Why Secure Licenses are Important

The need to have a secure driver’s license has never been more dire. In a day and age when licenses (and state-issued ID cards) operate as this Nation’s most widely accepted and requested type of identification, it is crucial that we take steps to implement some kind of standards on our licenses, and it is equally important that each state abide by the same set of standards, given that one state’s license is accepted in every other state across the Union.

The 9/11 hijackers knew well that having a license in this country was the key to operating just under the radar screen, which is why they sought as few as 38 licenses (official number) and state-issued IDs between them, and as many as 63 (unconfirmed number). Not only did those licenses allow them to board airplanes that fateful morning, but more importantly, they allowed the hijackers to operate inside our borders plotting, scheming and executing important parts of their attacks for months and years before the September 11^th.

The 9/11 Commission specifically recommended that the federal government establish a set of uniform standards for the states to follow in driver license issuance, and that is where the REAL ID Act came from. In short, it requires state DMVs to: (among other things)

• establish an applicant is legally present;

• tie license expiration to visa expiration;

• include a biometric identifier (to be determined by the Department of Homeland Security);

• check the validity of all social security numbers with the Social Security Administration;

• provide all other state DMVs with access to each others records to ensure multiple licensing from state to state is not occurring.

Many people argue that the 9/11 hijackers were here legally and would still have gotten licenses anyway, even if REAL ID had been in place. But it’s not true that they were all here legally, many of them came to and left the country several times under different visas but kept their various driver licenses throughout. And specific provisions set forth under the driver license section of the REAL ID Act would have addressed this very issue first of all by tying visa expiration to license expiration, and secondly each state DMV would have been made aware when each of the hijackers attempted to obtain multiple licenses.

The REAL ID Act is certainly not going to stop terrorism – to suggest otherwise is irresponsible. But what it will do, is disrupt terrorist travel by making the terrorists who are here already and have licenses easier to track, and by denying terrorists the most common, widely recognized form if ID available in this country and thus the ability to blend in and get to work plotting more attacks, without fear of being noticed or uncovered.

Imagine what might have happened if Mohammed Atta and his henchmen were forced to produce their Saudi passports – instead of their driver licenses – when enrolling in flight school.

Comments

[euhqywqwwl]

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[Kimberly Jacobs]

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[James Moyer]

Actually, the terrorists could have likely used their Saudi passports without difficulty to register for flight school--after all, a passport is a perfectly normal document found in airports and on pilots, and has been for at least half a century now.

On the other hand, had they shown up with non-photo New Jersey drivers licenses, perhaps things would have gone differently. (Unless it had been a flight school in New Jersey.)

The quantity count on the terrorists ID cards is slightly misleading--the difference between licenses were minor name variations which are normal for Muslim names (it's like a person with an ID card of John Smith, another with John. A. Smith and a third with John Adams Smith.) However, Muslim name variations are much greater than western name variations, and this certainly isn't helped by the fact that the Date of Birth, a relied upon record identifier, isn't very reliable for Muslim individuals, whose culture is less concerned with recording the date of birth.

It does not appear likely that these small but legal variations would be prevented under the Real ID Act. However, holding multiple licenses from multiple states, even with the same name might be preventable under the Real ID Act.

It remains a mystery why they thought they needed multiple licenses with the same names. Perhaps that's a sub-plot that went nowhere.

[A. Tate]

"Not Issuing Driver's Licenses to Illegal Aliens is bad for National Security," more at http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=40902

[swoodlyn]

Very well said. The Real ID Act has some potential to fend off just these types of activities if implemented correctly. The simple fact is that Licenses are the de facto standard for identification, that was not the intent nevertheless, that is what they are, the standard for identification purposes in the United States. With all the many implications of that single statement “standard for identification purposes in the United States”, don’t they deserve the forethought to make them secure? We expend enormous resources in a reactive mode rather than expending those resources on well thought out systems that are built on an appropriate scalable, interoperable, secure and responsive security model. I agree that the Real ID Act is not a panacea for all the security woes that we as a nation face, they are however, a starting point for developing a security space that addresses the needs that we are faced with today, while simultaneously allowing us to begin to build the infrastructure and process models that supports the interactions that are necessary for solving the information sharing failures that led up to situations like 9/11.