Driver’s license or national ID card? | CNET News.com
SAN JOSE, Calif.—Motor vehicle agencies must link their databases together, and perhaps implant chips in driver’s licenses, as necessary steps to ease the way for a national ID card, the head of a group of motor vehicle officials said Thursday.

Technology that may be used for a national ID card could take the form of a chip loaded onto a driver’s license, said Linda Lewis-Pickett, chief executive of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.

Lewis-Pickett was one of several panelists addressing the controversy over the National ID System, during the RSA Conference 2006 here.

“The DMV is in differing aspects of readiness and it would need to make a quantum leap to get to the point of issuing national ID cards,” Lewis-Pickett said.

She added that the various states need to develop a method of interoperability to share information that could be used for a national ID system.

The panel unanimously agreed that a national ID system will fail to fight terrorism, one of the intents of the Real ID Act that passed last year and is slated to take affect in 2008.