Resolving Identity

The need to resolve individual identity is an age-old challenge. Identification documents have a long history — during World War I, American military officers carried identification papers at all times while on active service. These passportsized identification books included a military portrait photo of the officer, basic biographical information and a signed attestation by a commanding officer or War Department representative. The portrait photographs were blind stamped with an offset official U.S. seal to provide further affirmation of the holder’s identity.

During World War II, and in the years that followed, every American soldier had an official government military ID bearing a photograph, identification number and fingerprints of the individual. For the civilian population, the driver’s license emerged as the method and means for accurately determining ID and was widely regarded as “the passport to America.” New concerns about the security of the driver’s license as a certified form of identification emerged in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the review conducted by the federal 9/11 Commission.

As the significance of identification methods has evolved over the course of our nation’s history, the use of paper IDs still begs a universal question that spans all levels of government and the private sector: “How can identity be verified with certainty, and what techniques and tools can be used to determine identity with as much accuracy as possible?”

In response to the 9/11 attacks, the federal government enacted a series of laws directed toward the goal of protecting the nation. Among them were the Patriot Act, the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, the Bioterrorism Act, the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act, and the Homeland Security Act, which established the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

In testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano suggested that implementing common sense border and transportation security initiatives was one of her top priorities for DHS.  In seeking to balance privacy issues with the enhanced documentation needed to better instill security confidence in the new identification standards that will be implemented as a result of Real ID — the 2005 federal law that imposes standards on state driver’s licenses to be accepted by the federal government for “official purposes” — Napolitano said that “it is difficult to think of an area of DHS operation where a greater use of cutting-edge technology would not improve capabilities. Our border security efforts, port screening, transportation security, customs processes, immigration programs and preparedness and interoperability efforts could all benefit from a strong push to develop new technologies.”