WASHINGTON -- Your driver's license soon may become a lot smarter, and a lot more worrisome.
State motor vehicle agencies want Congress to standardize the license, share more driver data between states and mandate techniques such as biometrics to "uniquely identify" each of America's 228 million drivers.
The group behind the push for what critics derisively call a "national ID" is the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA), which met last weekend in Arlington, Virginia, to figure out how to talk Congress into handing them $100 million for the project. On Monday, AAMVA arranged for buses to take conference-goers to Capitol Hill for a day of lobbying legislators.
Welcome to the latest tug of war, post-Sept. 11, between security and privacy. The AAMVA's fans in Washington note that four of the five hijackers who crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon had fraudulent identifications, while detractors argue that standardizing drivers' licenses is tantamount to a national ID card in all but name -- and un-American in any form.
"This is not about a national ID," says Jason King, AAMVA's public affairs manager. "The reality is that corporate America came to rely on (the driver's license) as something more. If people are going to use a driver's license for more, then we have a responsibility to create uniform standards."
Last week, the AAMVA received a hearty endorsement from an unexpected quarter, the Democratic Party-affiliated Progressive Policy Institute, which endorsed a far more expansive scheme that has privacy groups seething.
In a 12-page article, institute analysts Shane Ham and Robert Atkinson go much further than the AAMVA. They want licenses to become microchip-implanted smartcards holding not merely retinal scans or fingerprints --- but also "food stamps, voter registration, library cards, hunting and fishing licenses" and a wealth of corporate data like E-Z-Pass, gas station automatic billing and banking information.
"The number of smart card applications will explode, however, when DMVs begin issuing smart cards with an open architecture. With virtually every adult in the nation carrying a smart card, companies will not have to invest in their own chip cards or fobs to take advantage of smart card applications," Ham and Atkinson write.
They predict that if cardholders "transferred just two or three functions to their driver's license -- an ATM card, a credit card, a garage access key, a frequent flyer number, a grocery store discount card -- the improved cards could pay for themselves."
Anyone with a smartcard-license would have to have their finger or retina scanned whenever they wanted to use the license to buy something, fly on an airplane or use government services.
Ham and Atkinson dismiss privacy concerns: "A small but vocal fringe of special interest civil liberty and privacy groups has already begun to demagogue the issue in the media. Countering such misinformation and paranoid scenarios about 'tracking' the movements of citizens will take a patient and concerted education effort."
Most of the AAMVA's documents relating to its plan, with the exception of an executive summary, are password-protected and only available to AAMVA members. But AAMVA did provide Wired News with an eight-page hard copy of the task force's recommendations.
While opponents of the AAMVA and PPI proposals raise a slew of objections, including the fact that federal task forces concluded such a smartcard-license was unnecessary, the most chilling objection may be the idea of a gargantuan database that tracks and records any time you use your ID. If all states issued the smartcard-licenses, such detailed information about their use would become a gold mine for the IRS, police and direct marketers.
A coalition of liberal, conservative and libertarian groups raised precisely that objection in a letter to President Bush on Monday.
"A national ID could require all Americans to carry an internal passport at all times, compromising our privacy, limiting our freedom, and exposing us to unfair discrimination based on national origin or religion," the coalition wrote. "Once government databases are integrated through a uniform ID, access to and uses of sensitive personal information would inevitably expand."
The 42 groups signing the letter include the American Civil Liberties Union, American Conservative Union, Eagle Forum, the Japanese American Citizens League, People for the American Way and the National Conference of State Legislatures.
"If you look at the creation of the Social Security number, it was never meant to be a tracking number or for identification purposes. Basically, you have the Social Security number created for one purpose, and now you have it used -- overused, we would say -- by the government and the private sector for identification purposes," says Eagle Forum's Lori Waters. "Driver's licenses are for driving. They're not a guarantee of citizenship."
In a statement on Wednesday, the Libertarian Party said it "remains steadfast in its opposition to any sort of national identification program.... This proposal would be the beginning of the end of privacy in America, and the president has an obligation to reject it."
The Driver's Privacy Protection Act, which took effect Sept. 13, 1997, limits who can obtain and use personal information from state motor vehicle records, such as name, address, Social Security number, photograph and medical information.
What it doesn't cover is information on accidents, driving violations and driver's status, which aren't counted as personal information. The law also gives police and insurance companies access to records.
Currently, the only driver information that appears to be routinely stored in a central database is the National Driver Register, run by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The department says it features data "about drivers who have had their licenses revoked or suspended, or who have been convicted of serious traffic violations such as driving while impaired by alcohol or drugs."
Probably the most detailed critique yet of the AAMVA proposal came from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, in a report (PDF) released Wednesday.
It says: "The only distinctions between the AAMVA proposal and other national ID proposals rejected in the past are that (a) the card will not be issued by the federal government but by state motor vehicle agencies under mandatory federal regulations, and (b) the driver's license and DMV issued identity cards, held by 228 million individuals, are not (yet) mandatory. These distinctions are illusory rather than substantive."
In a conference call, EPIC director Marc Rotenberg called for "wider public debate" about the AAMVA's plan, noting that Congress had considered similar proposals before and rejected them. (In fact, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), even increased drivers' privacy, requiring that DMVs seek written consent before selling photos and personal data.)
A federal appeals court ruled last December (PDF) that it was unconstitutional for police to arrest someone for refusing to show an ID, saying the "arrest violated the Fourth Amendment."
What's at stake in this license tussle, says Rotenberg, is nothing less than "the ability to travel and move about this country without being asked by public officials or private actors to present identification."
Robert Zarate contributed to this report.
