WASHINGTON - Americans born after Dec. 1, 1964, will have to get more-secure driver's licenses in the next six years under ambitious post-9/11 security rules to be unveiled today by federal officials.
The Homeland Security Department has spent years crafting the final regulations for the REAL ID Act, a law designed to make it more difficult for terrorists and illegal immigrants to get government-issued identification and for counterfeiters to produce them. The effort once envisioned to take effect this year has been pushed back in the hopes of winning over skeptical state officials.
Even with more time, more federal help, and technical advances, REAL ID faces stiff opposition from civil liberties groups.
To address some of those concerns, the government will phase in a secure ID initiative that Congress approved in 2005. Now, the Department of Homeland Security is eyeing a key deadline in 2011, and then further measures to be approved three years later, according to congressional staff members who spoke on the condition of anonymity because an announcement had not yet been made. Department officials briefed legislative aides on the details late yesterday.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff promoted the final rules for REAL ID during a meeting yesterday with an advisory council.
"We worked very closely with the states in terms of developing a plan that I think will be inexpensive, reasonable to implement, and produce the results," he said. "This is a win-win. As long as people use driver's licenses to identify themselves for whatever reason, there's no reason for those licenses to be easily counterfeited or tampered with."
In order to make the plan more appealing to cost-conscious states, federal authorities drastically reduced the expected cost from $14.6 billion to $3.9 billion, according to Homeland Security officials familiar with the plan.
The American Civil Liberties Union has fiercely objected to the effort, particularly the sharing of personal data among government agencies. The Department of Homeland Security and other officials say the only way to make sure an ID is safe is to check it against secure government data; opponents like the ACLU say that creates a system that is more likely to be infiltrated and have its personal data pilfered.
The Sept. 11 attacks were the main motivation for the changes. The hijacker who flew into the Pentagon, Hani Hanjour, had four driver's licenses and ID cards from three states. The Department of Homeland Security, which was created in response to the attacks, has created a slogan for REAL ID: "One driver, one license."
By 2014, anyone seeking to board an airplane or enter a federal building would have to present a REAL ID-compliant driver's license, with the notable exception of those more than 50 years old, Homeland Security officials said.
The over-50 exemption was created to give states more time to get everyone new licenses, and officials say the risk of someone in that age group being a terrorist, illegal immigrant, or con artist is much less. By 2017, even those over 50 must have a REAL ID-compliant card to board a plane.
Among other details of the REAL ID plan:
+ The traditional driver's license photograph would be taken at the beginning of the application instead of the end so that should someone be rejected for failure to prove identity and citizenship, the applicant's photo would be kept on file.
+ The cards will have three layers of security measures but will not contain microchips as some had expected. States will be able to choose from a menu which security measures they will use.
Over the next year, the government expects all states to begin checking both the Social Security numbers and immigration status of license applicants.
