-Caveat Lector- September 26, 2001 Major Business News Hijackers' Deeds Highlight Issue Of Rampant Fake IDs in the U.S. By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY Staff Reporter THE WALL STREET JOURNAL One thing evident in the wake of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks is that the identification used by many of the terrorists often had little to do with who they were. At least four of the hijackers apparently used false passports to acquire authentic American drivers' licenses and other documents. A suspected associate traveled back and forth across the U.S.-Canadian border and acquired a driver's license in Michigan based on his Massachusetts license, even though he had an arrest warrant outstanding in Massachusetts. Federal officials say some of the terrorists may have engaged in "identity theft" -- which usually means stealing Social Security numbers to impersonate other individuals with false IDs. The hijackers were operating within a U.S. personal-identification regime that is one of the loosest in the developed world, with no single national ID and limited cross-checking or authentication of local-government records. The primary form of identification used by most Americans is the drivers' license, an often-forged document governed by 50 different sets of rules. "ID documents in the U.S. aren't worth the plastic they're printed on," says Joseph Atick, chief executive of Visionics Inc., a Jersey City, N.J., company that makes biometric identification systems, including computerized face-recognition. The terror attacks have raised calls for tightening up the system, including consideration of a national identity card, something that never before has been seriously proposed in the U.S. because of civil-liberties concerns. Rep. George Gekas, chairman of the House subcommittee on immigration, is considering proposing national IDs among "ways to tighten up the national security of visas and a host of other" immigration procedures, a spokeman for the Pennsylvania Republican says. Experts say that starting a national identity card or even standardizing or adopting stronger anticounterfeiting measures for drivers' licenses would pose daunting logistical problems. Many of these ideas rely on encoding IDs with biometric identification -- usually fingerprints or face patterns -- which would take a long time in a nation of 280 million. "If you started now it would be 2˝ years before most states could replace the driver's licenses of even half their people," says John A. Munday, president of a Polaroid Corp. unit that makes drivers' licenses for 37 states. Civil-liberties advocates continue to oppose the creation of a vast national database with reams of information about the comings and goings of law-abiding citizens. "Once you start collecting databases of very personal information, it's scary to think about where it would go," says Shari Steele, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy watchdog group based in San Francisco. The problems with identity come in two forms: counterfeit IDs and legitimate IDs that authenticate the wrong person. The spread of color laser printers has made forging drivers' licenses a cottage industry near many college campuses, where they are used by minors to buy alcohol. States have fought back by embedding in the licenses hard-to-copy holograms that are destroyed when kids try to insert a substitute photo. Few bartenders or airport reservation agents are familiar with out-of-state licenses, so forgeries often pass. David Myers, a Florida beverage-control officer who trains police nationally on recognizing false IDs, says there are 16,000 different types of birth certificates and 242 different drivers' licenses in the U.S. -- including old and new designs, special licenses of young drivers and other variations. "Very few people can recognize even a small portion of them," he says. Even more troublesome are real IDs issued to the wrong people. Once someone gets a "breeder document," such as a counterfeit birth certificate, they can use it to obtain genuine driver's licenses or Social Security cards, experts say. "Anyone with a laser printer and PhotoShop could produce a birth certificate," says Polaroid's Mr. Munday. Birth certificates are accepted by most motor vehicle departments. Motor vehicle departments have various standards for checking databases. When someone brings an out-of-state drivers' license, almost all states check it against a national bad-driver registry. But that doesn't link them to criminal databases that would hold arrest warrants. State Department lists of terrorists aren't checked either. Fewer than a dozen states are equipped to check the Social Security Administration database to see if the applicants' name and Social Security number match. The Air Line Pilots Association, which had been advocating a special identity card for pilots using biometrics before the attack, now thinks all air crews should have one. It also says it may support government-issued cards for all airport personnel if airport security is federalized. For airports, the country could go further and issue a sort of air-identity card. To speed frequent international travelers, Electronic Data Systems Corp. developed a system for the Immigration and Naturalization Service using an ID card that includes the unique hand geometry of each person, which would ensure that the card owner is the person holding the card. 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