S. Hrg. 110–555 

THE IMPACT OF IMPLEMENTATION: A REVIEW 

OF THE REAL ID ACT AND THE WESTERN 

HEMISPHERE TRAVEL INITIATIVE 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, 

THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

APRIL 29, 2008 

Available via http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

and Governmental Affairs 

( 

THE IMPACT OF IMPLEMENTATION: A REVIEW OF THE REAL ID ACT 

AND THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE TRAVEL INITIATIVE 

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42–752 PDF 2008

S. Hrg. 110–555 

THE IMPACT OF IMPLEMENTATION: A REVIEW 

OF THE REAL ID ACT AND THE WESTERN 

HEMISPHERE TRAVEL INITIATIVE 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, 

THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

APRIL 29, 2008 

Available via http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

and Governmental Affairs 

( 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

BARACK OBAMA, Illinois 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico 

JOHN WARNER, Virginia 

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire 

MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Staff Director 

BRANDON L. MILHORN, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk 

OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, THE FEDERAL 

WORKFORCE, AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

JOHN WARNER, Virginia 

RICHARD J. KESSLER, Staff Director 

JENNIFER TYREE, Chief Counsel 

JENNIFER A. HEMINGWAY, Minority Staff Director 

TARA SHAW, Counsel 

JESSICA NAGASAKO, Chief Clerk 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Akaka .................................................................................................. 1 

Senator Voinovich ............................................................................................. 3 

Senator Tester .................................................................................................. 6 

Senator Coleman .............................................................................................. 8 

Senator Collins ................................................................................................. 8 

Prepared statement: 

Senator Stevens ................................................................................................ 59 

WITNESSES 

TUESDAY, APRIL 29, 2008 

Stewart A. Baker, Assistant Secretary for Policy, U.S. Department of Homeland Security ........................................................................................................ 12 

Derwood K. Staeben, Senior Advisor, Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, 

Bureau of Consular Affairs, U.S. Department of State .................................... 14 

Hon. Donna Stone, President, National Conference of State Legislatures ......... 34 

David Quam, Director of Federal Relations, National Governors Association ... 36 

Caroline Fredrickson, Director, Washington Legislative Office, American Civil 

Liberties Union ..................................................................................................... 37 

Roger J. Dow, President and Chief Executive Officer, Travel Industry Association ........................................................................................................................ 39

Angelo I. Amador, Director of Immigration Policy, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Executive Director, Americans for Better Borders Coalition ........ 41 

Sophia Cope, Staff Attorney and Ron Plesser Fellow, Center for Democracy 

and Technology ..................................................................................................... 43 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Amador, Angelo I.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 41 

Prepared statement with attachments ........................................................... 121 

Baker, Stewart A.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 12 

Prepared statement with attachments ........................................................... 61 

Cope, Sophia: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 43 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 220 

Dow, Roger J.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 39 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 116 

Fredrickson, Caroline: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 37 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 102 

Quam, David: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 36 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 94 

Staeben, Derwood K.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 14 

Prepared statement with an attachment ....................................................... 68 

Stone, Hon. Donna: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 34 

Prepared statement with attachments ........................................................... 75 

Page

IV 

APPENDIX 

Post-Hearing Questions for the Record Submitted from: 

Mr. Baker .......................................................................................................... 246 

Mr. Staeben ....................................................................................................... 319 

Mr. Quam .......................................................................................................... 349 

Mr. Dow ............................................................................................................. 350 

Background .............................................................................................................. 351 

Additional testimony submitted for the Record: 

Susan Gurley, Executive Director, Association of Corporate Travel Executives ................................................................................................................ 364 

Ruth Ann Minner, Governor, State of Delaware, letter dated April 28, 

2008 ................................................................................................................ 366 

Janice L. Kephart, former Counsel, 9/11 Commission and President, 9/ 

11 Security Solutions, LLC, prepared statement ....................................... 369 

(1) 

THE IMPACT OF IMPLEMENTATION: 

A REVIEW OF THE REAL ID ACT AND THE 

WESTERN HEMISPHERE TRAVEL INITIATIVE 

TUESDAY, APRIL 29, 2008 

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT

MANAGEMENT, THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE,

AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,

OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:36 a.m., in Room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Daniel K. Akaka, 

Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Akaka, Pryor, Tester, Voinovich, Collins, and 

Coleman. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA 

Senator AKAKA. I call the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia to order. 

I want to first thank our witnesses for being here today to testify 

as we review how the Department of Homeland Security and the 

Department of State are implementing the REAL ID Act and the 

Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI). 

I also want to thank Senator Voinovich, my partner on so many 

issues on this Subcommittee, and welcome him here, too. Last year, 

following our hearing on REAL ID, he expressed his interest in 

holding another hearing to examine whether Federal agencies are 

prepared to implement both REAL ID and WHTI. I share this concern and I am happy that we can work on this issue together. 

Both REAL ID and WHTI stem from the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations on how to improve our efforts to prevent and deter 

another terrorist attack in the United States. REAL ID was designed to enhance the security of drivers’ licenses, as most of the 

September 11, 2001 hijackers acquired some form of U.S. identification document, some by fraud, which assisted them in boarding 

commercial flights and renting cars. WHTI is based on the Commission’s recommendation that Americans have their identities securely verified when entering the United States. 

I support the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations concerning 

identification security. However, as the saying goes, the devil is in 

the details. Unfortunately, both REAL ID and WHTI are controverVerDate Aug 31 2005 09:43 Oct 24, 2008 Jkt 042752 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\42752.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
2 

sial because of those very details. Both REAL ID and WHTI pose 

significant threats to Americans’ privacy and civil liberties. 

REAL ID calls for all States to capture digital images of an individual’s documents proving identity, such as birth certificate or 

passport, and provide electronic access to their databases to all 

other States. The massive amounts of personal information that 

would be stored in State databases that are to be shared electronically with all other States, as well as the unencrypted data on the 

REAL ID card itself, could provide one-stop shopping for identity 

thieves. 

We have been told repeatedly that the model for this network of 

networks is the Commercial Drivers’ License Information System 

(CDLIS), which allows States to exchange information about commercial drivers. CDLIS currently stores the name, date of birth, 

Social Security number, and State driver’s license, and number of 

13.5 million commercial drivers. Although proponents of REAL ID 

are quick to point out that CDLIS has never been breached, the 

attractiveness of such a network for computer hacking by identity 

thieves would increase exponentially as the number of individuals 

in the system increases to 245 million. 

In addition, it is unclear what privacy and data security laws 

would apply to this network of networks and what redress mechanisms are in place for individuals whose data is lost or stolen in 

another State. 

Because of the lack of privacy details in REAL ID, this expansive 

effort may create a false sense of security while actually making 

Americans more vulnerable to identity theft. 

Adding to my concern is the fact that some States are implementing enhanced drivers’ licenses (EDLs) to comply with WHTI. 

EDLs are basically REAL IDs with a vicinity-read radio frequency 

identification chip. I am afraid this poses serious privacy and security risks, as anyone with a RFID reader will be able to monitor 

the activities of EDL holders. 

Both REAL ID and WHTI pose significant challenges to the economy and the travel industry. For example, last year, the State Department was not prepared for the overwhelming demand for passports caused by the implementation of WHTI for individuals traveling to Canada and Mexico. Due to the lack of staff and planning, 

the passport processing time went from several weeks to several 

months, causing many Americans to cancel their travel plans. I feel 

that DHS will be in the same boat in 2009 when the current extensions for REAL ID compliance expire. 

Several States have passed laws rejecting REAL ID and the list 

is growing. DHS must be prepared for how it will deal with partial 

compliance if the problems with REAL ID are not resolved. The 

American public will need to know what to expect in secondary 

screening. The Transportation Security Administration will need 

enough staff on hand to quickly screen passengers and avoid travel 

disruptions if States continue to reject REAL ID. Federal agencies 

will need guidance on how they can serve the public and provide 

benefits to those who visit them and do not have the REAL IDcompliant cards. 

Today, I hope to hear from both DHS and State as to how they 

are preparing for these implementation deadlines and what has 

3 

been the impact of the current WHTI rules on the traveling public 

so far. 

Moreover, States are struggling to figure out how they are to pay 

for what is essentially an unfunded mandate. The matter is even 

more important given the current economic climate. States are trying to figure out how to pay for schools, roads, health care, and 

other essential services in a tight budget. Now they have to figure 

out how to pay for secure ID cards. 

Initially, DHS estimated the cost of implementing REAL ID to be $23 billion, of which $14 billion would be borne by the States. In 

the final regulations, the overall cost decreased to $10 billion, leaving the estimated cost to the States at $4 billion. 

The Federal Government should pay for this unfunded mandate, 

but it is critical that we fix the problems with REAL ID first. We 

cannot spend billions of taxpayer dollars to erode Americans’ privacy protections. 

That is why I introduced the Identity Security Enhancement Act, 

S. 717, with Senators Sununu, Leahy, Tester, Baucus, and Alexander, to repeal REAL ID and replace it with a negotiated rulemaking process and the more reasonable guidelines established in 

the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. As 

you know, that Act brought together representatives from the Federal Government, State, and local governments, privacy groups, 

and other stakeholders to develop standards for drivers’ licenses 

while ensuring privacy protections. By bringing everyone together, 

I believe that we can address the problems with REAL ID and have 

secure drivers’ licenses faster than the time frame proposed 

through DHS’s final rules. 

I am pleased that our bill now has the support of the National 

Conference of State Legislatures, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, 

the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, the American Civil 

Liberties Union, and the Center for Democracy and Technology. 

We all support improvements in our driver’s license and identification cards, but Congress has the responsibility to ensure that 

the changes being implemented by the Administration really are 

improvements and are affordable, practical, and increase security 

against would-be terrorists and identity thieves. 

Now I turn to my good friend, Senator Voinovich, for any opening 

statement that he would like to make. Senator Voinovich. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I really appreciate you holding this hearing today about two subjects that you 

and I have been concerned about for quite some time. I think it is 

apropos that we do because the folks that are going to be testifying 

here today are going to carry out these programs for the rest of the 

year and we want to make sure that the baton is handed off to the 

next Administration so that we don’t have some of the screw-ups 

that we have had in the past implementing some of these programs. 

I think we all know that since the 9/11 Commission issued its 

findings and recommendations, we have passed several pieces of 

legislation to improve our Nation’s security by implementing those 

recommendations. This has included legislation to implement the 

4 

Commission’s recommendation that everyone, including U.S. citizens, should carry a document enabling their identity to be verified 

when they enter the United States as well as the Commission’s recommendation that the Federal Government should set standards 

for the issuance of sources of identification, like drivers’ licenses. 

Easier said than done. 

Congress’s legislative efforts in these regards have resulted in 

plans known as the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, and I 

think, Senator Akaka, you referred to it as WHTI. So if we keep 

using the word WHTI, everybody will know it is the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, and REAL ID, and that refers to the licenses that we are asking States to produce. 

There have been significant challenges in implementing each of 

these programs. First, the implementation of WHTI at our airports 

last year was, at best, chaotic. Through no fault of their own, numerous American travelers missed their departure dates to travel 

overseas when the amount of time it took to get a passport increased from 4 to 6 weeks to several months. These problems were 

due to an absolute failure to anticipate demand by the State Department. This was outrageous, and quite frankly, I believe it contributed to the defeat of the President’s immigration legislation initiative because people believed that if the Federal Government 

could not do something simple like issue passports, how in the 

world could it ever implement the changes that were contained in 

the proposed immigration laws. 

There are times when I have asked myself, Mr. Chairman, 

whether we did good when we created the Department of Homeland Security, when we merged 22 agencies, over 200,000 people, 

with several of those departments in trouble already, and with different cultures. I have seen what has resulted of that. As we look 

back on it, I really wish that the Administration had been a little 

bit more aggressive in saying that maybe we were biting off too 

much. 

That is probably the biggest management change in the world. 

No corporation would ever have undertaken it. Compared to what 

we did with the Defense Department, at least there were some 

strings that went through the various Defense agencies. Here, we 

were trying to put together lots of departments, and so I think that 

there may be a day when we are going to have to look back and 

say whether we did this right and maybe look at maybe breaking 

some of that consolidation up. 

While I am told passport issuance problems have been resolved, 

I am interested in learning what steps the Departments of Homeland Security and State are taking to ensure that travelers don’t 

face similar or worse problems with WHTI when we implement it 

at land and seaports next year. Are we going to have another fiasco? 

I am also interested in discussing how these policy changes could 

impact cross-border tourism and trade. I visited the Windsor port 

last summer when I was there with the U.S.-Canadian Interparliamentary Group and heard about slow processing in Canada 

because of staffing shortages. Imagine my shock last week when I 

met with members of the Canadian Parliament Group, who I am 

going to be meeting with in the next several weeks and who told 

5 

me about the lines and the waiting times because of U.S. staffing 

shortages. I question how we can successfully implement policies 

that could further slow cross-border travel if we are doing such a 

poor job now to secure our borders in a way that facilitates the free 

flow of legitimate trade and travel. 

