Some federal and state government officials want to make state driver's licenses harder to counterfeit or steal, by adding computer chips that emit a radio signal bearing a license holder's unique, personal information.
In Virginia, where several of the 9/11 hijackers obtained driver's licenses, state legislators Wednesday will hear testimony about how radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags may prevent identity fraud and help thwart terrorists using falsified documents to move about the country.
Privacy advocates will argue that the radio tags will also make it easy for the government to spy on its citizens and exacerbate identity theft, one of the problems the technology is meant to relieve.
Virginia is among the first states to explore the idea of creating a smart driver's license, which may eventually use any combination of RFID tags and biometric data, such as fingerprints or retinal scans.
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Federal legislators may also require states to comply with uniform "smart card" standards, making state driver's licenses into national identification cards that could be read at any location throughout the country. The RFID chips on driver's licenses would at a minimum transmit all of the information on the front of a driver's license. They may also eventually transmit fingerprint and other uniquely identifiable information to reader devices.
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The Virginia legislators may balk at the use of RFID in driver's licenses, however, unless they can be proven to be immune from use by spies and identity thieves.
"I can't see us using RFID until we're comfortable we can without encroaching on individual privacy, and ensure it won't be used as a Big Brother technology by the government," said Joe May, chairman of the Virginia General Assembly's House Science and Technology Committee.
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