WASHINGTON - Two years after the nation was shocked to discover how easily the Sept. 11 hijackers obtained official identification cards - such as state-issued IDs they never should have received - experts say such documents are still too readily available to terrorists who could use them to facilitate more attacks.
While there has been progress since the attacks in making certain identity documents, such as Social Security cards, harder to get, experts say there has been alarming backsliding in other areas.
Increasing numbers of local governments, including Cook County and Chicago, have begun accepting Mexican identification cards, called matricula consular, as proof of identity.
The county is also considering recognizing similar cards from all other Latin American nations. The cards are issued by nations' consulates to their citizens living abroad, including undocumented immigrants.
The governments issuing the cards can't always be absolutely certain of the identities of card recipients, critics charge.
Last month, California legalized the issuing of driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants. Critics worry that the new law allows immigrants to present proof of their identities that can be difficult if not impossible for state Department of Motor Vehicles workers to verify.
Critics also are troubled by the many jurisdictions relying on the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number as proof of identity for undocumented immigrants. The numbers, created by the Internal Revenue Service so people without a Social Security card can file tax returns, are being used for identification purposes despite IRS warnings that they are unreliable for that purpose.
Meanwhile, the explosion of forged identity papers is made worse by the inability of government officials to detect such dubious documents.
The General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative agency, discovered that firsthand. Between May 2002 and June of this year, the GAO counterfeited driver's licenses and birth certificates and its undercover operatives then used them to fool border agents and enter the U.S. from countries including Canada, Mexico, Jamaica and Barbados.
"Identification fraud and document fraud is an enormous problem," Paul McNulty, U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, told the House Select Committee on Homeland Security. "Identification is on sale on the streets of America. (It) can be purchased by criminals, terrorists - anybody who wants to pose as someone else.
"And thousands upon thousands of government identification documents are produced or sold by fraud every month, including state driver's licenses, identification cards, Social Security cards, green cards, birth certificates, U.S. passports," he added. "Some of them are counterfeit. Others are genuine government documents that have been obtained through corruption or false statements. All of them enable the holders to conceal their true identity, or as in the case of the hijackers, to establish themselves in a way that gives them more legitimacy."
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks exposed wide gaps in the safeguards surrounding key U.S. identity documents, particularly driver's licenses and ID cards. In Virginia, seven of the 19 hijackers were able to get state-issued ID cards from the motor vehicle department.
The hijackers exploited a former loophole that allowed an applicant to get an ID card by submitting a notarized statement attesting to his or her residence. They got the Virginia ID cards even though they were living in a Maryland motel.
"It's a sad fact that our commonwealth had become known in the terrorist community as an easy place to obtain state driver's licenses or state identification cards," Joseph Carico, Virginia's chief deputy attorney general, said at the recent House hearing. "A valid driver's license, as you all know, is a passport to all sorts of places and behaviors including, of course, boarding airplanes."
Driver's licenses and state-issued ID cards are considered exceptionally important documents.
Because they are deemed suitable identification in virtually every situation where individuals are asked to produce proof of who they are and where they live, the licenses and cards are the closest things the United States has to a national ID card.
Virginia has closed the loophole used by the hijackers. Starting Jan. 1, a person applying for a driver's license or ID card must demonstrate U.S. citizenship or legal residence by showing documents such as a passport or birth certificate.
The Social Security Administration has also made it tougher to get its cards. The agency is now verifying applicants' immigration status with the Department of Homeland Security.
But while states such as Virginia and Florida have tightened their requirements for driver's licenses and ID cards, other states have seemingly created new loopholes, say critics who worry those states could be making it easier for would-be terrorists to acquire identification documents.
In September, California Gov. Gray Davis, in the midst of the recall campaign, signed a law allowing driver's licenses to be issued to undocumented immigrants, even though he opposed similar legislation in the past. Defending his reversal, Davis cited New Mexico and Nevada as states that also license undocumented immigrants.
While some of the opposition to the move has grown from anger that undocumented immigrants are being rewarded for breaking the law, other criticism has resulted from concerns that terrorists might seek to exploit the new, more liberal driver's license requirements.
California accepts the Mexican matricula consular and the ITIN as proof of identity for a driver's license. But the problem, experts say, is that Mexican consulates, which issue the matricula cards, typically require only a Mexican birth certificate.
"It is very easy to get fake Mexican birth certificates, and there's a growth industry in them right now within the U.S. because most Mexicans come across the border without documents," because that makes it less likely that their identities would be entered into the U.S. immigration database if they're caught, said Marti Dinerstein, president of analysis firm Immigration Matters and an expert on identity documents.
These and other problems prompted Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to warn states and localities and the increasing number of banks that recognize the matricula against relying on it for identification purposes. But his warnings have fallen on deaf ears in many instances.
"It is as if 9/11 never happened," said Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Homeland Security panel.
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