Now, I want you to know this is important to States like my 

State of Ohio, where in 2006 there was a $2.7 billion trade surplus 

with Canada—and there are over 500,000 Canadian visits to my 

State. We cannot have more embarrassments and problems like 

those that occurred last summer as the Departments of State and 

Homeland Security worked to implement WHTI at land and seaports. 

I also have real concerns about the REAL ID program, and Senator Akaka, I think, did a pretty good job in his opening statement 

to lay it out. I am troubled by the significant cost REAL ID compliance imposes on the States. I don’t know why we never raised the 

issue that this was an unfunded mandate under the legislation 

that Congress passed several years ago. According to DHS regulations, REAL ID compliance is expected to cost States almost $4 billion, yet only $90 million has been appropriated for REAL ID 

grants to States to date. This is a small sum when you consider 

that Ohio estimates that its initial cost of compliance will be $15 

million. 

I am also concerned about the fact that the Department of Homeland Security’s regulations indicates States should utilize databases like the Electronic Verification of Vital Events System, to 

verify REAL ID applicants’ information, even though DHS acknowledges that this and other systems are not ready for full implementation. What I am saying is there are six databases that are 

important to issue these REAL ID cards and those databases aren’t 

even all up. When are they going to be up? I question how we can 

go forward with a proposal that asks a State to utilize systems that 

are not there. 

As we implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations, we 

must do so in a way that is intelligent, thoughtful, and involves 

good management practices. We cannot proffer artificial measures 

that will do more harm than good. Further, we must allocate the 

resources necessary to implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations. In other words, are we giving you the resources 

that you need to do the job that we are asking you to do? 

I look forward to hearing from you today and I thank you for 

being here. I don’t want you to interpret anything I have said to 

say that I don’t think both of you gentlemen are doing the best that 

you can, but we have some real problems and I want you to know, 

as a former mayor and as a governor of Ohio, I was interested in 

good management and making sure that programs that I was involved with worked smoothly. 

You have a big burden on your shoulders and the real challenge 

is this stuff is not going to hit the fan soon—you will be gone. We 

want to make sure that next year, when a new Administration 

takes over, that it doesn’t hit the fan, that we are all set. It needs 

to be smooth, and they will look back and say that the Bush Administration did everything that they could to make sure they 

6 

eliminated the glitches so that the baton would be passed off 

smoothly. Thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Senator Voinovich. Senator Tester. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR TESTER 

Senator TESTER. Thank you, Chairman Akaka, and I want to 

thank both you and Senator Voinovich for allowing me to be at the 

Subcommittee hearing today. I also want to thank both our panelists here for being here, Mr. Baker, especially. You have got a 

tough task ahead to defend REAL ID, but I really do appreciate 

you being here. 

I want to echo Senator Voinovich’s thoughts. My frustration is 

with the policy. It is not with the people. And whatever we say 

here today is directed at that and not at anybody personally, because quite honestly, I have got some pretty strong emotions about 

REAL ID. It is, as I see it, the worst kind of Washington, DC boondoggle. 

I think we have folks who really have lost sight of the forest for 

the trees and we are implementing a law, and lost track of attaining a goal that we all share, and that is making this country more 

secure. The fact is that we are spending so much time on REAL 

ID that I think it has become a distraction from the very serious 

security challenges that do face this country. 

I live in Montana, right next to the Canadian border. We still are 

some 1,500 agents short on the Canadian border, on the Northern 

border. The technology that DHS planned to gain control of the 

Southern border has been shelved because it doesn’t work and 

there are still significant other gaps on the Northern border, for 

sure, other than the 1,500 agents that we need to be addressing, 

sooner rather than later. 

Mr. Baker, I have read your testimony and I do think that we 

are looking for the same outcome. You are right that no State 

wants to see its identity documents used in the commission of a 

terrorist act and we need to do what we can to prevent such an 

attack. But the question is really whether this is the right way to 

go about it. 

REAL ID was enacted with no debate or chance to amend it. In 

the 3 years since the law was enacted, it has had all kinds of unintended consequences and no benefit whatsoever when it comes to 

making America more secure at this point. It is incredibly expensive and complicated. It is burdensome to States and individuals 

alike. And it is being implemented in a style that makes ordinary 

folks cringe. 

It was not possible for any State to comply with REAL ID by the 

statutory deadline, so DHS created a game where they waited until 

more than 2 years after it was enacted before issuing rules that 

said if the States said they were going to comply, you would treat 

them as if they were in compliance. However, a number of States 

sent letters to DHS that specifically said they could not or would 

not comply with REAL ID. 

Montana’s Attorney General, for example, wrote, ‘‘Since the Montana legislature will not convene again until January 2009, I cannot authorize implementation of the REAL ID Act.’’ Your response 

7 

to Montana was, ‘‘I can only provide the relief you are seeking by 

treating your letter as a request for an extension, and gave my 

State and others an extension that they never requested. 

I might add that the bill that the Attorney General referred to 

that was passed in 2007, I believe was passed unanimously to not 

implement REAL ID, and the legislature is a pretty diverse group. 

To get an unanimous vote is nothing short of amazing. 

I am pleased that Montanans were not arbitrarily penalized 

under the law because I think that would have been a big mistake, 

but I really fail to see what this exercise actually accomplished 

other than to leave the details of implementing REAL ID to the 

next Administration. 

In short, the entire process of implementing REAL ID has become meaningless. Extensions were granted without cause and 

without any demonstrated security enhancements. Extensions were 

almost denied to certain States despite the fact that many of these 

States had actually done something productive in this area. This 

legal bobbing and weaving has done nothing to improve our homeland security. 

But the consequences for States and for individuals are very 

meaningful. They have no idea whether to go forward with the 

database construction, to redesign the drivers’ licenses and the 

training of new DMV workers that REAL ID requires. If States do, 

in fact, undertake these costly efforts, they do so with no guarantee 

that the Federal Government will compensate their efforts, as has 

been mentioned earlier here today. 

And for individuals, the price may even be higher. More expensive drivers’ licenses with more waiting time at the DMV may be 

the least of the individual worries. Above all, creating a national 

ID card—and make no mistake about it, that is precisely what this 

is—will open up countless opportunities for an individual’s personal 

information to be stolen or used in a way that he or she has not 

agreed to. 

So as you can probably tell, I am not impressed with the REAL 

ID Act and I am not impressed with how it has been handled and 

I don’t have the confidence that things are getting better. The Congress really needs to address this issue in a way that makes sense 

for this country and not continue to keep limping along from deadline to deadline. 

Chairman Akaka, as he talked about in his opening remarks, 

and others have introduced legislation that would take a new approach, giving States a seat at the table, which I think is critically 

important, and capitalizing on the improvements in drivers’ license 

security that already have been happening in States. I am pleased 

to support him in that effort as a cosponsor of that bill. 

Like I said in my opening remarks, Mr. Baker, we have got to 

play the hands we have been dealt. You have been dealt a pretty 

terrible hand and I don’t envy you having to go through this. But 

I look forward to your testimony and I look forward to explanation 

of some of the points that have been brought out today by the opening statements and I look forward to the questions. Thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Senator Tester. Senator Coleman. 

8 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN 

Senator COLEMAN. Mr. Chairman, I am going to yield to my colleague from Maine and submit my statement for the record. I 

would just briefly say that as a Northern border State, I have been 

focusing on the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, and actually, I will associate myself with the comments from my colleague, 

Senator Voinovich. I have a lot of concerns—I have traveled to 

Northern Minnesota—with some of the new rules regarding passports and drivers’ licenses, and hopefully there is better communication now, but we have got to do it right. I look forward to the 

testimony. 

With that, I yield to my colleague from Maine. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Coleman follows:] 

PREPARED OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN 

I want to begin by thanking the Chairman and Ranking Member for holding this 

important hearing today on the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative and REAL 

ID. WHTI is an issue I have been closely working on for many years now as a member of this Committee and as the previous Chairman of the Foreign Relations Western Hemisphere Subcommittee. 

Despite some frustrations and bumps along the way, I believe there has been 

some encouraging progress in recent months with the extension of the final deadline 

and the new passport card option for land and sea travel. I was also thrilled the 

State Department announced the addition of a walk-in, same day service passport 

office opening in the Twin Cities at the end of this year or early next year. I am 

hopeful the State Department will issue passport cards at this facility as well. 

The WHTI Final Rule will go into effect in a little more than a year and I want 

to be sure DHS and the State Department are doing what is necessary to continue 

to ease the burden on our constituents, especially those who live on the border. To 

that end, I have signed on as an original cosponsor to legislation that will be introduced by Senator Collins that would require DHS to establish temporary mobile enrollment teams in communities along the border for the purpose of assisting U.S. 

citizens in applying for passports and passport cards. This is an issue we developed 

together last year and would be another great step to help our border communities. 

I’ve worked hard to raise awareness on the issues I’ve heard from folks and businesses along the border with respect to WHTI. I am looking forward to hearing from 

our witnesses what is being done to effectively communicate what documents will 

be needed to cross the border in June 2009 and how they can obtain them. One of 

the biggest concerns I’ve heard throughout the entire WHTI process has been the 

lack of communication that has accompanied the many changes. I am also interested to hear how the new birth certificate requirement is impacting border crossings and what is being learned from the changes. 

Earlier this year, I visited the International Falls border to do a crossing for myself to observe the process firsthand and was pleased with what I experienced. That 

being said, we are on the doorstep of some of our busiest border crossing months 

and DHS and the State Department have a great opportunity to reassure folks 

through their conduct that the June 1st implementation date can go smoothly. We 

must not waste this opportunity. I look forward to hearing the testimony of our witnesses and thank them for participating in this hearing. 

Senator AKAKA. Senator Collins. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS 

Senator COLLINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 

holding this important hearing. 

The attacks on our country on September 11, 2001, focused our 

attention on the security of our borders and the security of our 

identification documents. Recommendations for stronger border security and authentic drivers’ licenses were proposed by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission. Both the Western Hemisphere Travel IniVerDate Aug 31 2005 09:43 Oct 24, 2008 Jkt 042752 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 P:\DOCS\42752.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
9 

tiative and REAL ID have been flawed programs, however, despite 

their worthy goals. 

In the case of the WHTI, the Department of Homeland Security 

has not been sufficiently attuned to how important cross-border 

travel is to the everyday lives of those who live in border communities. In the case of REAL ID, the Department has not yet resolved longstanding privacy and funding concerns. 

Meeting the challenge of securing the homeland requires that our 

borders be closed to our enemies but open to our friends. Along the 

Northern border, and in Maine in particular, that principle has 

special meaning. Our Nation’s border with Canada has long been 

criss-crossed with the strands of kinship, friendship, commerce, 

health care, and other shared activities. Border crossings are a routine part of daily life in the cities and towns along our borders and 

they are vital to the economies of communities on both sides of the 

border. 

The Aroostook Valley Country Club in Northern Maine is a perfect example of just how integrated border communities are, so I 

want to describe it to my colleagues. This golf course literally 

straddles the border of Maine and New Brunswick. The pro shop 

and the parking lot are on the American side of the border, while 

the golf course and the clubhouse are on the Canadian side of the 

border. Members and guests from both countries come and go and 

have done so for more than 80 years. Recently, however, the Border 

Patrol blocked the road leading from Canada to the golf course. 

This inconvenienced local residents, and once the golf course opens 

for the year, there is a great deal of concern that it could actually 

endanger the very existence of the course. 

The challenges associated with the Aroostook Valley Country 

Club are similar to those at numerous other border communities. 

I have urged Customs and Border Protection to devise commonsense solutions to border security issues, accommodating legitimate 

travel and trade while preventing entry by those who would do us 

harm. 

The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative similarly poses burdens beyond mere inconvenience. While DHS has taken some important steps to accommodate legitimate concerns, such as adopting the long-held view of Senator Coleman and myself that it 

should not require children traveling with their parents to carry 

passports, more needs to be done to relieve the financial and commercial burden that the Initiative will place on our Nation’s border 

residents. 

A positive step was the recent development of a passport card for 

land border crossings at half the cost of a passport. Its $45 cost is 

certainly an improvement. However, for a large low-income family, 

it still poses a significant burden. Reducing the cost of this document, having adequate port of entry staffing and infrastructure, 

and ensuring that the public is fully aware of the Initiative’s document requirements are necessary steps that must be taken before 

WHTI goes into effect. 

That last point about communication is particularly important. I 

have heard time and again from people in the hospitality industry 

in Maine and throughout the United States that there is a lot of 

10 

confusion about WHTI and that confusion is discouraging some Canadians from visiting Maine and other States. 

Turning from border security to the issue of REAL ID, I would 

note that the effective date for REAL ID has effectively been moved 

to the beginning of 2010, as all 50 States have now received extensions of the compliance deadline. These extensions headed off what 

might have been a disastrous day on May 11, when citizens of several States might have arrived at local airports only to find that 

their drivers’ licenses would no longer be an acceptable ID for airport security. 

