National Id Fraud

NATIONAL ID FRAUD By J. Bradley Jansen Free Congress Commentary February 13, 2002 This week, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) convened in Washington, DC and lobbied Congress for a handout to implement a de facto National Identification system. The AAMVA claims that they need federal tax dollars before they will raise standards and that their proposal would not be a national ID. In effect, the AAMVA members work for our state legislatures. Both associations of state legislators oppose their plan to seek federal funds to standardize procedures and link their databases together with those of law enforcement. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) both signed letters circulated by the Free Congress Foundation (along with Eagle Forum, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center) to President Bush and Secretary Mineta opposing the AAMVA proposal specifically as well as the idea of a national ID generally. A total of 43 national organizations joined together to express our opposition to the proposal. Many other organizations expounded on their respective reasons for signing the letter. Twila Brase, R.N., president of the Citizens' Council on Health Care (one of the signers of the letters), “views the national ID as a tool that will allow government tracking of private medical decisions, government health care databases, unconsented medical research, and use of health care data to create public policy supportive of health care rationing.” When I debated the head of the AAMVA on TechTV, we agreed that there is a need to improve standards used by the state motor vehicle bureaus, but we differed on many other points. When she claimed that they do not consider their plan a national ID, I pointed out that it fails the duck test, “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.” A new system with one set of standards established by the federal government, with federal money, with one network of databases linked to federal law enforcement agencies, set up despite the opposition of state lawmakers, looks, walks and quacks like a national ID. Pardon my mixed metaphor (and don’t cry fowl), but the AAMVA has an albatross hanging around their neck. They go out of their way to claim that their proposal is not a call for a national ID because they know most thoughtful Americans oppose that idea. Many patriotic Americans throughout our history have fought, many with their lives, for us to enjoy our constitutional liberties. We would dishonor their sacrifices to forfeit those protections now. Adding insult to injury, we would give up more of our privacy and other constitutional liberties as well as some of our security if we adopted a national ID plan such as the AAMVA proposal. Such a scheme would make us less safe as it violated our privacy. Such a proposal would nationalize lesser problems that would be harder to solve without sufficiently adding any appreciable benefit. Such a proposal, had it been in place, would have done nothing to prevent the tragedies of September 11th. Soundbite calls for a national ID should not become an excuse not to raise standards. As our letters to Messrs. Bush and Mineta explain, “An identity card is only as good as the information that establishes identity in the first place. Terrorists and criminals will continue to be able to obtain-by legal and illegal means-the documents needed to get a government ID, such as birth certificates and

Social Security numbers. A national ID would create a false sense of security because it would enable individuals with an ID-who may in fact be terrorists-to avoid heightened security measures.” It makes no sense to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to study proposals that will take billions more to implement if they actually make us worse off than we are now. Holding the state motor vehicle bureaus accountable for the lax standards is the only real solution. State lawmakers understand this point and are acting accordingly. Billions on bureaucratic boondoggles waste resources needed for real efforts to fight terrorism-as well as for tax cuts to help the economy or to pay down the national debt making it easier for us to honor the commitment made to our seniors for their Social Security retirement benefits. Given that the state DMVs are already some of the main culprits behind identity fraud because of their lax standards and because they sell and share our private, personal information without our consent in order to make a few bucks, the AAMVA proposal is a blueprint for an epidemic of identity fraud. To make a bad situation worse, it will be much more difficult for an identity fraud victim to correct a false national ID-especially one with additional (yet possibly falsified) biometric information-than it currently is for someone to clear up a bad credit report. A national ID is a bad idea whose time has not yet come. We can thank our long history’s series of patriots for that and much more. J. Bradley Jansen is the deputy director of the Center for Technology Policy at the Free Congress Foundation.