Posted on 12/30/2004 6:07:28 PM PST by Coleus
Bar-coded licenses promoted in New Jersey
WASHINGTON -- Walk into one of New Jersey's 45 motor-vehicle offices to get a drivers license and you're instantly under surveillance by closed-circuit TV and an undercover officer. Even before you get in line, a state worker checks your passport, birth certificate or other required documents.
When you get your license, you'll notice a bar code on the back that police officers can read with electronic scanners to verify your identity -- one of 22 security features built into the card. And forget about renewing your license by mail: Everyone now must show up.
Those changes adopted by New Jersey may serve as a roadmap for a national push to make all drivers licenses tougher to duplicate.
The law, which enacts intelligence reforms urged by a commission looking at the Sept. 11 attacks, seeks to close a potential vulnerability -- identity fraud -- that could let terrorists roam the country undetected. Most of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers got drivers licenses or other forms of identification that allowed them to board commercial flights with little scrutiny, according to the commission report.
"It was the key document to launch the attacks," said Amanda Bowman of Sloatsburg, N.Y., president of the Coalition for a Secure Driver's License. Coalition members include people who lost family members on Sept. 11.
"Three years later, we think this is literally the issue where the rubber hits the road," Bowman said.
But skeptics say new restrictions on drivers licenses could mean new hassles for consumers -- higher costs, unnecessary delays and a hefty dose of Big Brother -- without really improving security.
New Jersey spent more than $10 million bolstering license security, a cost that prompted the state to raise the price of a license from $18 to $24. And its decision to do away with mail-ins is expected to lengthen waiting lines.
The new law says the federal government must pay for the new security measures for licenses, but states aren't convinced they'll ever see the money.
Supporters say tougher standards will discourage forgers and improve highway safety by making it easier to take improperly licensed drivers off the road.
The new federal law requires all state-issued licenses to have digital photographs. They also must be designed to be tamper-proof, which could involve an eye scan or some other form of biometrics.
Most chilling to some is the requirement that the licenses have "common machine-readable identity information," such as a magnetic strip or, in the case of New Jersey, a bar code.
"Is the government literally going to be watching you?" said Cheye Calvo of the National Conference of State Legislatures. "That's a big deal because when you get into federal standards, you're walking a very thin line from turning a drivers license into a national identification card."
Drivers licenses, which states have been issuing for about a century without federal interference, already are the primary identification used by most people. They are displayed far more often to bartenders, airline agents and bank tellers than to police officers for driving infractions.
"We've got to be able to produce a very authentic credential that the American public can rely on not just for driving," said Jason King, spokesman for the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. "The state DMVs have been looking to make their process and operation more secure, and this legislation is a step in the right direction."
One aspect the law doesn't address: whether illegal aliens should be allowed to get a license. The homeland security legislation nearly collapsed over the issue, but lawmakers opposed to the practice agreed to take up the issue as a separate matter in the upcoming congressional session.
Currently 10 states -- Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin -- don't require licensees to be U.S. residents. An 11th state, Tennessee, allows undocumented immigrants to obtain a "certificate for driving," but it can't be used for identification.
More secure drivers licenses should help make roads safer. Each year, 8,400 people nationwide die in traffic crashes involving an improperly licensed driver. With a better means of checking credentials, some of those drivers could be identified and removed before they get into trouble, King said.
Marv Johnson, a lawyer with the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the IDs created under the new law won't make the country any safer.
Most countries experiencing a high rate of terrorism have a national ID, and one-third of those use biometric identifiers, according to the ACLU. The new licenses will give the federal government another way to keep track of citizens while creating a false sense of security, Johnson said.
"You're not going to stop counterfeiting and you're not going to stop forgeries," he said. "It will cost more, (but) it will be much easier to steal someone's identity."
Critics point out that the law won't prevent government workers from illegally selling bogus licenses. Connecticut and Virginia have been investigating license-selling schemes, and a federal jury recently found a North Carolina motor-vehicle employee guilty of such crimes.
Gordon Deal, spokesman for the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, conceded that fraud is always a worry but said the new changes in his state already are making a difference.
"We've noticed the street value has gone up because it's much harder to get a New Jersey drivers license now," he said.
On the Web:
www.ncsl.org , National Conference of State Legislatures.
www.aamva.org , American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.
www.aclu.org/ , American Civil Liberties Union.
www.securelicense.org , Coalition for a Secure Driver's License.
And don't laminate that Social Security card!
boy NJ is really on the cutting edge. Sacasm/ON
This has all been underway for several years now, a push for and toward interstate standardization of driver's licenses. Something else you're likely to hear more about in the next year or two is the notion of a "trusted traveler" card for boarding airliners. I wrote a series of articles on a related issue and interviewed a number of players.
MM
What ever happened to the 10th amendment?
Expect a lot more personal data to be embedded in these cards before the standard format is finalized. I don't so much have a problem with standardized DLs, but it's a slippery slope and we all know where it's headed.
MM
It did not escape the clutches of liberal judges.
RIP
Relax friend.
My feeling is that any word in the Oxford English dictionary is 'okie dokie' on a web site.
I've never even seen my SS card, and I started working for my Dad's steel business in 1959.
You Funny!
to late
Another step closer to a total police state brought to you by the New Jersey communists.
I fully expect them to tell us that we need these chips embedded in our foreheads or back of our hands soon enough. It is all for security afterall.
So now we have all these new security measures, but we still give licenses to illegal immigrants?
Mougatu said it best: "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"
And that's when I'll be declining. Guaranteed.
MM
"Leave it to the kooks to give insanity a bad name."
Sorry, not following your point in this context.
MM
If you can't figure it out, then no need to explain.
Given your sarcastic response, I assume you think only "kooks" expect a mandatory personal mark someday? If you want to throw out petty little insults, at least act like an adult and say what you mean.
MM
Anything thats politically connected and from the state of NJ is Fukced up, as a life long Resident I know. I hold a non-picture NJ issued drivers license valid thru 2007. Maybe after that I'll go underground to avoid the Big Brother-Big Jim McGreevys types we have here in NJ.
If you've got issues that they should do MORE, fire away, but how can you at the same time say that they are -- fascists, communists, tools of Satan, whatever -- for even trying to do something??
You don't need a LICENSE to drive a vehicle; merely a KEY!!!
When your car has a camera to see your face and a slot to read your card, perhaps THEN the thing (and the rest of us) will be 'safer'.
Well, I'm 54 years old and run very large businesses. Most of with whom I work, can discern clever sarcasm. BTW, my original remark was from a fellow FReeper. I merely repeated it on this thread. Now, I would suggest you back off. Thank you. Hope you had a Merry Chriistmas (that is a day after 24 December). Now, I am being sarcastic.
I getcha,,,,
My father started to drive in NJ when he was 11 and it wasn't in the country. And back then, you didn't need a key, all you had to do is roll the car and pop the clutch. He used to go fishing in the country with an older boy in the neighborhood who did drive but had a problem staying awake at night, so my dad would drive home from stokes and flatbrook barely seeing over the steering wheel.
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