What happens when your driver's license is more than permission to drive

This is a little off-topic for travel to the French West Indies, but the issue is identification - an issue when you return to the US from a trip overseas.

First a little legal definitionry: the word license has a specific meaning. A license is revocable permission. That's all. It's not the piece of paper or plastic in your purse or wallet, it's the actual permission (and it's a permission that can be revoked). The piece of paper is "evidence" of the permission your state has given you to operate a motor vehicle on its streets and roads.

Under almost all circumstances, calling the piece of paper the license does no harm and is commonly understood. When I was a kid in Texas, law enforcement uniformly referred to the license as "them."

Officer: May I see your license, please?

You: you hold your billfold up where the paper license shows through that little plasticine window.

Officer: Can you take 'em out, please?

In the good ol' days, the license was stiff paper with a description of you printed on it, with your birthdate, address, and some other stuff. No photo. Nowadays, the license is plastic with embedded security features in the plastic coating, a photo, plus the other information, and a magnetic stripe. The Driver's License is now officially your state-issued ID. People in stores want to see it when you present a credit card, use a check to pay for a purchase; people at bars may want to see your ID as proof of age as well as identity before they let you in. Someone wants to see your photo ID and boarding pass before you're screened for flights, and a driver's license is acceptable.

Your photo on the license is taken at your local DMV office and embedded in the plastic you're issued. The photo is digital, of course, so the file remains in the DMV's computers. And your photo is used by the police to find you.

The New York Times has an article about one Robert Howell, a fugitive warranting coverage on "America's Most Wanted," a TV show America knows and loves. Mr. Howell was wanted in Massachusettes on rape charges, and his photo was shown on the TV show. Employees of the Massachusettes DMV were sitting around doing their usual work. Using facial recognition software, they compared the mug shot show on "America's Most Wanted" with the nine million faces in the DMV database, and they caught him. Mr. Howell had been issued a Massachusettes driver's license under another name, and the DMV passed their data on to the police. Mr. Howell was tracked to New York where he was receiving welfare benefits under the name on his license.

Critics say this is an invasion of privacy, because the DMV is not an arm of law enforcement. The reply is that the driver's license is now proof of your identity, and people with licenses understand that use and consent not only to that use of the license but to having their photo used as a mug shot if they commit a crime, as well as whatever other uses are invented as the years roll by.

If the federal government imposes a federal ID card (by fiat or by controlling how each state generates driver's licenses), then all our DMV photos are instantly available in a national database for search. And while innocent people always say that if I'm innocent, I have nothing to fear, I'm afraid. The NY Times article mentions that the Massachusettes DMV scans all applications using facial recognition software for multiple applications for licenses by the same person (since the license is ID, having more than one ID lets a person apply for benefits multiple times). They have caught about a thousand such cases, which have been turned over to police. They also have caught people who were the victim of clerical errors in the process of issuance, but who have been called in for interrogation. While being interviewed for potential fraud at the state level may be scary and inconvenient, if this use goes federal, you may be sent to another country for investigation. Or held by federal authorities without charge while they determine if you are a terrorist.

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