One of the disturbing revelations to emerge from the Sept. 11 commission report was the relative ease with which the hijackers acquired driver’s licenses and other identification cards, sometimes by using phony documents, often by exploiting the states with the weakest requirements. Some of the hijackers used the cards to board aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001.
The Sept. 11 commission, which exhaustively retraced the travel of the hijackers before the attack, exposed something that every American knows: just how feeble and unreliable driver’s licenses have become as a way to verify identity. Even as driver’s licenses have become ubiquitous as ID–to board a plane, cash a check, or buy a drink–generations of teenagers have bought fake ones, and generations of counterfeiters have proven adept at creating them or the phony documents that are then used to get real licenses.
At the moment, different states require different proofs before issuing a driver’s license. At least one state didn’t even require photos on licenses until last year. As a 2003 report by the Markle Foundation bluntly summed up: “Driver’s licenses are still the weakest link in a weak chain.” That chain must be strengthened.
“Fraud in identification documents is no longer just a problem of theft,” the commission wrote. “At many entry points to vulnerable facilities, including gates for boarding aircraft, sources of identification are the last opportunity to ensure that people are who they say they are and to check whether they are terrorists.”
The intelligence overhaul bill passed by Congress last year wisely required the U.S. Department of Transportation to issue minimum standards on what documentation a state must require before it can issue a license or a personal ID card that the federal government will recognize. The new law also called for improved security for so-called “feeder” documents, such as birth certificates or Social Security cards.
What will this mean to the average American? New licenses may include something like a hard-to-counterfeit hologram. Or there may be new instant online checks at driver’s license offices on birth certificates, says Jason King, a spokesman for the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. The rules haven’t been written yet. And some of that would change if a bill passed recently by the House becomes law.
The current measures make sense. But some civil liberties groups fear that they will be a huge and unwarranted step toward a national identification card for Americans. They worry that the government will gather more personal data on Americans and link it in a new national database that would allow the government to constantly monitor those with driver’s licenses or ID cards. They fear an invasion of privacy in the name of the war on terror.
That seems overwrought. Tightening the standards for state driver’s licenses or ID cards, to make sure that you are who you say you are, seems preferable to the alternative–a federal identification system and national ID. This seems to be a reasonable effort to balance public safety and privacy concerns.
A national standard for state licenses may not put counterfeiters out of business, it may not even thwart teens who want to buy fake IDs for bars. But it seems likely to make those efforts more difficult–and for anyone who would cause destruction by gaining access to restricted places with phony identification. The new federal standards can achieve that, without creating new opportunities for officials to abuse the information that is collected.