While these extensions have averted a near-term crisis, they do 

not resolve other problems with REAL ID. For example, I remain 

very concerned about the implementation cost to States from what 

is effectively an unfunded Federal mandate. I also continue to be 

troubled by the potential privacy threats associated with the program’s information retention and verification policies. Many of the 

problems that States are encountering with REAL ID today would 

have been avoided if the original provisions of the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 that Senator Lieberman and I authored had not 

been repealed. 

The Congress, the Administration, and States now have a year 

and a half to come together to resolve these remaining issues. If 

we fail, December 31, 2009, may see a group of States exercising 

their right to say no to the Federal Government. That does not advance the cause of homeland security and it does not advance the 

debate. 

We need to come together to solve the remaining problems, and 

they are real problems. So once again today, I encourage the Department to reach out and truly work with State officials, technology experts, privacy advocates, and other stakeholders, including the Members of this Subcommittee, to minimize and address 

the very real cost and privacy concerns that continue regarding 

REAL ID. 

Again, I want to commend the Subcommittee Chairman and the 

Ranking Member for convening this important hearing. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Collins follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS 

The attacks on our country on September 11, 2001, focused our attention on the 

security of our borders and the security of identification documents. Recommendations for stronger border security and authentic drivers’ licenses were proposed by 

the bipartisan 9/11 Commission. 

Both the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative and REAL ID have been flawed 

programs, however, despite their worthwhile goals. In the case of WHTI, the Department of Homeland Security has not been sufficiently attuned to how important 

cross-border travel is to everyday life for those who live in border communities. In 

the case of REAL ID, the Department has not resolved long-standing privacy and 

funding concerns. 

Meeting the challenge of securing the homeland requires that our borders be 

closed to our enemies, but open to our friends. Along the northern border and in 

Maine, in particular, that principle has a special meaning. Our Nation’s border with 

Canada has long been criss-crossed with the strands of kinship, friendship, commerce, health care, and other shared activities. Border crossings are a routine part 

of daily life in the cities and towns along our borders and vital to the economies 

of communities on both sides of the border. 

The Aroostook Valley Country Club is a perfect example of how integrated border 

communities are. Its golf course literally straddles the Maine-New Brunswick border. The pro shop and parking lot are in the United States, while the course and 

11 

clubhouse are in Canada. Members and guests come from both countries and have 

done so for more than 80 years. 

Recently, however, the Border Patrol blocked a road leading from Canada to the 

golf course. This inconvenienced local residents and, if continued, could endanger 

the existence of the golf course. 

In responding to the challenges associated with the Aroostook Valley Country 

Club or those at numerous other border communities, I have urged Customs and 

Border Protection to devise common-sense solutions to border-security issues, accommodating legitimate travel while preventing entry by those who would do us harm. 

The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative similarly poses burdens beyond inconvenience. While DHS has taken some important steps to accommodate legitimate 

concerns—such as adopting my long-held view that it should not require children 

traveling with their parents to have passports—more must be done to relieve the 

financial and commercial burden that WHTI will place on our Nation’s border residents. 

A positive step was the recent development of a passport card for land-border 

crossing at half the cost of a passport. Its $45 cost, however, is still a burden for 

low-income families. Reducing the cost of this document, having adequate port of 

entry staffing and infrastructure, and ensuring the public is fully aware of the initiative’s document requirements are necessary steps before WHTI goes into effect. 

That last point is an important one: People in the hospitality business in Maine 

have expressed concern that confusion over the WHTI requirement is discouraging 

some Canadians from visiting Maine and other States. 

Turning from border security to securing identification documents, I note that the 

effective date for REAL ID has been effectively moved to the beginning of 2010 as 

all 50 States have now received extensions of the compliance deadline. 

These extension headed off what might have been a disastrous day on May 11, 

when citizens of several States might have arrived at local airports to find that their 

drivers’ licenses would no longer be an acceptable ID for airport security. 

While these extensions have averted a near-term crisis, they do not resolve other 

problems with REAL ID. For example, I remain very concerned about the implementation costs to States from what is an unfunded Federal mandate. I also continue 

to be troubled by potential privacy threats associated with the program’s information-retention and verification policies. Many of the problems that States are encountering with REAL ID today would have been avoided if the original provisions 

of the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 that Senator Lieberman and I authored had 

not been repealed by REAL ID. 

The Congress, the Administration, and the States have a year and a half to come 

together to resolve these issues. If we fail, December 31, 2009, may see a group of 

States exercising their right to say ‘‘No’’ to the Federal Government. 

I encourage the Department to work with State officials, technology experts, privacy advocates, and other stakeholders to minimize the costs and privacy concerns 

that continue regarding REAL ID. 

I commend the Subcommittee Chairman and Ranking Member for convening this 

important hearing. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Senator Collins, for your statement. 

I want to welcome our witnesses and thank you for being here 

today. Testifying on our first panel is Stewart Baker, the Assistant 

Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security, and 

Derwood Staeben, the Senior Advisor on the Western Hemisphere 

Travel Initiative for the Office of Passport Services in the Bureau 

of Consular Affairs at the Department of State. 

It is the custom of this Subcommittee to swear in all witnesses 

so I ask you to please stand and raise your right hand. 

Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give this Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, 

so help you, God? 

Mr. BAKER. I do. 

Mr. STAEBEN. I do. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much. Let the record note that 

our witnesses answered in the affirmative. 

12 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Baker appears in the Appendix on page 61. 

I would like our witnesses to know that although statements are 

limited to 5 minutes, their entire statements will be included in the 

record. Mr. Baker. 

TESTIMONY OF STEWART A. BAKER,1 ASSISTANT SECRETARY 

FOR POLICY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Mr. BAKER. Thank you, Chairman Akaka, Ranking Member 

Voinovich, and Members of the Subcommittee. I am pleased to appear before you today and talk about the implementation by the 

Department of Homeland Security of the REAL ID Act and the 

Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, two initiatives, as the 

Chairman said, that resulted from recommendations of the 9/11 

Commission that are designed to secure identification and protect 

our citizens. 

At DHS, a big part of our job is making it harder for terrorists 

to travel to the United States and we need to do that at the same 

time that we allow innocent travelers to move quickly and smoothly to their destinations. Doing those two things requires two things 

in turn: Good information about our adversaries, so that we actually know who we should be looking for, who should get special 

scrutiny, and then a good way to make sure that they don’t change 

their identities when they realize that we are onto them. 

We talk a lot about screening and getting good information about 

who our adversaries are. We have testified about that often. We 

are less often asked about how we can make sure that terrorists 

cannot easily change their identities to avoid the scrutiny that we 

have brought upon them, and so I am very pleased to be able to 

talk today about that aspect of our initiatives. 

False identification has long been a threat to the Nation’s security. For years, loopholes in our identification document system 

have been exploited for purposes of breaking the law. Many of us 

have been victims of identity theft, which is often made possible by 

forged identity documents, and the same criminal networks that 

helped illegal workers obtain fraudulent identity cards so that they 

could use them to obtain jobs, that same network also aided the 

terrorists who attacked us on September 11, 2001. Eighteen of the 

19 hijackers carried government-issued IDs. Many of them were obtained fraudulently. This led the 9/11 Commission to conclude that 

for terrorists, travel documents are like weapons, and the Commission made two important recommendations, that the Federal Government should set standards for the issuance of sources of identification, such as drivers’ licenses, and that it should ensure that 

people crossing the border are not exempt from carrying secure 

identification. 

To carry out these recommendations, Congress has enacted and 

DHS is implementing two legal requirements. The REAL ID sets 

the standards for security of documents that most people use to 

identify themselves in the United States. Its purpose is to make 

identity theft and fraud by terrorists and others much more difficult. 

And the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative requires that everyone entering the United States have a passport or acceptable 

13 

identity and citizenship document. WHTI, as we are going to call 

it, is designed to ensure that when we encounter travelers at the 

border, they have a document that confirms their identity and their 

citizenship, something that is not true today. 

I am going to stop reading the prepared statement here and turn 

briefly to something that Senator Tester said in his generous remarks, that perhaps this wouldn’t be the easiest job and perhaps 

we have been dealt a difficult hand to play. I would be lying if I 

said I thought I was going to have a great time for the next hour, 

but I will say that I am sustained because every once in a while, 

I get a letter like the letter I got from Maureen Mitchell from 

Madison, Ohio, just the other day. 

It begins, ‘‘Dear Mr. Baker, as a repeat victim of the crime of 

identity theft, I am writing to offer my support for enhancing the 

security measures for issuing drivers’ licenses and State ID cards. 

The State-issued drivers’ licenses and photo ID cards fraudulently 

obtained by the identity theft criminals in our cases’’—she is talking about herself and her husband—‘‘were the weapons used to 

successfully assume our identities, wreak havoc on our lives, and 

fraudulent obtain $184,000 worth of goods and merchandise.’’ 

She goes on to describe the first theft in 1999, when criminal impostors were able to fraudulently obtain Illinois State ID cards that 

displayed the criminal’s picture and my husband’s name and data. 

They obtained $150,000 worth of goods with that fraud. She took 

special measures after that to make sure that her bank account 

was protected and only upon presentation of a photo ID was the 

account to be accessed, and yet 2 years later, the bank called her 

to say, we have some unusual activity, and it turned out that there 

had been four fraudulent withdrawals totaling $34,000 from her 

bank account by a woman named Tina Payne, who had an Ohio 

photo ID card, driver’s license equivalent, that had Tina Payne’s 

picture and Maureen Mitchell’s address and date of birth on it. 

She goes on to explain the difficulty that she had clearing her 

name and says in closing, ‘‘Mere words fail to convey the life-altering consequences my family and I have endured as victims of identity theft. Our good names and personal finances are one of the 

most private and sacrosanct areas of our adult lives and they will 

never be truly restored. REAL ID security protocol measures that 

stop terrorists, ID theft criminals, and illegal immigrants from 

fraudulently obtaining DMV-issued drivers’ licenses and ID cards 

are of vital importance to our national security, our national economy, and our citizens. 

‘‘As an ID theft victim and consumer, I will be happy to spend 

a few extra dollars and wait a little longer in the line at the DMV 

to ensure the safety and well-being of my identity and our national 

security. The minor inconvenience is a small price to pay for our 

own sake and the sake of our Nation. Thank you for your efforts.’’ 

So every once in a while, someone sees what we are doing and 

agrees with us and we are delighted to help people like Maureen 

Mitchell by improving the security of the drivers’ licenses that currently are used by so many identity thieves. Thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. And now we will hear from Mr. 

Staeben. 

14 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Staeben with an attachment appears in the Appendix on page 

68. 

TESTIMONY OF DERWOOD K. STAEBEN,1 SENIOR ADVISOR, 

WESTERN HEMISPHERE TRAVEL INITIATIVE, BUREAU OF 

CONSULAR AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

Mr. STAEBEN. Chairman Akaka, Ranking Member Voinovich, and 

distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to discuss the role of the Department of State in implementing the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative to enhance the 

security of our borders and facilitate legitimate trade, travel, and 

tourism. 

Our primary role is to provide American citizens with passports 

and soon passport cards so they can comply with the new travel 

document requirements that take effect on June 1, 2009. 

Our increased workload indicates that Americans are already 

well aware of the new requirements. In fiscal year 2007, we issued 

18.4 million passports, a 50 percent increase over fiscal year 2006 

and an 80 percent increase over fiscal year 2005. Currently, more 

than 89 million Americans have passports, roughly 28 percent of 

our population. Thus far in fiscal year 2008, we are seeing a 7 percent increase in receipts over the same time period last year and 

our processing time is well within the standard 4 weeks for routine 

service and 2 weeks for expedited service. 

Our initial workload projections indicated demand for U.S. passports could reach as high as 26 to 29 million this fiscal year, 30 

million in fiscal year 2009, and 36 million in fiscal year 2010. Although we continue to prepare for a possible 26 to 29 million this 

year, our current workload indicates that it may be more in the 

range of 20 to 21 million. Although this lower demand may be due 

to recent legislation extending the implementation date, we fully 

expect to see an increase in demand in the months leading up to 

June 1, 2009. 

To meet the passport demand generated by WHTI, we are building the necessary staffing levels and infrastructure. To that end, 

we have hired hundreds of new passport adjudicators and support 

staff since spring of 2007 and are continuing our recruiting efforts 

into 2008 and 2009. 

We opened the mega-passport center in Hot Springs, Arkansas, 

1 year ago to process 10 million passport documents per year and 

we are opening a second printing and shipping facility in Tucson, 

Arizona, this month with the same capacity, for 10 million documents. We are also opening three new passport agencies in Detroit, 

Dallas, and Minneapolis to better serve our border communities. 

We are expanding our agencies in Seattle, Miami, and Chicago, and 

we are doubling the size and adjudicative capacity of the National 

Passport Center in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We have also established a reserve corps of passport adjudicators to supplement 

our full-time passport services staff during demand surges. 

