Social Security Number became a de facto national I.D. - used and abused by government agencies, commercial entities and identity thieves alike - without Congress ever facing up to the mess they helped make. (This will be the subject of the next Tipsheet.)
So, what exactly are the motor vehicle administrators proposing? The AAMVA outlines eight strategies, including standardizing the driver's license and the definition of residency in all states; better data on the I.D. (which could include biometrics such as fingerprints); and improved fraud prevention. Check out this page on the AAMVA website to see which vendors and experts are whispering in their ears. The documents themselves are password protected, but titles such as "Accelerating Biometric Identification" and "Establishing a National System for State-issued Secure Personal Identification" provide the flavor.
The AAMVA wants to better coordinate information sharing with the Social Security Administration, law enforcement and the Immigration and Naturalization Serrice, entities which already have some access to driver's license databases.
Before setting new standards, launching new technologies and creating a national I.D. database, however, it will be well worth investigating and tightening up the practices within the states themselves:
The AAMVA's home state of Virginia is where up to seven of the terrorist hijackers obtained fraudulent driver's licenses or I.D. cards prior to Sept. 11, because the standards for application were so lax. The old rules, since changed, allowed an applicant to receive an I.D. with notarized forms, rather than with a passport or driver's license from another state.
"Four states (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Utah) issue driver's licenses to illegal aliens under the guise of 'safer streets'," according to Phil Kent of the Southeastern Legal Foundation. "California is considering OKing such legislation."
In 1998, three states (Colorado, Florida and South Carolina) planned to sell their driver's license photo databases to a New Hampshire company called Image Data, which intended to create an anti-fraud database for use at retail outlets. Once the details became public of how the database was being created, legislators in those states shut the sales down.
States including Colorado, inexplicably, give drivers the option of having their Social Security Number printed on the license itself - an invitation to identity theft if the license is ever lost or stolen.
The current goal of the state motor vehicle administrators - to set consistent standards and assure that holders of driver's licenses are who they say they are - is worthy. But it would be a mistake to give those administrators the power and funding to devise a national I.D./driver's license database without a robust public debate and a thorough examination of current practices and loopholes.
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