The Providing for Additional Security in States’ Identification (PASS ID) Act of 2009 seeks to resolve some of the issues with REAL ID, which was introduced after the September 11 attacks as a federal law imposing authentication and security measures on drivers' licenses and state ID cards.
"The bill addresses most of the major concerns CDT has raised regarding REAL ID. The approach the Act proposes will go a long way towards increasing the reliability of driver’s licenses and ID cards in a privacy and civil liberties protective way," said the Center for Democracy and Technology in a statement.
PASS ID removes the requirement for a state to provide drivers' details to all other states, and also refines the 'official purposes' for which federal agencies can request a compliant ID card. States must also abide by privacy and security protections for personal information stored in motor vehicle databases, and they are also prohibited from storing social insurance details on the machine-readable parts of ID cards. Under REAL ID, this information could theoretically be used for tracking individuals.
REAL ID was an attempt to produce a tamper-proof ID card that couldn't be copied by terrorists, but several states had refused to implement REAL ID, citing costs and privacy concerns. These included Maine, Arizona, and Montana. States were supposed to have issued the cards by May 2011.
PASS ID was introduced by senators Akaka (D-HI), Baucus (D-MT), Carper (D-DE), Tester (D-MT), and Voinovich (R-OH).