The Utah Driver License Division will start issuing smart card licenses in the latter part of 1997, according to a July 12, 1996 article in the Deseret News. In addition to your drivers license, the card is expected to have items such as fishing licenses, library cards, and bank debit cards. To avoid illegal use of your card, if it is lost or stolen, the card will contain a digitized photo of you.

The Deseret News article described a three-level security scheme for protection of the data in the card.

  • A digital image of you will be stored in the card. In the future those stored pictures could be shared between licensing divisions, states and law enforcement agencies, reducing chances that a stolen license could be used to build an identity in another locale (the beginnings of a national ID card!).

  • Personal data about you is printed on the card.

  • Personal data is also stored in the cards memory and on a bar code.

These three security levels are expected to make the card difficult to alter.

COMMENT: My concern isn't about the security of the smart card itself. I'm worried about information about me getting into governmental and industrial central computers. The danger of the smart card, in my view, is that it opens the door to government and industry getting more detailed information about me than they have ever been able to obtain! Once this information leaves my smart card, I have no control over what happens to it.