-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. The system, which has 80,000 registered users, is
in use in seven airports in the U.S.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
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The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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