[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 133 (Thursday, October 10, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10385-S10388]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. DURBIN (for himself and Mr. McCain):
  S. 3107. A bill to improve the security of State-issued driver's 
licenses, enhance highway safety, verify personal identity, and for 
other purposes; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and 
Transportation.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise to introduce the Driver's License 
Fraud Prevention Act. This is a timely bill that would provide much 
needed Federal assistance to the States to help make their driver's 
licenses more reliable and secure than they are today. I am pleased 
that my colleagues, Senator McCain, has joined me in this effort.
  Since September 11, 2001, we have learned much about our society. We 
learned in the most painful way that those aspects of our open society 
that we, as Americans, value the most, are the very same 
characteristics exploited by people who hate freedom.
  Our open borders welcome millions of visitors and immigrants each 
year. Our civil society is based on the integrity of our citizens to 
self regulate their behaviors and to abide by the rule of law. And our 
very informal system of personal identification relies on the honesty 
of people to represent themselves as who they are, and to not hide 
their true identities.
  Yet, after September 11, we learned that it was the very openness of 
our society that the nineteen terrorists took advantage of by slipping 
into our country and mingling among us for months before embarking on 
their evil tasks.
  Since that tragic day, as a price for enhancing national security, we 
have imposed numerous measures across the country, including erecting 
barricades in front of buildings and requiring tougher screenings at 
airports. But there is one area that we need further improvements on, 
which is what our bill would address.
  It seems that everywhere we turn today, we are asked to present photo 
identification. And what is the most common identification that we 
show? It's the State-issued driver's license.

[[Page S10386]]

  The purpose of the driver's license has changed dramatically over the 
years. The driver's license was originally created by States for a 
public safety purpose, to permit a qualified person to operate a motor 
vehicle. Today, however, the license has become the most widely-used 
form of identification that is accepted by a wide variety of private 
and public entities. In an April 2002 poll conducted by Public Opinion 
Strategies, 83 percent of the American public noted that they used 
their driver's license for purposes other than driving.
  A driver's license has undoubtedly become a key that can open many 
doors, yet the current framework that States rely on in issued licenses 
was not designed for the cards to be used for identification purposes. 
Today, the 50 States follow 50 different methods for verifying a 
person's identification when they process driver's license 
applications. They apply different standards for defining what the 
acceptable documentation are that they require from applicants.
  Additionally, the level of security in the driver's licenses and 
identification cards varies widely, from those states that incorporate 
high tech biometric identifiers to ones that are simply laminated. In 
fact, law enforcement officials estimate that there are more than 240 
different formats of valid driver's licenses in circulation today.
  Because of the disparity in the State issuance processes and the 
varying degrees of security of the cards themselves, it is extremely 
easy for individuals today to abuse the system by shopping around for 
licenses in those States with the weakest practices.
  Earlier this year, I chaired a hearing in the Governmental Affairs 
Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, where we learned 
that eighteen of the nineteen hijackers involved in the September 11th 
attacks probably used State-issued driver's licenses or identification 
cards to board those doomed airplanes.
  We also learned that these terrorists specifically went to motor 
vehicle agencies in States that, at that time, employed some of the 
most lenient processes and requirements in issuing licenses and 
identification cards.
  For example, on August 1, 2001, two of the terrorists, Hani Hanjour 
and Khalid Al-Mihdhar, drove a van from New Jersey to the Virginia 
Department of Motor Vehicles, DMV, office in Arlington. In the parking 
lot, they asked around until they found someone willing to lie and 
vouch for their Virginia residency. They met Luis Martinez-Flores and 
Herbert Villalobos who, for a price, were willing to help.
  Hanjour and Al-Mihdhar paid these strangers $50 each and received 
notarized forms which claimed that the two transients were in fact 
Virginia residents. Using these fake documents, Hanjour and Al-Mihdhar 
walked into the DMV, stood in line, had their photos taken, and walked 
out with authentic State-issued Virginia photo identification cards.
  The next day, on August 2, 2001, Hanjour and Al-Mihdhar returned to 
the same Arlington DMV with two other September 11 terrorists, Salem 
Al-Hazmi and Majed Moqed. Hanjour and Al-Mihdhar helped Al-Hazmi and 
Moqed obtain Virginia identification cards of their own by vouching 
that they lived together in Virginia.
  On the same day, two more terrorists, Abdul Al-Omari and Ahmed Al-
Ghamdi, who were renting a room at a Maryland motel, contacted Kenys 
Galicia, a Virginia legal secretary and notary public, through a 
referral from Luis Martinez-Flores, the same person who was loitering 
near the Arlington DMV the day before.
  Al-Omari and Al-Ghamdi paid Galicia to have her prepare false 
notarized affidavits stating that the two men lived in Virginia. Using 
these fake documents, these two also went to a Virginia motor vehicles 
office and received State-issued identification cards.
  In addition to exploiting the lax Virginia system, at least thirteen 
of the nineteen terrorists held driver licenses or identification cards 
from Florida, a State that, at that time, did not require proof of 
residency from applicants.
  A few of the September 11 terrorists held licenses or identification 
cards from more than one State, including from California, Arizona, and 
Maryland, while only one did not appear to hold any form of American-
issued identification. Some received duplicate cards from the same 
State within months of September.
  Some of them used these licenses to rent automobiles and check into 
motels, which provided them with constant mobility. Others used 
licenses as identification to receive wire transferred funds and to 
register for flight schools.
  Yet had they not held these valuable commodities, would they have 
been successful in carrying out their evil final acts?
  At the Governmental Affairs Subcommittee hearing, we heard testimony 
from a Maryland police chief that, just two days before September 11th, 
Ziad Jarrah, one of the terrorists, was stopped for speeding on 
Interstate 95, north of Baltimore. During this traffic stop, Jarrah 
produced an apparently valid driver's license from the State of 
Virginia, and as a result, the stop proceeded in a typical fashion.
  However, while Jarrah's license indicated a resident address in 
Virginia, Jarrah was in fact resting overnights at motels along the way 
to Newark, New Jersey, from where he boarded Flight 93, which 
ultimately crashed in Pennsylvania. Had he been unable to produce a 
license when he was pulled over, or if he had produced a license that 
the trooper could have identified as having been issued fraudulently, 
who knows how that stop may have concluded.
  What we do know is that these terrorists bought their way into our 
shaky, unreliable, and dangerous system of government-issued 
identification. With the identification cards that they obtained under 
phony pretenses, doors opened across America, including the doors of 
the four doomed aircrafts on the morning of September 11, 2001.
  More troubling is that it appears what the terrorists did in 
obtaining the multiple identification cards was a part of an official 
strategic plan that terrorists employ as they seek to infiltrate our 
society.
  Last year, Attorney General Ashcroft presented to the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, on which I serve, a copy of an Al Qaeda Terrorists 
Manual that was found by Manchester, England, police officials during 
the search of an Al Qaeda member's home.
  Contained in it is a page that reads as follows:

       Forged Documents (Identity Cards, Record Books, Passports)

       The following security precautions should be taken:

                           *   *   *   *   *

       2. All documents of the undercover brother, such as 
     identity cards and passport, should be falsified.
       3. When the undercover brother is traveling with a certain 
     identity card or passport, he should know all pertinent 
     [information] such as the name, profession, and place of 
     residence.

                           *   *   *   *   *

       5. The photograph of the brother in these documents should 
     be without a beard. It is preferable that the brother's 
     public photograph [on these documents] be also without a 
     beard. If he already has one [document] showing a photograph 
     with a beard, he should replace it.
       6. When using an identity document in different names, no 
     more than one such document should be carried at one time.

                           *   *   *   *   *

  It is obvious to me that the September 11 terrorists were trained 
very well by Al Qaeda. They followed these instructions flawlessly as 
they sought, and successfully obtained, multiple State-issued driver's 
licenses and identification cards in America.
  The use of fake IDs is one of the oldest tricks in the book for 
criminals, and now we know that this is a page in the book for 
terrorists as well.
  It is also one of the oldest traditions of adolescence, and a rite of 
passage for many teenagers who casually use a borrowed or tampered ID 
to buy alcohol or tobacco products, or to get into a nightclub. But 
underage drinking not only endangers the lives of those consuming the 
alcohol, it threatens the lives of others as well.
  According to a 2001 survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health 
Services Administration, SAMHSA, more than 10 million individuals aged 
between 12 to 20 years old reported consuming alcohol in the year prior 
to the survey. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 
NHTSA, reports that in the United States, drivers between the ages of 
16 and 21 account