One of the key objectives of the Department is to ensure that the 

passport application is as convenient as possible. The most convenient way to apply for a passport is at a Passport Acceptance Facility. Currently, there are more than 9,400 sites at post offices, 

clerks of court, and other government offices nationwide where citiVerDate Aug 31 2005 09:43 Oct 24, 2008 Jkt 042752 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 P:\DOCS\42752.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
15 

zens can apply for a passport. Since April 2005, when WHTI was 

announced, the Department has added more than 2,400 facilities, 

many of which are located along the Northern and Southern borders. In fact, there are currently 301 acceptance facilities located 

within 25 miles of the U.S.-Canada border and 128 acceptance facilities located within 25 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. 

In response to the needs of the border resident communities for 

a more portable and lower-cost alternative to the traditional passport book, the Department will begin issuing passport cards this 

June. To meet the operational needs of Customs and Border Protection, the passport card will contain vicinity-read RFID technology 

to facilitate entry and expedite document processing at U.S. land 

and sea ports of entry. This card is the result of an interagency effort to produce the most durable, secure, and tamper-resistant card 

possible to the American public using state-of-the-art laser engraving and security features. 

The Department has benefited from the collaborative efforts, 

among others, of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Sandia National Labs, DHS’s Forensics Document Lab, 

and, of course, our colleagues at Customs and Border Protection 

Agency. In consultation with DHS’s Forensics Document Lab, the 

card is designed with multiple layers of overt, covert, and forensics 

security features to guard against tampering and counterfeiting 

and to provide easy visual and tactile verification to Customs and 

Border Protection officers. It is important to note that there is no 

personal identity information on the RFID chip, only a unique 

number that points to the bearer’s file in a secure government 

database. To mitigate the risk of tracking, the card will be issued 

with a protective sleeve to prevent unauthorized reading of the 

chip. 

To encourage Americans to apply for passports and cards and to 

level demand during our traditional peak season, we began accepting applications for the passport card on February 1, 2008. As of 

yesterday morning, we have received 192,000 passport applications. 

Public outreach, of course, is a key to successful implementation 

of WHTI. The Department awarded a contract to a marketing firm 

on March 3, 2008 to help inform Americans about WHTI requirements, the new passport card, and the differences between the card 

and a traditional book, and to encourage Americans to apply early 

for their documents. 

As we move toward full implementation of WHTI, we and our 

colleagues at DHS will continue our public outreach efforts, particularly in border resident communities, and will continue our outreach to business associations and stakeholder organizations. We, 

like our colleagues at DHS, are committed to implementing WHTI 

in a rational, intelligent manner, one that facilitates trade, travel, 

and tourism while enhancing our national security. 

I thank you again and I look forward to your questions. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Staeben. 

Mr. Baker, as you know, the REAL ID Act states that individuals 

who do not possess a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license or identification card cannot use it to fly or enter Federal buildings. Therefore, Americans without REAL ID cards could be subject to secondary screening at airports. Given the number of States that have 

16 

passed laws against REAL ID compliance, this could lead to major 

disruptions for the airline industry. Can you tell us what steps you 

are taking to ensure that TSA is prepared to handle the possible 

increase in secondary screening after December 31, 2009? 

Mr. BAKER. As you know, we faced the prospect as early as May 

of this year that we would be doing that, and at the time, there 

were a number of States who had expressed opposition to REAL 

ID, several who said that they would not implement it, and we 

were in the process of preparing to handle the additional screening 

requirements on May 11 of this year. 

As it happens, and I think for very good reason, all of those 

States found a way to comply with the security requirements or to 

assure us that they are moving toward compliance with those security requirements, notwithstanding their statements and their legislation saying that they would not implement REAL ID. 

We expect that was a very practical solution. It has improved the 

security and put a number of drivers’ licenses and put a number 

of States on a path to substantially increase the security of their 

licenses by the end of 2009. We expect that the same thing will 

happen in the run-up to December 31, 2009. States faced with the 

question, do I want to improve the security of my drivers’ licenses 

or do I prefer less-secure licenses that people can’t use to get on 

planes without going through secondary screening, have chosen to 

improve the security of their licenses? We fully expect them to do 

the same at the end of next year, which is what they did this year. 

Senator AKAKA. So did you have a backup plan for TSA? 

Mr. BAKER. I am glad to respond in a little more detail. Obviously, we left ourselves some months between the deadline for submitting a request for extension and the actual date on which we 

had to begin implementing REAL ID in the airports of the Nation, 

so we had some months of additional planning that we could do 

and so the planning was at an initial stage. 

But I can say that the plan was to focus first on the airports that 

were in the State that failed to meet the standards because we expected to see the largest number of licenses there. That is the largest amount of and most difficult planning. And we were considering 

a number of possible measures to separate the people who had 

good drivers’ licenses or good ID from people who were unable to 

produce licenses or ID that met the standards of REAL ID. 

Senator AKAKA. As I mentioned in my statement, I am concerned 

about the network of networks that will emerge connecting State 

motor vehicles offices with each other. In its final regulations, DHS 

mentions the Commercial Drivers License Information System run 

by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators as a 

model for this network of networks. AAMVA claims that all of the 

information in CDLIS is owned by the States. Assuming that the 

laws governing CDLIS will also apply to the REAL ID State network, can you tell me what privacy laws govern the information in 

CDLIS, and if CDLIS is breached, what rules apply to protect drivers whose personal information is compromised? 

Mr. BAKER. There are Federal privacy laws that actually apply 

directly to State DMVs, including the information that would be 

stored and handled through the systems. In addition, I would expect that any other State laws that provide for privacy of that data 

17 

would provide for, say, notification of breach. I think that 40 or 

more States now have laws requiring notifications of breaches of 

personal data. I believe that the great majority of them apply to 

government agencies as well as the private sector so that you 

would expect notification of those breaches in accordance with 

State law. 

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Baker, cost is a major issue for States in determining whether to comply with REAL ID. Allowing States to use 

up to 20 percent of their Homeland Security grants to pay for 

REAL ID is, in a way, a hollow solution. It is essentially robbing 

Peter to pay Paul. Of the approximate $80 million in REAL ID 

grants available today, how much does DHS plan to give to States 

for development of the State motor vehicle hub and how much will 

be set aside for the other elements of REAL ID, such as improving 

card security and operational or maintenance costs at State DMVs? 

Mr. BAKER. I think that is an opportunity to talk a little bit 

about the funding that we have made available. Hundreds of millions of dollars has been made available through the 20 percent 

rule, and while States may say, well, we would prefer to spend that 

money on something else, it is nonetheless available to offset the 

costs of REAL ID. 

In addition, we have received $90 million in appropriations for 

grants. We have asked for, I believe, $110 million in fiscal year 

2009 as well as an additional $50 million to pay for IT costs that 

will benefit the States overall. 

We currently have, as you said, about $80 million that is available in a grant program that we will be making available to States. 

We are still examining the question of how much we believe a hub 

would cost. We continue to be attracted to the idea of putting grant 

funds into the hub because, as I believe others have said, one of 

the concerns is that we need connectivity to several databases. The 

databases need to be available to all States so that the States can 

get access to that information to verify the particular documents 

they see. Therefore, we know all States will benefit from the construction of a mechanism for them to talk to all of these databases 

and no one today has that connectivity. So it is valuable and supplemental to existing expenditures. 

So we expect to fund the construction of that connectivity as part 

of the grant program. Some of that connectivity will likely be, in 

effect, paying the cost of individual States to hook up to the database, to the hub. That money could be spent centrally or it could 

be provided to the States so that they can make the hook-up on 

their own. We are still looking at that possibility. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. Senator Voinovich. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Baker and Mr. Staeben, as you know, I am unhappy with 

the passport issuance problems that resulted from the implementation of WHTI at airports and I am extremely concerned that we 

will have similar problems with the implementation of WHTI at 

land and seaports. I am equally concerned with Homeland Security’s plans to implement the REAL ID Act. Will you or representatives of your Departments commit to briefing me and perhaps other 

Members of this Subcommittee on the strategic written plans for 

implementing WHTI and REAL ID, including how the programs 

18 

will be transitioned to a new Administration and who will manage 

the program throughout the transition? I am really concerned who 

is going to carry it on. You are going to be gone, and who is going 

to take care of moving that program forward? 

And also, on the issue of costs, how are they being estimated and 

how are they being funded? I am extremely concerned about the 

amount of money that is in the 2009 budget and whether or not 

it is adequate for you to get the job done. Senator Akaka and I are 

very concerned about the handing off of the baton to the next Administration so it is not dropped. 

Mr. STAEBEN. Thank you very much for that question, sir. Yes, 

on behalf of the Bureau of Consular Affairs and the State Department, I would commit to briefing you and any other members on 

your staff on our long-term strategy, our plans in order to meet the 

passport demand that will be generated by WHTI, as well as to discuss our transition plans for the next Administration. 

I would also like to say that after we returned to our normal 

processing levels last fall, we took a very intensive review of all aspects of passport operations, from infrastructure, staffing levels, 

lockbox operations, call center operations, IT connectivity, printer 

capacity, as well as the number of acceptance facilities around the 

United States in order to take the necessary steps to see that what 

happened last year does not happen again. We are currently building our infrastructure and our staffing, as I mentioned in my testimony, in order to meet an anticipated 26 to 29 million by next year 

and 36 million by 2010. 

As far as you asked about funding, in 2008, we submitted Congressional notification for additional funding to meet—when we 

learned that initially we could be facing 26 to 29 million, we asked 

for additional funding. We currently have authority to hire upwards of 700 additional passport adjudicators this fiscal year. And 

the other point is in terms of long-term funding, with Congress’ assistance and the Passport Services Enhancement Act of 2006, we 

obtained a funding stream to help us to fund the additional passport requirements that would be generated by WHTI. 

Mr. BAKER. Senator, of course, I would be glad to commit to brief 

you on our transition plans for both of those programs. As you 

know, we have taken the transition, which will be DHS’s first transition, very seriously. We have done a lot of planning. I have personally designated career officials who can carry over in the transition period because, of course, we know that in the past, terrorists 

have exploited power transitions and we don’t want to see that 

happen again. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Have you personally visited various places 

on the Canadian border to see what is going on? I have to tell you 

that the Canadian Parliamentarians that we have met with have 

voiced some great concern about the lines and it seems the mismanagement. There is supposed to be a line apparently for commercial vehicles that is faster than the other and it stacks up. They 

just are very critical of the operation. Have you actually been up 

there to spend some time, to see it and—— 

Mr. BAKER. I have, and it is true that we have special lanes with 

readers, in fact, using RFID in order to move people faster. If the 

lane for the folks with the registered traveler cards is blocked by 

19 

traffic, then it is—until you get to that lane, you don’t get the benefits of being a registered traveler. However, I have to point out that 

the lanes leading up to the United States are in Canada and at the 

end of the day, the Canadians will have to make the decision to 

build infrastructure that allows those lanes to extend far enough 

for travelers to get the benefit. 

Senator VOINOVICH. I would like, because we are going to be getting together in the next couple of weeks with the Canadians, I 

would love to have your appraisal of where we are and also what 

you believe to be their responsibilities on how they could help us 

facilitate—— 

Mr. BAKER. Absolutely. 

Senator VOINOVICH [continuing]. This effort. And you understand 

that Canada is the No. 1 trading partner for 36 of our States. It 

is our biggest trading partner. We have this unbelievable surplus 

with Canada. Our economies are intertwined. We have a place 

called Cedar Point that gets an enormous number of folks coming 

down from Canada and they are concerned about their business. 

This is a big deal and we certainly want to make sure we secure 

the borders. But we have got to make sure that in the process of 

doing that, we do not stymie this economic vitality that is going on 

between our respective countries and also just the travel and tourism aspect of this, which is very important to both of our countries. 

It is my understanding that these databases for REAL ID aren’t 

up and it would seem to me that before you would ask States to 

implement the REAL ID program, that you would wait until those 

databases are up and then say, now they are up, they are available, and give States a reasonable time to comply now that they 

have all of the information they need to really do the kind of job 

that they should be doing. Why we aren’t doing that is one question. 

And the other question is, don’t you think that if we are asking 

the States to do this that the Federal Government ought to pay for 

a good part of the infrastructure that they are going to have to put 

in initially to make this happen? I mean, that is a major part of 

the push-back. You are asking States to come in with an enormous 

investment on something and saying it is your responsibility when 

this is more than just the States’ responsibility. It is the Federal 

Government’s responsibility. We have mandated this in this legislation. 

Mr. BAKER. Two thoughts. On the databases, we have indeed 

given States extra time, recognizing that the databases are not up. 

Nothing that is required right through the end of 2009 requires 

them to utilize databases that are still under construction. During 

the next year or two, we expect, with the funding that we are going 

to be releasing, that many of these databases will be available. Already, the Electronic Verification for Vital Events has probably 

doubled or tripled the—— 

Senator VOINOVICH. But what I am saying is you are going to 

ask—you are saying to me, go ahead and do it now with the databases that are in existence. Aren’t you going to come back, or we 

are going to come back and say, now they are all up. Now do it 

over again. 

20 

Mr. BAKER. No. None of the things that we are asking States to 

do now are redundant of the things that they will be asked to do 

once the databases are available. 

