This picture is for chuckles....
From the press conference...
There are really three reasons why secure driver's licenses and security standards for driver's licenses make a lot of sense. First of all, as the 9/11 Commission noted in its final report, secure identification is an essential way of ensuring that people are who they say they are. And therefore this kind of identification gives us a tremendous tool in preventing dangerous people from getting on airplanes or getting into federal buildings.
Second, secure identification happens to be a very good way to prevent illegal immigrants from
pretending to be American citizens so they can work illegally in this country. And make no mistake
about it: identity fraud among illegal immigrants is a serious problem. It harms the legal worker, it deceives the honest employer, and it destroys the privacy and the good credit of innocent Americans every year.
During fiscal year 2007, when we were conducting worksite enforcement operations, enforcing the
immigration laws, our Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents made 863 criminal arrests, and
ended up charging more than 500 individuals with state and federal document fraud crimes, including
identity theft and Social Security fraud.
Third, secure identification protects all of us from the pernicious plague of identity theft. Last year, our Secret Service arrested over 4,300 suspects, including both legal and illegal workers, for identity theft crimes that totaled $690 million in actual fraud loss to individuals and financial institutions. Studies show that roughly 35 percent of these kinds of fraud cases involve the use of fraudulent driver's licenses or phony state ID cards. And in the year 2005, according to the FTC, identity theft cost American households $64 billion, and 28 percent of those incidents likely involved the use of a phony driver's license.
Secretary Chertoff emphasizes over and over that the "secure identification" created by this legislation will only replace driver's licenses, and be used to allow folks to board planes and into federal buildings. From what I've read elsewhere, the legislation does not disallow or prevent anyone (or anything) from demanding its presentation. For ex., if you want to buy a house, there will come a point in the process where your social security number is requested. You can refuse. The mortgage company is not allowed to demand it from you, but they are somehow still allowed to refuse the loan if you don't wish to comply. At least, that has been my experience.
Under this legislation (the new constitution for the european union is an easier read - i'm just repeating what i've read elsewhere here) there are no restrictions for it's use. In other words, there is no language in the bill - at all - that discusses buying or selling in any way. Whether that is good or bad, I don't know, I'm not a lawyer. But mortgage companies are already pretty darned leary about accepting anyone's "word" about their identity. You may rest assured that they WILL know - to the greatest extent that such a thing CAN be known - that the buyer is who s/he says s/he is.
So is this whole issue really a problem, or is the problem that we don't really trust our neighbors anymore? In any case, here we are six years after 9/11, and it's not so easy to fly a 747 into a building anymore.
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