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The Drive For Better Identification
by Sarah Lai Stirland
As Congress debates legislation on the recommendations of the panel that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, disparate parties will be scanning the final bill for the inclusion of a provision on state-issued driver's licenses. The idea -- to establish minimum, federal standards for the licenses -- could have a significant impact on individual privacy and the state budgets.
The provision addresses the standards individuals would have to meet to obtain driver's licenses, as well as the technical security standards designed to prevent counterfeiting. Proponents of the idea say that privacy safeguards can be built into the system and that the establishment of some fundamental standards is long overdue. Opponents argue that the cost of implementing the idea properly would far outweigh the benefits.
Lawmakers are resurrecting the idea in Congress, citing its recommendation in the report of the so-call 9/11 Commission as a reason for its inclusion in the legislation. The report noted several times that the 9/11 terrorists generally had managed to weave themselves into the fabric of everyday American life by easily obtaining legitimate driver's licenses.
"All but one of the 9/11 hijackers acquired some form of U.S. identification document, some by fraud," the 9/11 Commission report noted. "Acquisition of these forms of identification would have assisted them in boarding commercial flights, renting cars and other necessary activities."
Too Much Intelligence?
The House bill drafted after the recommendations were released would establish standards for the kinds of information that driver's licenses should contain, as well as the documents that individuals need to procure licenses. It also would specify that the licenses should contain security features to prevent forgeries and that states should link their licensing databases.
The legislation, H.R. 10, further would mandate standards for the issuance of other key documents that establish identity, such as birth and death certificates, and it calls for the establishment of databases that record births and deaths.
Last Thursday, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz, introduced similar yet less-detailed ideas in an amendment he proposed to intelligence legislation, S. 2845, on the Senate floor. He said he had tried hard to balance the nation's civil-liberties concerns while also adopting the 9/11 Commission's recommendation.
The amendment would establish federal standards for birth certificates, driver's licenses and other key documents that establish identity but would not require the linking of databases. It also would provide grants to help states establish databases that record births and deaths. "This amendment would not mandate a national ID card," McCain said. "We believe it fulfills the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission without trampling on states' rights, privacy or civil liberties."
The proposals have drawn fire from the National Governors Association (NGA), National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), National Taxpayers Union and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Both NGA and NCSL late last week called the plans unfunded mandates, even though both bills would authorize federal money to help implement the ideas. The ACLU called the House proposal an attempt to establish an identity card.
"The imposition of federal standards for state-issued identification would, no doubt, dump billions of dollars worth of unfunded mandates on states who are already footing the bill for numerous federal programs," NCSL President John Hurson said in a statement. That statement said that state legislators should form a task force with governors to establish standards.
In a letter to the leaders of the House Government Reform Committee, NGA Executive Director Ray Scheppach noted that the House legislation was drafted without consulting governors, that it would exclude states from establishing the standards and that it would require an unprecedented level of information sharing, both between states and states and the federal government.
An Old Idea Resurrected
The idea of establishing national standards for driver's licenses has drawn widespread opposition in the past. When the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) issued such a proposal after the 2001 terrorist attacks, a group of 44 organizations from both the left and the right urged President Bush to oppose such a plan.
"Once government databases are integrated through a uniform ID, access to and uses of sensitive personal information would inevitably expand," they wrote. "Law enforcement, tax collectors, and other government agencies would want use of the data. Employers, landlords, insurers, credit agencies, mortgage brokers, direct mailers, private investigators, civil litigants, and a long list of other private parties would also begin using the ID and even the database, further eroding the privacy that Americans rightly expect in their personal lives."
Organizations such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) have said they do not oppose efforts to prevent fraud but that the creation of national databases causes privacy concerns. When AAMVA floated its proposal, EPIC said such databases would increase the risk of fraud by creating profiles of people. EPIC also questioned the safeguards for the proposal.
But Robert Atkinson, director of the Technology and New Economy Project at the moderate Democratic group the Progressive Policy Institute, argues that current legislation would not go far enough to protect the nation from terrorists.
In an essay published Friday, he highlighted the argument in the 9/11 Commission report that the nation needs national standards for IDs because the standards could prevent terrorists from obtaining IDs that enable them to perform basic tasks like renting cars or opening banking accounts. And he argued that the intelligence bills should incorporate efforts to modernize the process of issuing state driver's licenses.
Atkinson backs a plan for several states to test voluntary programs based on more secure driver's licenses that contain computer chips and biometric information for verification. He argued that such a system would differ from a national ID card because the system would be voluntary.
And in a paper detailing how such a modernization system would work, Atkinson and his colleague, Shane Ham, specify that the linking of state DMV databases is essential because it would enable the issuing authorities to conduct background checks for existing licenses. The key, they argue in the paper, would be to include checks in the system so it could not be abused.
The Price Of Improvement
But security experts said policymakers should think about the benefit of establishing such systems. "The question is, 'How much are you going to spend versus what it's worth?'" said Bruce Schneier, founder and chief technology officer for the computer-security company Counterpane.
"I'm not opposed to improving the system, but again, it's a matter of tradeoffs," he said. "If you're going to include biometrics such as iris scans, you're going to have to get into a whole other debate about the problems that's going to try to solve and the pros and cons of such systems."
He said if policymakers are concerned about document authenticity, they should examine the Treasury Department's process for creating secure documents because that department has done a cost-efficient job of creating documents that are very expensive to forge.
On the other hand, Schneier said that checking individuals' identities does not always reveal their intentions. "What we want to do is measure intentionality," he said. "We pretend that knowing your name has to do with intentionality. It's a ridiculous notion."
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