Personal Identification: Modern Development and Security Implications, 2nd Edition

Key factors, that created today’s need for public-issued mass ID, are addressed

• Chronicles the effects of large and mobile populations beginning a century ago.

• Chronicles the effects of “impersonal” electronic & computer communications at a distance, and

not face-to-face.

• The distribution of services and money by government agencies based on a person’s identity –

including “age” and “group” criteria.

• Describes recent national security and terrorism concerns that necessitates the need to know

“You are who you say you are.”

Personal identification documents (IDs) and the societal need for “trusted” identification by the public is a relatively new social phenomenon. In 1900, most people did not need or have any IDs until passports, with a photograph of the individual, became mandatory when Great Britain entered World War I in 1914. In the United States, the State-issued driver’s license is probably the only trusted ID in one’s wallet today, but they became “trusted and secure” documents only recently with the requirement for REAL ID. With the first photo driver’s license issued by the State of Colorado in 1959, it took until 1984 for the last State (New York, 25 years later) to comply.

As a direct result of 9/11, where terrorists used fake driver’s licenses to board planes, Congress passed the Real ID Act in 2005 to make all State-issued driver’s licenses more trusted, uniform, and tamper-resista