And if I could just briefly, I will address the funding question. 

Yes, we do believe that the Federal Government should provide assistance to the States and we have provided, as I said, made available hundreds of millions of dollars, some of it directly focused on 

REAL ID to the tune of close to $200 million, if our fiscal year 2009 

request is granted. So we are bearing a substantial part of the financial burden. 

How much more this will cost is actually still to be determined. 

We all are using very speculative data that was originally provided 

to us by the States when they were asked, how much do you think 

this is going to cost you. They told us, and all of us have been using 

that data since. So until we can get some good data about the actual expenditures, we think we have provided a very substantial 

part of the cost already. 

Senator VOINOVICH. My time is up. Are we going to have another 

round? 

Senator AKAKA. I will have another round, yes. Senator Tester. 

Senator TESTER. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I kind of want to follow up on Senator Voinovich’s questions 

here, and then we will go a different route later. Mr. Baker, you 

talked about hundreds of millions of dollars for REAL ID have been 

requested and in some cases appropriated, and $200 million is a lot 

of money. But we are talking about a $10 billion program. If my 

math is right, if you had a program that cost $1,000, we are talking 

about $20 to $30, to put it more in layman’s terms. 

So you are right on one hand that there have been hundreds of 

millions of dollars requested or that has actually come to fruition, 

but on the other hand, you are talking about a $10 billion program, 

and $100 million here and $100 million there isn’t going to get it 

done. Could you respond to that? 

Mr. BAKER. Yes, I will be glad to. Many of the costs that we saw 

in this program have to do with how rapidly people are processed, 

how soon you require people to come in and renew their licenses, 

and we have substantially reduced that cost by providing the 

States with a longer period to bring people in and by allowing them 

to extend for people over 50 for a very substantial period of time 

so that they can get a lot of the under-50s through their system 

in a reasonable time. That is going to greatly reduce the cost. In 

addition, of course, we have provided additional funds. 

We will be asking the States, I think, to give us better estimates 

of the costs, but I think we heard an estimate of $15 million from, 

I think, the State of Ohio as a cost. We have heard numbers on 

the order of two to five from other States. That doesn’t add up to 

$10 billion. 

Senator TESTER. OK. So how much less would you anticipate it 

being for overall implementation of the program? 

Mr. BAKER. It is hard to know. If you took a $10 million cost 

from one State and you multiplied that by 50, you would be looking 

at $500 million. 

Senator TESTER. OK. It is interesting. I just want to talk about 

the 20 percent rule just for a second. The President requested cuts 

21 

in Homeland Security funding for the States from $550 million to 

$200 million. Twenty percent of that can be used for REAL ID to 

set up databases, background checks, DMV employee checks, 

countless other mandates. For Montana, that would amount to 

about $160,000, because we get about $800,000 total. Twenty percent of that is $160,000. I have got to tell you, by Montana terms, 

where a dollar does go quite a ways, that is a mere pittance. Any 

thoughts about how that can be rectified? 

Mr. BAKER. Well, I understand you are using the figures that the 

Administration proposed for substantially reducing that particular 

program—— 

Senator TESTER. That is right. 

Mr. BAKER [continuing]. At the same time that the Administration proposed $160 million worth of funding directly for REAL ID. 

A $110 million of it would go straight to the States and presumably 

Montana’s share of that would be substantially more than 

$160,000. 

Senator TESTER. OK. Well, you get to my concern. My concern is 

the same concern probably—well, I shouldn’t say exclusively, but 

the funding part of this is a big issue for States. 

I want to talk about encrypting data on the card. There is nothing put in the final regulations about it. Do you see it that the information has to be encrypted, or should it not be encrypted, or 

should it be encrypted, or what is going on there? 

Mr. BAKER. We did not approach this with a priori sense of what 

the right answer was, but when we talked to law enforcement, they 

raised real questions about the value of the machine readable zone 

for them if it was encrypted. You can imagine, if you are a Montana State Trooper and you stop someone in the middle of a long 

empty highway drive, you need to be able to read that information 

quite quickly, and if you have to try to find an encryption key, it 

is not going to be easy. 

Senator TESTER. I get that, but when you talk about the 

Maureen Mitchells of the world, if it is not encrypted, that means 

that bar owners—I am not saying they are bad folks—clubs, people 

on the Internet that want to get one of these machines, and I think 

from my perspective that opens up identity threat to a much greater risk. 

Mr. BAKER. Well, the information that is on the machine readable zone is the same information that is on the face of your driver’s license. It doesn’t include your Social Security number. It includes your name, address, date of birth. That is information that 

is very hard to hide in an Internet age, and the notion that somehow because it is on a machine readable zone it will become more 

available to identity thieves is, I think, pretty speculative. 

Senator TESTER. Well, as long as you want to bring that up, you 

have 17 requirements. One of those requirements is, in fact, a Social Security number on the card, No. 4. Required documentation, 

date of birth, Social Security number, address of principal residence, and habitancy of lawful status. 

Mr. BAKER. That is the information that must be provided to the 

Department of Motor Vehicles. It does not—— 

Senator TESTER. But it doesn’t need to be on the card. OK. 

Mr. BAKER [continuing]. Need to be on the card. 

22 

Senator TESTER. Let me ask you about folks in Montana, a couple issues. We get our drivers’ licenses mainly by mail, is there any 

difficulty there? 

Mr. BAKER. Certainly not mailing it out—— 

Senator TESTER. As far as security, as far as that kind of stuff? 

Mr. BAKER. We have not tried to restrict central issuance of drivers’ licenses because central issuance saves States a great deal of 

money and can provide more security. 

Senator TESTER. OK. In Montana we have centralized Department of Motor Vehicles, places where you go to get your drivers’ 

licenses. We also have a lot of places that may be an afternoon once 

or twice a month where DMV employees go out to a public building 

usually and take the tests and that material is gathered up in a 

room very similar to this one. Is there a problem with that? 

Mr. BAKER. I think not, from what I understand of the process 

as you have described it. That is to say, people will be collecting 

the information and then mailing out the licenses. That should be 

something that can be accommodated under REAL ID. 

Senator TESTER. OK. Does it concern you at all that after all is 

said and done, we are really not going to have anything until 2017 

for sure everywhere, and that means if there are gaps—that is 16 

years after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. Does it concern you at all that we are extending out that far for this particular item? 

Mr. BAKER. Obviously, we would love to be able to wave a magic 

wand and have everybody have good ID today, but we know that 

the biggest expense the States have was the process of bringing 

people in. So if we are going to reduce the cost, we have to extend 

that period. What we did is we said that 2017 is when the last person over 50 is going to get a REAL ID. Everyone under 50 will 

have it in 2014. We will be issuing the first of those completely 

compliant in 2011. That means that we will be able to check the 

IDs with confidence by 2014 of everyone under 50, and if you have 

to make a priority, I think that is an appropriate—— 

Senator TESTER. So the extensions are done to save money? 

Mr. BAKER. If we could get this faster without breaking the bank 

for the States, we would be delighted to do it faster. 

Senator TESTER. OK. Well, even 2014 is a ways out there. I 

mean, I will be pushing 60 by 2014. That is how far it is out there. 

[Laughter.] 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BAKER. It is not that bad, Senator. [Laughter.] 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Senator Tester. 

I will call now on Senator Collins, followed by Senator Coleman. 

We will have a second round of questions. Senator Collins. 

Senator COLLINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to pick up, Mr. Baker, on the cost issue because this is 

of tremendous concern to our States and the Department’s suggestion that States use a portion of an already inadequately funded 

State Homeland Security grant program just is not a sufficient answer. The cost to States of implementing REAL ID by the Administration’s own estimate is expected to be approximately $4 billion 

over 10 years. Both the National Governors Association and the 

National Conference of State Legislatures have recommended that 

23 

$1 billion be appropriated this year to assist States in improving 

the security of their drivers’ licenses, a key part of REAL ID. 

So first, let me ask you, does the Department support such an 

appropriation, a targeted, earmarked—at the risk of using a word 

that is in disfavor in Washington, but a targeted $1 billion appropriation for compliance with REAL ID? 

Mr. BAKER. The Administration has supported targeted funding 

for REAL ID. The Administration budget put forward, as I said, 

$110 million in grants and another $50 million in in-kind contribution from the Federal Government. It did not include the numbers 

that you are talking about, and obviously at this point the determination of the size of the grant is going to be determined by the 

Congress and not necessarily by our recommendation. But at this 

stage, our recommendation is that there be a targeted program, but 

the number that we would use is $110 million plus the $50 million. 

Senator COLLINS. See, that number puzzles me because the Department’s own analysis suggests that far more is required to help 

States, especially since there are a lot of expensive start-up costs, 

particularly for States like Maine, like Montana, that have had to 

make sweeping changes in their approaches. This is not something 

that is easily affordable to any of our States. So I hope you will 

work with us to be more realistic on those up-front costs because 

the amount that the Administration is proposing does not begin to 

cover the costs that our States are having to incur at a time when 

the economy is poor and State revenues have declined sharply, 

leaving shortfalls in many States. 

Mr. BAKER. We will be glad to work with you on this. We recognize that the cost estimates have been difficult to arrive at with 

any precision and we will be doing everything we can to produce 

better numbers that are more accurate for you. 

Senator COLLINS. Well, what would be most helpful is to have 

the Administration actually support our efforts to increase the 

funding for a targeted program, but I am going to move on to another issue. 

Your written statement notes that DHS plans to expand its mobile enrollment centers for the NEXUS Trusted Traveler Program 

in some of the Northern border States, and Senator Coleman and 

I, in particular, have been pushing for DHS to use these mobile 

centers in our States. If CBP is already deploying these teams to 

the field, why doesn’t DHS also instruct these teams on how to accept passport card applications? After all, these officers are very 

skilled at reviewing identity documents. They could easily pass on 

to the State Department the verified applications for further processing. 

That would allow us to either greatly reduce or eliminate the $25 

execution fee that first-time applicants have to pay, which is more 

than half the cost of the $45 for the passport card. If you could get 

the passport card’s cost down to $25, it would be so much more acceptable to our constituents. And it seems to me it doesn’t make 

sense to send out these teams—you also have TWIC teams that are 

going out. Why not use these mobile enrollment centers as a more 

full-service approach so that we don’t have to pay $25 to the Postal 

Service each time one of these applications is handled? 

24 

Mr. BAKER. We certainly would support anything that would 

bring down the cost of the card, bearing in mind Senator 

Voinovich’s stress that the State Department have the funds to 

handle the load. But I think on the question of the exact procedures for gathering the information that is necessary for a card, I 

should defer to Mr. Staeben. 

Senator COLLINS. Let me broaden the question to you because 

last year’s Homeland Security law instructed the State Department 

to develop proposals for reducing that execution fee, including the 

use of mobile application teams, before the final rule on WHTI is 

issued. And the rule has been issued, but the State Department 

has yet to come up with a plan to use the mobile enrollment teams. 

Why isn’t there more cooperation between DHS and the State Department on this? 

Mr. STAEBEN. Well, thank you for the question, Senator Collins. 

There are a couple of questions in there. One, on February 1 of this 

year, we did lower the cost of the execution fee from its previous 

$30 to $25. This was after extensive discussions with our primary 

acceptance facility agent, which is the U.S. Postal Service, and 

after these discussions, we all agreed to lower it from $30 to $25. 

The execution fee, of course, is the fee that these entities, such as 

the U.S. Postal Service, county clerks of court, charge on our behalf 

in order to cover their costs for processing the acceptance of these 

applications. 

I think from the State Department’s perspective, we are looking 

for a more permanent solution in terms of increasing our acceptance facilities along the Northern and Southern border, which will 

be more permanent. We already have 301 on the Northern border. 

In fact, there are 17 Passport Acceptance Facilities within 25 miles 

of the Maine and Canada border already. We have been working 

with the Postal Service both to increase the number of acceptance 

facilities along the borders as well as to encourage them to conduct 

more ‘‘Passport Fairs,’’ which they have been doing very aggressively. I noted in discussions with your staff several months ago 

that they had already conducted at least two, I believe, in the State 

of Maine. 

So this is how we are approaching this. That, of course, does not 

preclude discussions with the Department of Homeland Security on 

other possible activities, but I will defer to Mr. Baker since that 

falls under his purview. 

Senator COLLINS. Mr. Chairman, I know my time has expired 

and I hope my colleague is going to follow up on this, but this just 

does not make sense. If DHS is sending enrollment centers out, 

mobile enrollment centers, which I applaud the Department for 

doing, for both the NEXUS program and the TWIC program, surely 

these individuals who are skilled in reviewing identity documents 

can also handle applications for the passport card and thus pool resources here and allow for a significant reduction in the fee. This 

is an example of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing, 

or perhaps knowing but not working together. 

Senator AKAKA. Senator Coleman. 

