The Vital ID Almost Anyone Can Get

The question pops up everywhere: at the airport, at the bar, at the Target return counter, at the bank, at the video store. May I see your driver’s license?

The document is treated as a national identification card.

But there are no national standards for who can get one, or for how.

In some states, applicants must show birth certificates, Social Security cards and utility bills to prove they are residents. In others, just about anyone can get a license or a state ID.

Florida, for instance, requires no proof of residency. Even foreign tourists stopping in the U.S. for just a few days can obtain a license. And all they need to prove their identity is a federal immigration form--which they fill out themselves. There is no verification. As many as 13 suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks had Florida IDs or licenses.

Virginia too makes it easy to obtain a license. Applicants do need to prove residency, but all it took to meet that requirement--until the law was changed last week--was a sworn statement from a witness who would vouch for an applicant’s address. Those statements were not hard to get, either: Hucksters would stand outside motor vehicle offices, offering sworn testimony for $100 or less. Three of the suspected hijackers apparently obtained Virginia identification cards that way.

The loose controls on some states’ licensing alarms many law enforcement officials, because a driver’s license is no longer just a license to drive. It’s an essential document to smooth the path through life in this country. Immigrants often find a valid driver’s license key to renting apartments, securing jobs and getting credit. And of course, a U.S. license helps expedite airport check-ins.

Because there are 242 valid formats of state ID in the U.S. (some states have several different formats, going back many years), frauds often are difficult to spot.

Bogus licenses can be dummied up the old-fashioned way, with scissors and glue. Or they can be obtained via the Internet.

There are now Web sites offering to sell fake IDs for all 50 states, for as little as $30. Law enforcement agencies have shut down dozens of such sites, but new ones continue to emerge, including some based outside the United States.

Forgers also can download templates for various state identification cards--along with instructions on how to make a hologram and how to laminate a fake ID. Web forgeries are so popular that one national expert estimates that some Web sites take in more than $1 million a year selling the phony documents.

But it may be just as easy, experts say, to get a legitimate license from a state with weak controls.

Take North Carolina: The state nominally requires a Social Security number from all driver’s license applicants. But there are 388,000 licenses out there linked to the bogus Social Security number 999-99-9999, which clerks have been instructed to put in the computer system if an applicant cannot come up with a valid number.

State Rep. Larry Justus, a legislator investigating the issue, said Spanish-language radio stations in at least two other states ran ads telling immigrants where to pick up shuttle buses to North Carolina motor vehicle offices for no-hassle driver’s licenses.

“We were just handing them out wholesale,” Justus said.

And once a shady character obtains a license, “guess what, that person’s in,” said Jason King, a spokesman for the American Assn. of Motor Vehicle Administrators.

“It’s the basic entry point into our whole system,” Justus added.

Indeed, a license from a state such as North Carolina or Florida opens the door to obtaining other documents--including driver’s licenses from states with more stringent regulations, such as California.

“You get a license and you drive away with a new identity,” said David Myers, a national expert on fake IDs with the Florida Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco.

Uneasy about passing out such benefits so freely, some states are tightening requirements. North Carolina lawmakers are considering revoking all the licenses that carry phony Social Security numbers. They also have moved to require proof of residency.

Illinois announced this week that it would no longer hand out temporary driver’s licenses to foreigners who are in the state for brief stays. Those licenses, it turned out, often were used to help the foreigners obtain Social Security cards--the key to opening bank accounts, getting credit cards and applying for permanent driver’s licenses.

“We’ve been much too lax in our identification process for a long time in this country,” Justus said. “We’ve got to tighten up our security from every standpoint.”

Even in this get-tough atmosphere, a few voices are calling for reforms that would make it easier for more people to obtain driver’s licenses. California lawmakers, for instance, passed a bill shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks that would grant legal immigrants the right to get licenses even if they do not have permanent residency.

State Rep. Gil Cedillo, the Los Angeles Democrat who pushed the measure, says it will make Californians more secure, not less, by giving the state a way to track the estimated 1 million immigrants now driving without licenses. The state will be able to test their road skills and make sure they carry insurance, providing “more security on our highways,” he said.

After a horror like the attacks in New York and Virginia, “people have some difficulty thinking clearly about these matters,” he added. “We hope we don’t exchange one hysteria for another.”

Whatever the official state regulations, experts warn that determined criminals still will be able to exploit loopholes to obtain valid IDs. “There is no foolproof method,” King said.

Case in point: a burglary that took place earlier this week in the St. Louis suburb of Overland.

The thieves smashed the window of a local motor vehicle office and carted away the computer software used to make driver’s licenses, the camera used to take identification pictures, a laminating machine--and 200 blank plastic cards with magnetic strips on the back and holograms of the state seal on the front. Those blanks become driver’s licenses.

Carol Fischer, director of the Missouri Department of Revenue, said that only the most technology-savvy crooks could figure out how to use the software to make licenses. But Overland Police Chief Jim Herron called the programs “not all that sophisticated.”

Herron suspects that the stolen equipment will be used to make phony licenses for underage drinkers, not for terrorists hoping to assimilate into American life. Still, he has alerted the FBI, just in case.

“I think this is a bigger threat to local tavern owners than to national security,” Herron said. “[But] could the driver’s licenses be made for other things? . . . Could a terrorist use them to rent vehicles and buy airline tickets? Yes, theoretically, they could.”