Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- [I wrote: In the long run it'ill be a question of who "owns" the government or in whose interests it operates. It's seems evident who owns it or at least in whose interests it operates now.] ID, please Idea of national identity card system gains momentum in wake of attacks By Ross Kerber, Globe Staff, 9/24/2001 Suddenly, a national identity card system doesn't seem so far-fetched. An idea that had relatively little support before the Sept. 11 terror attacks now may be gaining some momentum. With government agencies looking for new ways to track suspects, and companies responding with new technology, the issue is now on the agenda of a congressional subcommittee. Privacy objections have been raised against such proposals in the past. But in recent years, state motor-vehicle bureaucrats have quietly laid the technical groundwork to allow authorities to instantly check any driver's license against official databases. The system encourages states to standardize the bar codes and magnetic stripes on the millions of driver's licenses they issue each year. This means data such as a person's name and address can be quickly scanned in any jurisdiction. A few companies already sell hardware to allow data-scanners to compare the licenses against government records, much like the credit-card readers widely used in retail stores. All of these steps were initially meant to help police during traffic stops and to deter underage drinking. But since the destruction of the World Trade Center, the license technologies have also drawn interest from federal authorities looking to pick out suspects moving through checkpoints like airports or border crossings. One scanning-device maker, Logix Co. of Longmont, Colo., said it received an order from the Secret Service's financial-crimes division last week. The agency plans to use the readers to combat financial fraud by comparing data from credit cards to data encoded on driver's licenses. Scott Bahneman, a Logix Cos. vice president, said he has held talks with other agencies, including the State Department, in the days after the attacks. Officials hope the scanners might be used to automatically compare identity-card data with electronic watch lists of wanted individuals, Bahneman said. State Department officials say upgraded driver's licenses could make it harder to obtain passports under false names. Since driver's licenses are the most common form of identification that Americans use to obtain passports, ''anything one could do make that [driver's license] a more secure document, we'd be in support of,'' said a State Department official who asked not to be named. Whatever driver's license technologies emerge will help illustrate the balance that society strikes between privacy and security. The high-tech upgrades are being discussed partly because authorities suspect some of the Sept. 11 hijackers may have used false identities during the years they lived in the United States. Until more specifics are known about the terrorists' tactics, of course, it won't be clear whether new license formats would have made a difference. One forum for the discussion will be the House subcommittee on immigration, which is considering new passport technologies in hopes of deterring future attackers from entering the country. Subcommittee chairman George Gekas of Pennsylvania said a national ID card system will also be considered. ''Over the years, that kind of thing has been deemed to be like Big Brother, and therefore objectionable,'' Gekas said in an interview. But while he won't necessarily endorse such a proposal, he believes the terror attacks have changed the political climate toward the idea. Besides, given all of the advances in driver's licenses, Gekas said, ''for all intents and purposes we're practically at the situation where the identity of every American is readily available.'' He's not far off. Most states have already agreed to design their licenses according to guidelines from the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, in Arlington, Va., known as the ''National Standard for the Driver License/Identification Card.'' The standard would apply to cards issued to nondrivers. The 90-page document describes a host of ways to make security features more useful to authorities in any state. For instance, the paper suggests exactly how states might format the magnetic stripes that 21 states, including Massachusetts, run across the back of their license cards. These stripes can hold up to 275 bytes of data, enough to encode most of the information printed on the front of the cards, such as a person's name and address. Magnetic stripes are useful because they can be read by credit-card scanners, already present at millions of retail counters. But the data on the stripes can be altered by counterfeiters as well. To store more information more securely, states can use a two-dimension bar code, a field of thousands of black-and-white pixels that takes up about a square inch and resembles the cover of a composition notebook. These bar codes can hold about 2,000 bytes of data, or enough to encode a small mugshot of a person. So far, 24 states, also including Massachusetts, have begun to include such a barcode; the US military does as well. Nine states and the District of Columbia also store some form of biometric information on the bar code, such as a person's fingerprint. A few states, including Delaware and South Carolina, are also considering licenses that would include computer chips, which could store many times as much personal information. Polaroid Corp.'s identification-card division in Bedford is the largest producer of state driver's licenses. Division president John Munday predicts there will be calls for more security features following the events of Sept. 11. ''There's a long way to go in terms of the opportunity to increase security,'' he said. The costs will hold back some states, Munday said. New Jersey officials, for instance, estimate they will have to spend $12 million to begin to include bar codes and other security features. But the political issues present more uncertainty, Munday said. ''Personally, I'd rather feel safe on an airplane, than not have my picture displayed'' in electronic data, he said. ''But others might disagree.'' Many privacy advocates have declined to be interviewed about new security technologies since the events of Sept. 11. Asked about the new driver's-license standard and Gekas's comments, a spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union would only note that the organization has opposed plans in the past that it feared would lead to the creation of national identity cards. For instance, the group opposed a 1998 plan by the Department of Transportation to require states to obtain drivers' Social Security numbers and photos to help enforce immigration rules. The ACLU said the proposal would ''violate the most basic of American liberties: the right to be left alone.'' Others say the attacks call for a reevaluation of how much government tracking might be acceptable. High-tech licenses that are harder to fake might also help protect individuals against crimes like identity theft, said Deborah Hurley, a Harvard counter-terrorism expert. ''There's a big space between the way we lived a few weeks ago and today,'' Hurley said. ''People tend to see it as either a swing into maximum-security mode or none at all. ''But there's a lot of things we could do in between.'' Ross Kerber can be reached by e-mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED] begin:vcard n:Robb;Karen tel;pager:www.federaltimes.com tel;fax:703-750-8603 tel;home:703-503-2042 tel;work:703-750-8659 Web: www.federaltimes.com ------------------------------------------------- This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: archive@jab.org T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
