The anti-terrorism bill signed by President Bush Friday has rekindled debate about whether standardized driver's licenses will become de facto national identification cards — opening the door to potential encroachment on personal privacy.

To be sure, we would insist that any legislation that might move us closer to such a system have safeguards against abuse by the government. There's no earthly reason why ID cards should be capable of tracking the movements of any individual, even if the technology exists to do so. But we believe there's nothing inherently wrong with requiring driver's license to have tougher counterfeiting protection built in — holograms, magnetic strips and features visible only under infrared light — stuff Virginia already does — or with standardizing them.

Let's be honest. No amount of fiddling with the design of a driver's license is going to make us safe from terrorism. If the bad guys can out-gun the good guys, they can muscle their way into or onto any platform they want. It's more likely that counterfeit-proof licenses will deter more would-be young drinkers than they will goons from al-Qaida.

Let's also be honest about some of the dangers to our privacy and civil liberties posed by a national ID card. The genie's already out of the bottle, where that's concerned; if you pay taxes and have a Social Security number, you aren't invisible; the feds can easily track you down, if necessary. The National Criminal Information Center has just about everything else covered.

In reality, standardized driver's licenses aren't a bad idea. They could theoretically save money if the design is created and printed at the federal level, leaving state licensing departments such as our DMV free to be points of issue. Standardized licenses would certainly save on hassle as we move from place to place.

As we said early on, we realize there's the potential for abuse of a national ID. We are not willing to surrender our civil liberties or our privacy for the sake of someone's perceived safety; as we also said, a national ID or driver's license won't prevent a terrorist attack. As long as the law is written with safeguards against abuse, we have no problem with having a national driver's license.

Originally published December 18, 2004