Senator COLEMAN. Let me follow up. First, do you have a map 

showing the Northern border where these various acceptance 

agents are located? I have seen some old maps, at least in MinVerDate Aug 31 2005 09:43 Oct 24, 2008 Jkt 042752 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 P:\DOCS\42752.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
25 

1The information provided by Mr. Staeben appears in the Appendix on page 74. 

nesota, and the Northern border was pretty empty in those areas 

right by it. Do you have anything that you have available—— 

Mr. BAKER. I did not bring a map of that. 

Mr. STAEBEN. No, I am sorry. I do not have one with me. I can 

provide that information to you.1

Senator COLEMAN. Mr. Chairman, I would like to actually take 

a look at that. 

Second, just following up, and this is Minnesota-specific, there is 

a new passport agency that we are opening up in the Minneapolis 

area. If $25 of the $45 cost is an execution fee, if folks then apply 

in a passport agency, does that mean that the cost for getting the 

passport card would be less if they are not working with the Post 

Office? 

Mr. STAEBEN. The $20 cost of the card is based on cost of service 

study, a requirement to recover the cost of producing the card. So 

the execution fee is just an incentive. Basically, it encourages the 

acceptance facilities to accept these passport applications on behalf 

of the Secretary of State. 

Senator COLEMAN. What Senator Collins and I are pushing here 

is that if you have ways in which folks get these cards without 

dealing with the Post Office or these acceptance facilities—in other 

words, if you get it directly, if you are not dealing with a third 

party, can we lower the cost? The message here is it sure would 

make a lot of sense, at least in my State where we have integrated 

communities. We have hockey teams that go back and forth between Fort Francis and International Falls. 

And by the way, the exception for kids is still in place, right? Minors will not have to be getting these cards? 

Mr. BAKER. That is true. 

Senator COLEMAN. But then going to the adults, if, in fact, you 

have—as I understand this fee, there are two pieces of it. There is 

the execution fee, it is the administrative cost, and then there is 

the incentive to some of these acceptance facilities, Post Offices, for 

instance. But if folks can get it directly, are there ways to get the 

cost of this card down to the $20 or $25, either through the mobile 

teams that Senator Collins has talked about that I support or 

working directly with other facilities where you are not paying the 

Post Office the $25 to $30? 

Mr. STAEBEN. I would have to discuss this further with the Department of Homeland Security—— 

Senator COLEMAN. I would appreciate that discussion, and—— 

Mr. BAKER. And I think you do deserve a more detailed answer 

and we will get it for you. I just want to point out that the reason 

the States are complaining about the cost of REAL ID is that it 

costs money every time somebody shows up at the counter and 

hands you papers and says, ‘‘This proves that I am entitled to an 

identity document.’’ Handing that burden to the mobile teams 

doesn’t mean that there isn’t a cost to doing it. There is a cost 

when the Postal Service deals with it. So it won’t be free to do 

something like that. We will examine the question of whether it is 

nonetheless something that can be done and what the implications 

would be. 

26 

Mr. STAEBEN. Yes. Also, I believe there may be a legal requirement to collect the execution fee as part of the application process. 

If it doesn’t go to the passport acceptance facility, such as the 

USPS, or to county clerks of court, it goes to the U.S. Treasury. So 

we would have to investigate that, as well. 

Senator COLEMAN. There is no question, there is a cost of processing a document, but at least as I understood the breakdown, you 

have the administrative cost and then there is this incentive for 

others who have their own costs. But if we can short-circuit that 

or change that, then perhaps we can reach the point where, again, 

we are paying the administrative fee. There is no question about 

that. 

Let me kind of step back a little bit. When we came to January 

of this year, or last year, the system collapsed. Folks didn’t really 

understand that they didn’t need the passports at that time. We 

had all this pressure on passports. I dealt with thousands of cases 

in Minnesota, thousands of folks who simply—they paid the expedited fee and literally it was months before they got a passport. 

The staff was listening to people on Sunday nights before they 

were leaving on a honeymoon, long-planned trip, etc., on Monday. 

I appreciate the fact the Department then put in some additional 

facilities, has increased the production capability. 

As we fast-forward now to June 1, 2009, another deadline is 

going to be approaching. How confident are you that we are not 

going to have the disaster that we had at the beginning of last 

year? 

Mr. STAEBEN. Well, thank you for that question. As I mentioned, 

or alluded to earlier, the plan here is to make sure that we have 

the infrastructure in place as well as the adjudicative capacity to 

meet whatever comes our way, whether it be 32 million or 36 million. We also have built in trip wires for surge capacity. 

For instance, if we hit the first trip wire, we will draw on our 

reserve corps of passport specialists that we have trained. They 

have other jobs, but we can draw on them, if necessary. The second 

trip wire is remote adjudication, where we will draw on the expertise of our consular officers at missions abroad to adjudicate renewal cases. 

So everything that we have done and all the steps that we have 

taken are to make sure that, first, we can meet an anticipated capacity of 36 million by 2010, and then to build in surge capacity 

so that if it does happen, we can respond very quickly and do not 

have a repeat of last year. 

In terms of informing the American people, particularly the border resident communities, we have contracted with this company 

which will begin its bulk outreach campaign probably in September, with a follow-up in December. The reason we are doing it 

then is because we are accepting the passport applications now for 

the cards, but we will not begin producing those until June. Then 

it will take a short time in order to issue all those cards that have 

been in the system, so we want to wait until September when we 

will have returned to our normal 4-week turnaround time for passport card applications to begin informing the border resident communities that the card is now out there. You can get it within a 

27 

short time frame. Please apply now. And that still gives us 9 

months before June 1, 2009. 

Senator COLEMAN. I would hope there would be a very robust 

public communication effort to avoid the kind of confusion, or massive confusion that we had last year. 

I see my time is up, Mr. Chairman. There are other questions. 

I know there are other panels and I don’t want to keep this panel 

here forever, so I anticipate submitting some questions for the 

record. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Senator Coleman. 

Mr. Baker, States are concerned that strings will be attached to 

the REAL ID grant funds. All States could use funding to improve 

the security of their drivers’ licenses and identification cards, 

whether they comply with REAL ID or not. I would like to know, 

if a State receives funding under the REAL ID grant program, are 

they required to comply with REAL ID? If a State chooses not to 

comply with REAL ID, will it have to repay the grant funds? 

Mr. BAKER. We are clearly not going to give REAL ID money to 

States who say that they are going to spend it on a yacht for the 

governor, so we do expect to get the security benefits that REAL 

ID requires from States that take these funds. And some States, 

New Hampshire among them, said—they actually received a grant 

and they returned it because they said, we aren’t going to comply 

with REAL ID. 

Since then, I think the States that are looking at this question 

have discovered that they can refuse to comply with REAL ID and 

at the same time implemented all the security features that REAL 

ID calls for. That has allowed a number of States, including Maine 

and Montana, to say while we are not implementing REAL ID, we 

are implementing the security features of REAL ID because we believe in security. 

DHS has been flexible and accepted the substance of security 

without insisting on some kind of pledge of allegiance to REAL ID 

and we continue to expect to do that. So I hope that we can find 

a way to improve the security of State licenses, to help underwrite 

the cost of that without having an argument about what bumper 

sticker goes on the car. 

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Staeben, in determining its cost estimate for 

REAL ID, DHS estimated that 75 percent of current driver’s license holders would actually get a REAL ID card. Do you believe 

that those individuals who do not get a REAL ID card will instead 

apply for a passport? If so, what steps are you taking to prepare 

for the increase in passport applications from individuals who do 

not want to or cannot receive a REAL ID card? 

Mr. STAEBEN. Thank you for that question, Mr. Chairman. Actually, that was one of the variables in last year’s experience. We believe that there is a growing demand for the U.S. passport for purposes other than international travel, as a premiere document for 

identity and citizenship, and we asked the contractor that conducted the survey last summer that led to the projections that we 

were using until the recent legislation indicated that we would be 

at 26 to 29 million and there was an attempt, although not particularly successful, to get a handle on that number. We are still trying 

to refine that number as to how many are out there applying for 

28 

a passport book or a card for purposes of obtaining Medicaid benefits, for purposes of voter registration, or for purposes of compliance 

with the REAL ID. 

But in general, we think that the 36 million is a little on the 

high side, and yet we continue to prepare for that and we are—our 

strategy is to remain flexible so that we can increase very quickly 

if we need to, or we can scale back a little bit on our recruiting efforts, if necessary, if in fact the numbers aren’t coming in as we 

anticipate. 

As I said, we are also working with the contractor in order to 

conduct yet another survey to follow up on that in order to further 

refine those numbers and get a better understanding of how many 

people will be applying for passport cards, presumably since they 

are less expensive, for purposes other than international travel. 

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Baker, in light of all of the recent stories 

about personal data privacy breaches, it is particularly important 

that REAL ID be implement with strong protections for the privacy 

of personal data. This is especially true because REAL ID essentially requires the creation of a national database of driver information to be shared between States. Yet the final DHS regulations 

contain no plan to secure the shared driver information. Can you 

explain why the REAL ID final rules did not lay out a plan for protecting the personal data that will be accessible in the planned 

databases? 

Mr. BAKER. First, we do require States to have security plans for 

the data, and that is an important protection. We want to leave 

room for States to make choices that make sense to them on exactly how to implement that to accommodate their individual circumstances and how they actually process data. 

In terms of ways to approach this problem for the future with respect to the hub, we expect to be addressing that in the course of 

actually deciding how the hub will function and what security 

measures will be in place, but that is a question for the actual implementation of the grant and the contracts that will produce the 

hub, and so we certainly do not expect it to be without security features. 

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Baker, I want to commend your Department, 

acting through Customs, for taking action to enforce the Passenger 

Vessel Services Act on Hawaii’s coast-wide cruises. Maintaining a 

U.S.-flag cruise industry is important to both Hawaii and the Nation as a whole. Not only is this important to the State of Hawaii 

and to the U.S. economic and national security, but this issue is 

important to me personally. I hope that Customs will adopt the 

rule that adequately protects markets where U.S.-flag passenger 

ships operate, and that does not have unintended effects elsewhere 

in the United States. 

Has the Department considered implementing a more limited 

rule that specifically addresses the competitive harm to large U.S.- 

flag passenger ships by foreign-flag ships evading the coastwide 

laws in those markets? 

Mr. BAKER. Well, Senator, as you know, we have looked hard at 

the possibility of addressing the question of what truly is an international cruise and what is not. There have been strong objections 

to the practice of having very brief stops after midnight in a single 

29 

port outside the United States as a way of demonstrating that the 

international component has been met. 

Our proposed solution which we have published attracted quite 

a bit of controversy and we are looking very hard at the comments, 

both favorable and unfavorable, to see how we can best come to a 

final resolution. We are working at that very hard and I hope that 

we will be able to announce something, certainly in the next few 

months. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Mr. Baker. I will submit my other 

questions for the record. Senator Voinovich. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to know what plans you both have to explain to the 

public the requirements and procedures and documents WHTI is 

going to be requiring and the differences between the documents. 

In other words, I think you need to clarify what is going to be required. For example, the passcard cannot be used as a substitute 

for a passport for air travel, and it is important people understand 

that. 

Now, you made some reference before about the passcard. For example, I understand that TSA is going to require some day a REAL 

ID as you go through airport security. Would the passcard substitute for that REAL ID? If the States aren’t going to go forward 

with REAL ID, what is going to happen in terms of when people 

go through and they are asked for their ID and it is not a REAL 

ID, it is my old driver’s license from Ohio? Is that going to be adequate? There is a lot of questions that are out there and it seems 

to me that you ought to do a lot of work in working with travel 

and tourism, AAA and a lot of other organizations to have a plan 

in place to make sure that the information getting out is as clear 

as possible. 

For example, I understand now that if you are coming from Canada to the United States, in the old days, it was an oral declaration. Now, I think they are requiring a passcard or a driver’s license or a birth certificate. Come June of next year, it is my understanding that you are going to have to have a passcard to come 

back into the United States or a passport. These are things that 

really need to be clarified so that folks understand just what they 

are going to use these documents for. 

Mr. STAEBEN. Thank you very much, Senator Voinovich, for that 

question. The passport card was designed specifically to meet the 

needs of the border resident communities. In fact, it was as a result 

of the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that we issued in 

2005. We received over 2,000 comments to that. Many of these 

comments specifically addressed a need for a document that was 

more portable and less expensive than a traditional passport book. 

That is really the genesis of the passport card that the Department 

of State is developing. It is not a globally interoperable document 

and therefore it is not under ICAO standards acceptable for the air 

environment. So we designed it specifically to meet the needs of the 

border communities. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Could it be used as a substitute for a driver’s license? 

Mr. BAKER. Yes, it could. If you are using it to go through TSA’s 

checkpoints, we would, of course, accept it. 

30 

Mr. STAEBEN. The passport card is, by definition, a U.S. passport 

and carries all of the rights and privileges of a U.S. passport book. 

So wherever a passport book would be accepted—— 

Senator VOINOVICH. But for air travel, you need to have a regular passport? 

Mr. STAEBEN. That is correct, sir. In terms of public outreach, 

the public relations firm that we have contracted that will begin its 

outreach this September with a follow-up in December going to 

focus specifically on the differences between the book and the card 

so that people understand the differences. If all they do is they live 

in a border community, they cross the border, whether it is from 

Texas into Mexico or Maine into Canada, this is their life, then the 

card would probably be the correct document for them. 

