TEXAS COMPUTER STOLEN FROM COMPANY THAT GATHERS COMPUTERIZED FACIAL IMAGING AND THUMBPRINTS FOR TEXAS DRIVERS LICENCESAP Wire | 11/03/2005 | Company hired for biometrics program had IDs stolen in NevadaCompany hired for biometrics program had IDs stolen in Nevada

Associated Press


AUSTIN - A company the state hired to gather computerized facial imaging and thumbprints on all Texas driver's licenses failed to protect the identities of 7,500 Nevada drivers last spring, officials say.

Civil libertarians are warning that the coming futuristic identification system could endanger the private identities and individual liberties of law-abiding Texans.

"This new system is an identity thief's dream come true," said Ann del Llano of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. "Now any good identity thief in the world has a new database that's going to be one of the largest databases that exists."

Digimarc Corp., based in Beaverton, Ore., landed a $30 million contract last month from the Texas Department of Public Safety to collect biometric thumbprint and facial images on all Texas driver's licenses.

Biometrics is technology that measures and analyzes human physical characteristics for authentication.

The new licenses won't debut for at least two years while Digimarc puts the computerized system in place, said DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange.

In Nevada, thieves broke into a local department of motorized vehicles office and walked out with computer equipment containing all the personal data needed to establish false identities.
The equipment was subsequently found, and there was no indication that any of the private information had been used.

DPS pushed for the revamped licenses because it is convinced the new system will curtail traffic in fake driver's licenses, making personal data more secure, not less, Mange said.

Mange said the system in Texas will send all driver's license data directly to a centralized computer in Austin, making it less vulnerable than Digimarc's digital system in Nevada.

Digimarc, which advertises itself as the world's largest provider of secure driver's license solutions, declined to comment.

Its Nevada license system was compromised last March.

Tom Jacobs, spokesman for the Nevada department of motorized vehicles, said the heist netted Social Security numbers, names, ages, dates of birth and photographs of drivers. Until the break-in, Nevada officials said they'd thought Digimarc's system contained safeguards against criminals seeking its data base.

But Jacobs said they discovered after the fact from Digimarc that the compromised data lingered on local computers for 60 days as a backup for computer glitches rather than getting transferred daily into a more secure mainframe.

"It was certainly less secure than we thought it was," he said.

Apologetic state officials reissued the affected licenses and placed fraud reports with three major credit bureaus before police discovered the stolen goods, along with guns and drugs, on the rooftop of a building under construction, Jacobs said.

Earlier this year, state Rep. Frank Corte, R-San Antonio, persuaded the Texas House to authorize the DPS to contract for the new driver's license system.

"It turned out that 19 out of the 21 terrorists had fake IDs," Corte said of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "I believe identity theft is going to be curtailed by this legislation. This whole idea that someone could hack into DPS' database is ludicrous."