[[Page S10387]]

for just seven percent of all drivers in the Nation, yet are involved 
in fifteen percent of all alcohol-related fatalities.
  Drunk drivers are perhaps the most dangerous drivers on the road. But 
there are others who should not be allowed on the road.
  We learned that thousands of drivers each year operate motor vehicles 
using multiple licenses issued under different identities from multiple 
states, which enable them to evade enforcement of driving restrictions 
imposed on them.
  They know that under the current license issuance process, no State 
checks the background of license applicants with its sister States to 
see if that person may have already been issued a license by another 
State. So it is quite easy for individuals who have had their license 
suspended or revoked in one State to travel to a neighboring State and 
acquire a new license.
  A reprentative of the American Association of Motor Vehicle 
Administrators, AAMVA, who testified at our hearing stated it this way: 
``Although the current system allows for reciprocity among the States, 
it lacks uniformity. Individuals looking to undermine the system, 
whether it is a terrorist, a drunk driver or an identity thief, shop 
around for licenses in those States that have become the weakest 
link.''
  AAMVA is a nonprofit voluntary association representing all motor 
vehicle agency administrators and chief law enforcement officials 
throughout the United States and Canada.
  At the hearing, we also heard from a representative of the National 
Governors Association, NGA, who testified that the NGA has not yet 
developed an official position on the subject of identity security or 
enhancing the driver's license systems.
  However, he acknowledged that the current system employed by States 
is broken, and is more likely to actually enable identity theft and 
fraud rather than prevent it.
  He and others on the panel referenced several initiatives that some 
states were currently undertaking to improve their driver's license 
systems. For example, Virginia and Florida adopted revised procedures 
since last year to prevent the types of abuses we all recognized since 
September 11. And many other State legislatures have adopted, and are 
still in the process of debating, various reform measures, which, I 
believe, are all steps in the right direction.
  I was especially encouraged to hear that the states were willing and 
ready to work with the Federal Government to address their problem 
together.
  At our hearing, the AAMVA representative also testified that:

       Seventy-seven percent of the American public support 
     Congress passing legislation to modify the driver's licensing 
     process and identification security. And, we need Congress to 
     help in five areas: (1) support minimum compliance standards 
     and requirements that each state must adopt when issuing a 
     license; (2) help us identify fraudulent documents; (3) 
     support an interstate network for confirming a person's 
     driving history; (4) impose stiffer penalties on those 
     committing fraudulent acts; (5) and, provide funding to 
     make this happen. Funding so states can help ensure a 
     safer America.

  Thus, following this hearing, I reached out to, and worked with a 
number of groups and individuals representing States, motor vehicle 
agencies, privacy advocates, immigrant communities, and the technology 
industry, to consider an appropriate federal legislation on this issue.
  We also reached out to various agencies in the Bush Administration, 
including the Office of Homeland Security, to seek their input on 
legislation.
  Then, in July of this year, President Bush unveiled his ``National 
Strategy for Homeland Security.'' In that report the President wrote:

                       Major Initiatives (State)

       Given the states' major role in homeland security, and 
     consistent with the principles of federalism inherent to 
     American government, the following initiatives constitute 
     suggestions, not mandates, for state initiatives.
       Coordinate suggested minimum standards for state driver's 
     licenses. The licensing of drivers by the 50 states, the 
     District of Columbia, and the United States terrorities 
     varies widely. There is no national or agreed upon state 
     standards for content, format, or license acquisition 
     procedures. Terrorist organizations, including Al-Qaeda 
     operatives involved in the September 11 attacks, have 
     exploited these differences. While the issuance of drivers' 
     licenses fall squarely within the powers of the states, the 
     federal government can assist the states in crafting 
     solutions to curtail the future abuse of drivers' licenses by 
     terrorist organizations. Therefore, the federal government, 
     in consultation with state government agencies and non-
     governmental organizations, should support state-led efforts 
     to develop suggested minimum standards for driver's licenses, 
     recognizing that many states should and will exceed these 
     standards.

