National urgency, national push for ID cards

TRIGAUX E-mail: Click here Archive

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 26, 2001

Larry Ellison is worth $15-billion. Now one of the world's richest people wants to give us all something absolutely free.

A national identity card. Complete with your photograph and digitized thumbprint.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, there's a new national urgency to better identify ourselves and those we work with.

For example, in St. Petersburg a company called HireCheck that conducts employee background checks says demand is surging as corporations get more nervous about exactly whom they have hired.

Now, Ellison may get a receptive audience for his argument that a national ID card is crucial for U.S. security. To privacy advocates who bitterly oppose ID cards for U.S. citizens, Ellison suggests personal privacy already has been compromised by the electronic age and the Internet.

"This privacy you're concerned about is largely an illusion," Ellison said in an interview last week on the evening news of KPIX-TV in San Francisco.

Ellison runs Oracle, a California company that is the world's leading maker of database software. His company will donate to the government the software needed to make a national database to help match citizens with the ID cards.

"We need a database behind that (ID card), so when you're walking into an airport and you say that you are Larry Ellison, you take that card and put it in a reader and you put your thumb down and that system confirms that this is Larry Ellison," the billionaire told KPIX.

Shoppers must disclose more information at malls to buy a watch than they do to get on an airplane, he complains.

For Ellison, who never shies from controversy, calling for tighter national security is not new. Another push for a national ID card is not new. Privacy experts criticizing such a card as an unnecessary internal U.S. passport is not new.

But the circumstances since 9-11-01 are dramatically new.

Confirming personal identity. Checking an individual's background. These are emerging national hot buttons since we learned the hard way how easy it is for terrorists to settle unseen into our neighborhoods.

Polls last week show many Americans support a national ID card.

According to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, seven of 10 Americans favor a requirement that citizens carry a national identity card at all times to show to a police officer upon request. Women especially favor the idea.

Digging into people's backgrounds also is gaining a new priority by the business community.

Just ask Renee Svec, a manager at St. Petersburg's HireCheck. The company, formerly called CIC Applicant Background Checks, has handled background checks on employees at more than 4,000 companies.

Svec estimates HireCheck has seen a 25 percent bump in business since Sept. 11. Most new clients are companies with government contracts ("maybe they cut corners and did not do required checks on employees before") and transportation businesses making sure their charter bus or limo drivers are who they say they are.

As part of the terrorist investigation, the Federal Aviation Administration already has ordered all airport workers with access to planes and secure areas to submit to new criminal background checks. The Coast Guard is checking the identities of passengers on inbound ships.

In Florida, Svec says, companies that fail to do background checks can be held liable for an employee who hurts a client or fellow worker.

Rely on resumes and work histories only if you like reading good fiction, Svec suggests. Consider:

Nearly a third of all job applicants misrepresent themselves in some way. Maybe they did not graduate from a particular school. Maybe they did not work in that job at that company.

A full 11 percent of those people applying for work have a criminal background. Some are upfront and disclose that blemish. Others do not.

HireCheck can match a person's name with an address and a Social Security number. It can confirm a person's education and work history. It can tap a credit bureau report as well as a criminal history.

Would any of these checks ferret out a potential terrorist? Unlikely, Svec admits. But job applicants with Social Security numbers that do not match their names or with work histories that are inconsistent can at least raise some red flags.

Two days after terrorist attacks toppled the World Trade Center towers, the chief executive of a New Jersey company called Empire International paid HireCheck $40,000 for criminal background checks on all 500 of his drivers. Most of them drove executive limos and worked in New York City.

David Seelinger, Empire's chief executive, wanted his customers to have better peace of mind, Svec says. (All checks came back clean.)

Is a national ID card inevitable? Nope. But the idea will now get more attention.

Most countries have some kind of national identification system. Germany, France, Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain already use national ID cards. Britain says it will reconsider issuing national identity cards to its citizens.

Along with the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, the Nordic countries and Sweden do not have national ID cards.

Not yet.

- Robert Trigaux can be reached at trigaux@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8405.

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