Senator readies driver's license bill

In the interests of national security and identity theft prevention, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) expects to introduce legislation this month providing minimum uniform standards for state-issued driver's licenses.

He offered little detail about what the legislation would contain, following an April 16 hearing on the issue by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee's Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring and the District of Columbia Subcommittee.

But he said the legislation could provide incentives for states to meet minimum standards and add minimal biometric identification tools, such as fingerprints, to licenses. "If we move legislation on a reasonable level, it'll create force for change and a national movement," he said.

The issue erupted after officials learned that many of the Sept. 11 terrorists fraudulently obtained driver's licenses. Durbin said the hearing wasn't about creating a national identification system, but about creating "accurate national standards" for state-issued licenses.

Durbin, who said he was a victim of identity theft, heard from a panel that was heavily in favor of strengthening the driver's license as an ID document by establishing national minimum standards, incorporating biometric security features, linking state and federal databases and imposing stiffer penalties for fraud.

"What we have is a system that is broken and a product that is not very reliable," said Betty Serian, a vice chairwoman with the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (www. aamva.org), which issued recommendations for national standards earlier this year.

An example of a good information system, she said, is the 1986 federally mandated Commercial Driver's License Information System, an AAMVA-managed clearinghouse used by motor vehicle agencies to limit commercial drivers to only one such license. In a four-year period, the system kept 871,000 potentially dangerous drivers off the roads, she said.

Richard Varn, Iowa's chief information officer, said the issue really isn't the ID card itself but the databases. "It isn't what you carry. It is which databases are accurate, complete and accessible," he said. Iowa is currently creating an Identity-Security Clearinghouse to link birth and death records with a Social Security number and driver's license.

Although the National Governors Association (www.nga.org) and the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (www.nascio.org) have no official position on the issue, Varn said, both are working with other organizations on the issue.

In Kansas, state Sen. Barbara Allen said she introduced legislation to stem identity theft. "Today, I regret to say, Kansas is one of the easiest states in the nation in which to obtain false identification and to steal someone's identity," she said.

Although privacy is an issue, she said that only those with something to hide would lose out if the security of driver's licenses were improved.

J. Bradley Jansen, deputy director of the Center for Technology Policy at the Free Congress Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said creating a national ID system would not prevent terrorism or identity fraud, but it would be expensive and dependent on a "massive bureaucracy."

"Even with a biometric identifier, such as a fingerprint, there is no guarantee that individuals won't be identified, or more importantly, misidentified, in error," he said.

It would be difficult, he added, "to remedy identity fraud when a thief has a national ID card with your name on it but his biometric information."

But Barry Goleman, a vice president with American Management Systems Inc.'s State and Local Solutions Group, said adding biometric features to a driver's license could cost around $5 a card if they are mass-produced.

"Don't let detractors say that this can't be done," he said.