  I fully agree with the President that the issuance of driver's 
licenses is within the province of the States. In fact, our bill 
explicitly recognizes and preserves the right of states to determine 
the qualification or eligibility for obtaining driver's licenses, the 
terms of its validity, and how the license should look.
  But I also agree with the President that there is an important role 
for the Federal Government to play in assisting the states to address 
the national problem of fraud and abuse. I therefore believe this bill 
that we are introducing today strikes an appropriate balance between 
the states' authority and federal interests.
  Our bill is narrowly drafted to improve the process by which licenses 
are issued. First, I note that there are two already existing federal 
programs that address driver's licenses.
  The National Driver Register, NDR, which was first created by 
Congress in 1960 and revised in 1982, serves as a central file of state 
reports on drivers whose licenses have been suspended, revoked, 
canceled, or denied, or who have been convicted of serious traffic-
related offenses. The NDR's primary purpose is to enable State motor 
vehicle agencies to share driver record information with each other so 
that they can make informed decisions about issuing driver's licenses 
to individuals, particularly those who move into their states from 
other jurisdictions.
  The Commercial Driver License Information System is the second 
Federal program, which was established by Congress in 1986, to keep 
problem commercial drivers off the roads, and to prevent traffic 
violations from being hidden behind multiple licenses.
  Every State today participates in both federal programs, and all 
States currently share certain information with each other in order to 
make informed decisions before issuing driver's licenses. However, the 
current limited scope of these programs leave a gaping loophole: One 
deals only with records of problem drivers, while the other deals only 
with records of commercial drivers. What about the records of non-
problem drivers who are not commercial drivers?
  Our bill closes this loophole by consolidating the appropriate 
functionalities of these two programs and by adding new security 
measures that would allow every State to check all other States' 
records of all drivers before issuing commercial or regular driver's 
licenses. This new process will help prevent States from issuing more 
than one license to any one individual, which will end forum shopping, 
abuse, and fraud.
  In recognizing the federal responsibilities of this program, our bill 
would provide Federal funding for the upgrades as well as direct 
Federal funding to states to assist their continued participating in 
the new integrated system.
  While the goals of the bill are specific and firm, we are also 
mindful of the jurisdiction of the states to regulate who is eligible 
to receive driver's licenses, and what the licenses should look like. 
We thus provide authority to the Secretary of Transportation to engage 
in a negotiated rulemaking which would include all the appropriate 
affected entities and individuals, in order to collectively develop the 
required minimum standards on the issuance process.
  This program can be successful only if every state participates 
enthusiastically. Therefore, to provide maximum input from the states, 
the bill specifically requires that the Secretary consult with the 
states and entities representing the interest of the states, and, as 
necessary, with interested groups and individuals in developing 
consensus implementing regulations.
  I should note, as the White House has, that many States should and 
will exceed these minimum standards set forth in this bill. So for 
states that are already above the curve, our bill provides federal 
grants to highlight innovative pilot programs designed to verify 
driver's identity, prevent fraud,

[[Page S10388]]

or demonstrate the use of technology to create tamper resistant 
licenses.
  Our bill also requires States to make their driver's licenses and 
identification cards more resistant to tampering, altering, or 
counterfeiting then they are today. But, again, the bill does not 
specify what those security features ought to be. Instead, it requires 
the Secretary of Transportation to engage in rulemaking with the States 
and with experts to collectively develop the required minimum standards 
for all states to adopt.
  The bill also cracks down on internal fraud and bribery that, 
unfortunately, occur behind the DMV counters. We impose tough penalties 
for unauthorized access to or use of DMV equipment used to manufacture 
licenses, and also creates penalties for persons who fraudulently 
issue, obtain, renew, or transfer a driver's license. The bill also 
requires States to conduct internal audits of license issuance 
processes to identify and address these fraudulent activities.
  Finally, our bill enhances privacy protection for license holders by 
significantly strengthening the Driver's Privacy Protection Act, which 
Congress last amended in 1994. The bill protects the privacy of 
driver's information by expanding the definitions of sensitive 
``personal information'' and by tightening up the current set of 
permissible disclosures.
  Additionally, under this bill, State motor vehicle agencies would be 
prohibited from disclosing or displaying social security numbers on any 
driver's license, motor vehicle registration, or any other document 
issued for the purpose of identification.
  With Federal financial and technical assistance and a narrowly 
tailored common-sense approach, I believe this bill can close the 
loopholes that continue to leave all of us vulnerable. By working 
together, we can assist states to adopt a new system that will ensure 
integrity in the issuance process, integrity in the cards themselves, 
and protection of privacy of drivers across the country. I urge my 
colleagues to support this important bill.
                                 ______