Senator VOINOVICH. For example, I will just interrupt you, but 

we have a lot of folks in Cleveland who tell me that they go up to 

Windsor to gamble. I suspect that the gambling houses will tell 

them they need to get—by June of next year, they are going to 

have to have a passcard if they expect to get back into the United 

States, is that right? 

Mr. STAEBEN. That would be correct, sir. A passport card would 

probably be the document of choice in that situation if all they are 

doing is driving to Windsor for those purposes. If, on the other 

hand, you live in a border community and yet you have occasion 

to fly, then probably you would want to order both a passport book 

and a card, in which case the card is only $20 because it is treated 

as a renewal. So it is $20 in addition to the cost of the passport 

book. 

The public outreach campaign that we have is going to focus on 

the border resident communities. We look to DHS for the broader 

national campaign. However, we are coordinating very closely. In 

fact, their public relations firm is meeting with our public relations 

firm this week to begin coordinating our outreach activities. As I 

said, we will be focusing more on the border resident communities 

in order to inform them about the passport card. 

Senator VOINOVICH. How about the Canadians? We have Cedar 

Point that just gets a tremendous number of people coming in from 

Canada to take advantage of it. What are those Canadian people 

going to need to get into the United States come June of next year? 

Mr. BAKER. The Canadian Government has not issued a passport 

card, but Canadian provinces have indicated strong interest in following up on the lead of the States in the United States who have 

begun issuing enhanced drivers’ licenses that have the features of 

a passport card and can be obtained—— 

Senator VOINOVICH. But we are the ones that are going to require it. I mean, for people coming in from Canada. 

Mr. BAKER. Yes. 

Senator VOINOVICH. We are going to tell them, you can’t come 

into the United States unless you have what? 

Mr. BAKER. And we have—well, certainly a Canadian passport, 

also an enhanced driver’s license from any of the participating 

provinces. British Columbia is already issuing them. Ontario, 

Manitoba, and others are launched on the planning for issuing 

theirs so that there should be an inexpensive alternative to a passport available to Canadians. The Canadians by and large have 

31 

passports at a much higher percentage than the United States 

does, probably double U.S. penetration in terms of having passports, so that it may not be as necessary for them to have special 

cards to cross the border. They may already have what they need. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Well, one thing I would just leave with you 

is that we need to do as much as we possibly can to work with our 

Canadian brothers and sisters and try to get the best information 

that we possibly have to each other and make sure that things are 

as clear between us as possible, because I am, as I say, very active 

in the U.S.-Canadian Parliamentary Group. I have to tell you that 

our colleagues in the Canadian Parliament are very critical of what 

we are doing. Now, I suspect maybe some of them may be exaggerating it, but if that is the kind of feeling that they have, I just 

wonder whether or not you are spending as much time as you 

should with their ambassador here, Mr. Wilson, to make sure that 

all of the details are worked out and clarified so that there isn’t 

a bunch of finger pointing next year about not cooperating. 

Mr. BAKER. I think we have spent quite a good bit of time with 

Ambassador Wilson and with our Canadian partners, working very 

hard to make sure that information gets out. And in fact, it is 

worth remembering that what happens in June 2009 is the third 

and last stage in the process of imposing more effective documents 

at the border. We imposed a requirement in January 2007 for everyone who flies to the United States and compliance is at 99.8 percent today, and was. 

When people realize you are going to enforce that deadline, the 

word gets out. Every Canadian media outlet was focused on that 

requirement and got the word out. When we imposed the requirement—when we got rid of the requirement that you could smile 

your way across the border without any documents, that new requirement was imposed in January of this year and while there 

was a lot of, again, what was called earned media, mostly consisting of people on both sides of the border predicting a disaster, 

everyone understood that they needed to have a birth certificate as 

well as a driver’s license or a passport, and again, our compliance 

with that is above 95 percent today. People do come into compliance if they know you are going to enforce the deadline. 

And now, I think, we have one last step to take, which is to move 

from the idea that a driver’s license and a birth certificate is as 

sufficient as an actual passport. That will take some doing. There 

will be a number of people who need to get those documents. We 

are getting the word out. We are going to spend $10 to $15 million 

over a period of years to make sure that word gets out. But our 

biggest allies in this are the people who will be covering it for the 

media, and we have had very good cooperation, if you can call it 

that, from people in the past saying this could be a disaster, watch 

out, and that alerts everyone. They all go out and get their documents and we have averted the disaster twice. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Senator Voinovich. Senator Tester. 

Senator TESTER. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I just want to echo the remarks of Senator Voinovich because I 

have heard some of the same, and I hope the meetings that you 

32 

are having with the Canadian officials, are to a discussion, because 

quite honestly, the points that they have brought up to me, I hope 

to bring them up to you and I hope that they are not just pushed 

away. I hope they are addressed. I just implore you to do that. 

I want to go back to the Department of Motor Vehicles centralized. I asked you a question earlier on the first round about if, in 

fact, there were people that go out to public buildings and give the 

tests. I just want to make sure that what I heard was correct, and 

you said you did not think that would be a problem, that they could 

still go out to remote locations, give the test, and send the driver’s 

license through the mail back to the applicant. Is that correct? 

Mr. BAKER. Yes. I would have to get into the details, but if what 

they are doing is collecting the information so that they have the 

information that would otherwise be collected at the DMV—— 

Senator TESTER. Right. 

Mr. BAKER [continuing]. Which I assume they have to do. 

Senator TESTER. Right. 

Mr. BAKER. Actually, central issuance, in our view, tends to be 

more secure than having multiple places that just print the license 

out on the premises. 

Senator TESTER. OK. So what you are saying is they couldn’t 

print them out on the premises? 

Mr. BAKER. You mean like in the back of the mobile—— 

Senator TESTER. I mean, if they had—yes, in the back of a mobile. 

Mr. BAKER. It is not that that is impossible, but it would require 

particular care to make sure that the materials are not subject to 

being diverted, etc. 

Senator TESTER. OK. What I need from you, if you could, in your 

free time, if you could just send me a verification that this is possible, and if there are any caveats, include—— 

Mr. BAKER. We will be glad to look at that closely. 

Senator TESTER. I would appreciate it because in a State as big 

as Montana, myself, for example, I live 80 miles from the nearest 

one, 50 miles from the one that meets three times a week, 35 miles 

from the one that is open once every month for half a day, so it 

is a big issue. 

Just a quick question and it deals with the September 11, 2001 

terrorists. They were here long after their visas expired. Why 

aren’t we putting resources into a system to track and find visa 

overstays? 

Mr. BAKER. We are. We have identified and deported more people 

in the last year than I think ever before in the history of the 

United States. And obviously, you have to prioritize them because 

there are a large number of overstays. We have just published a 

rule that will require everyone who comes to the United States by 

air to check out biometrically upon departure so that we can compare arrival and departures with biometric identification of the 

identities, which will give us a much better picture of who is arriving and who is leaving and who is overstaying. 

Senator TESTER. That database is already constructed for the biometrics? 

Mr. BAKER. No. We have proposed the rule. We are hoping to get 

the rule into final form by the end of the year. 

33 

Senator TESTER. OK, and so it will be operational when? 

Mr. BAKER. The data would begin arriving sometime in 2009. It 

is not that we don’t have some idea of who has overstayed. We 

often have some idea of—— 

Senator TESTER. I understand that, but—— 

Mr. BAKER. This will improve it, yes. 

Senator TESTER [continuing]. To fill all the cracks in, that would 

be done by—— 

Mr. BAKER. I expect in 2009. 

Senator TESTER. OK, 2 years after—2009, that is next year. You 

would have the database done by 2009? 

Mr. BAKER. Yes, the plan is to have the data come in—— 

Senator TESTER. Good for you. 

Mr. BAKER [continuing]. And that would allow us to do the 

matching. 

Senator TESTER. I think that is great. My last point, and it is not 

a question, it is just a comment. The economic impacts, the potential economic impacts of people being able to flow across the border, 

Senator Voinovich talked about a little bit, are incredible. From a 

farming perspective, being able to go up into Canada and get repairs where they are not available, sometimes down in the States, 

is huge. 

And the other issue, if there is one good thing about the dollar 

being down, it is the Canadians come across and they like to spend 

money in the United States and they do it. And if they can’t get 

across the border or if there is a minimal amount of hassle about 

getting across the border, they won’t do it, and so we need to minimize the hassle. Thank you very much. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Senator Tester. 

I want to thank our first panel very much for your comments and 

your statements, as well, and your responses. That will be helpful 

to the Subcommittee. 

Mr. BAKER. Thank you, Senator. 

Mr. STAEBEN. Thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much. 

And now I would like to call our second panel. We have six members of this panel. Testifying on our second panel are the Hon. 

Donna Stone, a Representative from the 32rd District in the Delaware General Assembly and President of the National Conference 

of State Legislatures; David Quam, Director of Federal Relations 

for the National Governors Association; Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the Washington Legislative Office of the American Civil 

Liberties Union; Roger Dow, President and CEO of the Travel Industry Association; Angelo Amador, Director of Immigration Policy 

at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; and Sophia Cope, Staff Attorney at the Center for Democracy and Technology. 

As you know, it is the custom of the Subcommittee to swear in 

all witnesses and I would ask all of you to stand and raise your 

right hand. 

Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give this Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, 

so help you, God? 

Ms. STONE. I do. 

Mr. QUAM. I do. 

34 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Stone with attachments appears in the Appendix on page 

75. 

Ms. FREDRICKSON. I do. 

Mr. DOW. I do. 

Mr. AMADOR. I do. 

Ms. COPE. I do. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much. 

Senator TESTER. Mr. Chairman. 

Senator AKAKA. Senator Tester. 

Senator TESTER. I just want to express my regrets to the second 

panel. I have got to go preside on the floor. I will be checking out 

your testimony. I have already read a fair amount of it and appreciate your presence here today, and I really mean that. I am sorry 

I have to leave, because I would really love to follow up these questions with you guys, too. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much. 

Again, I want to thank all of you for being here today. As you 

know, your full statements will be placed in the record. 

Representative Stone, please proceed with your statement. 

TESTIMONY OF HON. DONNA STONE,1 PRESIDENT, NATIONAL 

CONFERENCE OF STATE LEGISLATURES 

Ms. STONE. Good morning, Chairman Akaka, Ranking Member 

Voinovich, and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. I appear before you today as President of the National Conference of 

State Legislatures. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to 

testify today on the State impact of implementing the REAL ID 

and the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. 

State legislators across the country share the goal of ensuring 

the integrity and security of State-issued identification and recognize the need to provide adequate border protection. We hope to 

continue the dialogue with you and this Subcommittee on these 

programs. 

While NCSL had numerous concerns with the draft REAL ID 

regulations issued in March 2007, we commend DHS’s efforts to 

provide States much-needed flexibility and to reduce State costs, 

per DHS, in the final regulations. However, the road to successful 

implementation is long, uphill, and in some places has rocky terrain due to a number of ongoing uncertainties, which include most 

importantly the Federal Government’s commitment to fund the 

REAL ID; the connectivity to and governance of the databases that 

States will need to access in order to verify the validity of identity 

documents; the true cost of the REAL ID, including the user fees 

States will have to pay when accessing these databases; and the 

Department’s recognition of State legislatures’ critical role in the 

implementation of the REAL ID. 

I have provided more details on each of these items in my written testimony and ask that it be submitted for the record. I would 

welcome the opportunity to discuss them in detail during the question and answer period. 

Senator AKAKA. It will be included. 

Ms. STONE. In order to address some of these implementation 

challenges, NCSL calls on Congress to repeal the REAL ID Act and 

35 

reinstitute the negotiated rulemaking process created under the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 and to 

fully fund the requirements. Again, while NCSL recognizes that 

the final regulations provide States additional time and flexibility 

to implement the REAL ID, the negotiated rulemaking could address several remaining issues, including waiving the verification 

requirements for applicants who already have a federally-issued 

identity credential; prohibiting Federal agencies from charging 

States transaction fees for accessing the required electronic 

verification systems; and instituting a legislative trigger that would 

automatically release States from complying with REAL ID provisions in any fiscal year in which the Congress fails to appropriate 

funds for these purposes. 

Regarding WHTI, I again want to thank DHS and the State Department for recognizing the importance of cross-border movement 

of people to the families, communities, and businesses throughout 

the Nation, but particularly along the borders. I also commend the 

Department’s efforts to work with States to create WHTI-compliant 

enhanced drivers’ licenses and other border crossing documents. 

However, the experience of many of my colleagues in developing 

EDLs does not encourage me. Washington State is the first to conclude an EDL agreement with DHS, but I have heard that it is now 

harder and more time consuming to obtain an EDL than to get a 

passport. Other colleagues have expressed concern about the use of 

RFID. We also believe that DHS should conduct separate negotiations with each State and not use an EDL agreement with one 

State as a cookie cutter for all. 

