30-day Policy for Iowa Driver’s Licenses

The state of Iowa is getting serious about identity theft and fraud using fake driver’s licenses. According to The Sioux City Journal, the state is expecting to have its new centralized license-issuing process in place by the end of March. Under it, an applicant is issued a paper license at the DMV, then receives the permanent card in the mail about 30 days later.

Twenty-four other states have some form of centralized format. Five years ago, the 9/11 Commission urged states to improve the security of their driver’s licenses and ID cards to prevent terrorists from gaining entry into the country, as well as forestall identity theft and other crimes.

“I think more and more are going to it because of the fraud that’s available for over-the-counter licenses,” Kim Snook of the state Department of Transportation’s office of driver services tells the paper. “They come in with good documents, and our staff is very well-trained in fraud and what to look for on documents, but unfortunately it doesn’t get the INS checks, it doesn’t get the image verification.”

Paul Steier, commander of the department’s motor vehicle investigation unit, said DMV workers have no way of knowing whether real documents are simply stolen by criminals.

“They’ll break into your house and steal your  or Social Security card and they’ll show up at one of our counters claiming to be you,” he said. “It makes it more difficult to catch them with the methods that criminals use today.”

How have other states been improving license security? Nevada is one of several that are switching to a new kind of card called the Advanced Secure Issuance card, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. The card has 15 different security features designed to prevent counterfeiting, but only a few have been publicly disclosed: “the background on the card, the gold star on the upper right corner, the micro-laser cut of the shape of the state, the bar code and the overprint of some of the text,” the Journal reports.