Many State legislators who are wrestling with REAL ID and 

WHTI EDLs have noted that the U.S. passport achieves the same 

goals of both programs and that the process for obtaining the passport is much less onerous than what is required for either REAL 

ID or an EDL. The problem is the cost of a passport. At NCSL’s 

spring forum just last week, we considered resolutions calling on 

Congress to reduce the cost of a passport. 

Mr. Chairman, I would like to reiterate that State legislators are 

committed to working with Federal policy makers to ensure the security and integrity of identity documents. However, we see the 

road to REAL ID as being closed for construction, and S. 717 is the 

best route to finalizing Federal standards for State-issued drivers’ 

licenses and identification cards as long as it is accompanied by full 

funding. 

For WHTI, the road is bumpy at present, but if the Federal Government chooses the proper route, a smoother ride is still possible. 

I thank you for this opportunity to testify and look forward to 

questions from Members of the Subcommittee. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Representative Stone, for 

your statement. Mr. Quam. 

36 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Quam appears in the Appendix on page 94. 

TESTIMONY OF DAVID QUAM,1 DIRECTOR OF FEDERAL 

RELATIONS, NATIONAL GOVERNORS ASSOCIATION 

Mr. QUAM. Thank you, Chairman Akaka and Senator Voinovich, 

it is a pleasure to be back before you to talk about an issue that 

is of very large interest to governors. 

The position of the governors remains as it was the last time I 

was before this Subcommittee. Our governors’ policy is that of fix 

and fund: REAL ID has to be fixed, it has to be workable, it has 

to be cost-effective, and actually has to increase the security of 

driver’s license systems. And it must be funded. When the Federal 

Government decides to come in and regulate a traditionally Statebased activity, the Federal Government should pick up the tab. 

Before I get into my testimony, I did want to mention something 

that Assistant Secretary Baker said. He said that governors were 

recently faced with a choice, do I want to improve the security of 

my licenses or do I want less-secure licenses, and that was the 

choice they were facing as they came up on this deadline for asking 

for an extension. That was not the choice the governors faced. All 

governors are committed to having secure drivers’ licenses. They 

are also committed to combatting identity theft. There is not a single governor who would say that they are not pro-security. 

The choice that they were given, however, was whether or not to 

inconvenience their citizens because their citizens and their legislatures and themselves had questions about whether REAL ID would 

work. Faced with that, ultimately, all States did receive an extension, but for several States, it was a Hobson’s choice. It was a takeit-or-leave it and if you leave it, citizens will be the ones who are 

punished. It wasn’t much of a choice, but all States did ultimately 

comply. I think we have to have a more cooperative system in the 

future if REAL ID is ultimately going to survive. 

Three main points that I want to make. First, what does it mean 

to be fixed, to fix REAL ID? All the focus must be on the electronic 

databases and this is really the cornerstone of REAL ID. It is also 

the source of all the uncertainty. When governors ask me to brief 

them about the databases, they ask the following questions: How 

will it work? Who will own it? How is it governed? How does it protect my citizens’ individual data? What does it cost? We today cannot answer any of those questions, and so when you talked about 

fixing REAL ID, I think it is getting a handle on those systems and 

knowing what it is before States can commit. 

With regard to funding, again, governors believe that if the Federal Government steps in to dictate how States should do their 

business, then the Federal Government should pay for it. DHS has 

made a big deal of the cost estimate, the fact that it has gone down 

to about $4 billion. I think Assistant Secretary Baker was questioning whether maybe that was high. States, on the other hand, 

are questioning whether it is low. That $40 billion estimate misses several key points. First, we 

don’t have cost estimates, nor are they included, on the security of 

the manufacturing centers. What will the buildings be required to 

have as far as making them secure? If all States need to build Fort 

Knox, that estimate is going to be low. 

37 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Fredrickson appears in the Appendix on page 102. 

Second, the transaction cost. This is the cost of actually asking 

each database a question about the applicant before you. DHS recently raised the rates for the SAVE database to 50 cents. Well, 50 

cents—and that is the minimum—per transaction when you have 

242 million people is a large number that is not counted in this 

original estimate. 

And then third, in the spirit of Washington, DC accounting, the 

assumption was made that only three out of every four people 

would actually get a REAL ID. Well, it is easy to cut your costs 

when 25 percent of the population is taken out of who may have 

to be serviced. I think accurate numbers have to be found so that 

we know what is being asked of States. 

Finally, with regard to the grant process, governors were very 

concerned about the fact that there is only $90 million out there. 

States other than the State of Kentucky, which received some initial grants with regard to vital statistics, have not received one dollar. No money has come out under the grant programs. The existing grant programs favor the creation of the hub, a DHS priority, 

not a State priority. The governors’ position is that governors and 

States should be deciding how those funds should be used. The appropriations were for States, not for DHS, to determine how best 

to move forward with REAL ID. 

Finally, with regard to WHTI, governors are taking a very close 

look at some of the pilot projects with regard to enhanced drivers’ 

licenses, including the Washington project. I think some are encouraged by what they see as a more collaborative effort than 

REAL ID has been to date. Governors firmly believe that security 

and commerce can coexist, but it must be a collaborative process. 

I think there is a long way to go with regard to WHTI, but hopefully the cooperation that was shown there can help yield results 

on REAL ID. 

I would be happy to take questions. Thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Quam. Ms. Fredrickson. 

TESTIMONY OF CAROLINE FREDRICKSON,1 DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON LEGISLATIVE OFFICE, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES 

UNION 

Ms. FREDRICKSON. Chairman Akaka, Congress stands at a crossroads regarding our national policy for identification cards. Following one path, Congress can choose to do nothing and the REAL 

ID Act will gradually force the creation of a national ID card system. Disregarding the growing national consensus against this system, Congress could allow the REAL ID system to limp forward 

over the next decade or more, wasting billions in tax dollars and 

weakening, not enhancing, ID security in the process. 

Or Congress can follow another, better path, heeding the clear 

call of constituents and the States that want ID security but believe it can only come with protection of individual privacy. This 

more prudent path requires Congress to replace REAL ID with a 

plan that allows and encourages States to innovate, to improve ID 

38 

1The map referred to appears in the Appendix on page 111. 

security, but avoids the privacy and security risks of a national ID 

card system. 

On behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), our 53 

affiliates, and more than half-a-million members, we urge Congress 

to choose the second path. Stop building a national ID system that 

vastly increases the risk of identity theft and instead move towards 

a system that recognizes that security can be enhanced only by protecting privacy. 

Specifically, Mr. Chairman, we recommend that this Subcommittee work to enact your bill, S. 717, the Identification Security Enhancement Act of 2007, to replace Title 2 of the unworkable 

REAL ID Act of 2005. 

REAL ID will almost certainly generate ubiquitous demands for 

presentation of compliant cards. The REAL ID could soon serve as 

an internal passport. Card readers will proliferate in daily life, and 

going to the grocery store or the gym or the day care center will 

require passing through a series of internal domestic check points. 

Soon, no American will be able to operate without a REAL ID card, 

and every check point will degrade the privacy of our lives just a 

little more. 

The ACLU does not oppose identity security, but if REAL ID survives, its database would create one-stop shopping for identity 

thieves with the largest repository of private information on all 

Americans—our birth information, Social Security numbers, and biometric information. We don’t want DHS to impose a system that 

makes our private information an easy target for identity theft. 

If Congress fails to change course, then REAL ID will continue 

to force wasteful expenditures of State and Federal funds during 

precarious economic times. If REAL ID made us safe, perhaps it 

would be worth the high price, but it won’t. When criminals and 

terrorists obtain REAL ID licenses by using the stolen identities of 

law-abiding Americans, they will be able to walk through our society without scrutiny. 

As you can see from this map, the one with 2008 here,1 State opposition has led to the passage of numerous State laws prohibiting 

implementation of the REAL ID Act. Governor Butch Otter recently signed an act prohibiting Idaho from implementing REAL 

ID. Idaho became the eighth State to enact such a law, joining the 

seven States in red—Georgia, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, 

Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Washington. Legislation is awaiting Governor Palin’s signature in Alaska to prohibit funding of 

REAL ID. 

Ten additional States have unequivocally stated their opposition 

through passage of memorials and resolutions, with many calling 

on Congress to repeal REAL ID entirely. These States are Arkansas, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, North 

Dakota, South Dakota, and Tennessee. They appear in yellow on 

the map. Legislation opposing REAL ID has passed at least one 

chamber of a State legislature in an additional 11 States. And Missouri, confusingly, is green on this map, not yellow, because in addition to passing a resolution against REAL ID in 2007, the State 

legislature moved binding legislation through one house in 2008. 

39 

2The prepared statement of Mr. Dow appears in the Appendix on page 116. 

Some States have asked for extensions of compliance deadlines, 

not to signal compliance but simply to run out the clock on the 

Bush Administration. Republican Governor Mark Sanford of South 

Carolina sent a letter to Congress this month calling REAL ID ‘‘the 

worst piece of legislation I have seen during the 15 years I have 

been engaged in the political process’’ and urged its repeal. When 

asked whether Montana would participate in REAL ID, Democratic 

Governor Brian Schweitzer explained, ‘‘No, nope, no way, hell no.’’ 

Despite DHS’s rhetoric to the contrary, States’ opposition to 

REAL ID is accelerating, not slowing. So Congress should not sit 

idly by while the REAL ID Act creates a national ID card system 

at the cost of Americans’ privacy and in the face of widespread opposition. Congress must choose the better path and pursue S. 717 

and repeal REAL ID. Thank you very much. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Dow. 

TESTIMONY OF ROGER J. DOW,2 PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, TRAVEL INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION 

Mr. DOW. Thank you, Chairman Akaka. I am pleased to appear 

before you on behalf of the Travel Industry Association and our 

strategic partner, the Travel Business Roundtable, to discuss the 

impact of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) on 

travel to the United States. We represent 1,700 public and private 

entities that make up the $740 billion travel community that employs over seven million Americans, generates $99 billion in taxes, 

and produces a trade surplus. Travel and tourism is the front door 

of economic development and really is a critical element in public 

diplomacy. 

First, I would like to thank you for your leadership in assuring 

that our homeland security efforts are properly implemented in an 

efficient and effective manner. We commend Congress for prudently extending the WHTI deadline and defining reasonable 

benchmarks to ensure its successful implementation. 

The travel community is keenly aware and supportive of the 

need to protect our borders and to prevent admission of those who 

wish us harm. On the horrific day of September 11, 2001, it took 

hours to bring the travel industry to its knees and our economy followed weeks later, as did the world economy. We must protect both 

the physical security and the economic security of our country. 

Unfortunately, we have instituted increased travel and security 

measures while neglecting to properly communicate these new and 

cumulative security requirements to international visitors, and this 

has hampered travel facilitation and resulted in a significant decline and impact on overseas travel to the United States. We must 

not cause similar harm by not properly implementing and communicating WHTI to Canada, our closest neighbor. 

I would like to discuss four points covered in my written testimony. First, the travel community strongly supports a properly implemented WHTI. It is good policy, as long as we can enhance border security and as long as we have realistic deadlines, robust advanced communications, and the necessary infrastructure and 

staffing. TIA’s support of WHTI is longstanding and consistent, 

40 

whether it be through testimonies, starting a ‘‘get a passport now’’ 

website, and mobilizing more than 30 members of the travel trade 

community in support of the Administration’s efforts on WHTI. We 

participate in the CBP Travel Advisory Group, lending our expertise on communications. 

As early as October 2005, we submitted comments on four separate occasions to DHS and to States on the need to develop a robust communications plan for WHTI. That did not happen, resulting in last summer’s passport debacle. Senators Voinovich and 

Coleman talked about the left hand not talking to the right hand. 

We just heard two entities say that they have hired two separate 

public relations firms to accomplish the same job and communicate 

WHTI clearly to our friends across the border and to U.S. citizens. 

There is so much at stake if we don’t implement WHTI correctly 

and properly. The negative receptions of poorly-communicated air 

security rules over the last 7 years have caused us to lose millions 

of overseas visitors. Since 2000, the number of global long-haul 

travelers around the world to locations other than the United 

States has increased by 30 percent, or 35 million visitors. During 

the same time period, travelers visiting the United States has 

dropped by two million, or 8 percent, and that is at a time when 

the U.S. dollar is at an all-time low. We should be booming and we 

are not. 

Successful implementation of WHTI is extremely important. It is 

a major priority because Canada is our closest travel partner, as 

has been said many times today. In 2006, 40 million Canadians 

and Americans crossed the border, Canadians bringing $13.5 billion to the United States. Just a 5 percent decrease in those Canadian travelers would cost us $700 million. We can’t afford economically and diplomatically to mess this up. 

Communications is a critical key to making WHTI successful. We 

must have a preemptive, sophisticated, well-funded, and sustained 

public outreach campaign. DHS and States should have prepared 

this campaign years ago and used all communication channels—television, radio, print, Internet—outdoors. WHTI is very important. 

This is a sea change in culture and law, culture and practice and 

tradition from what has gone on in traveling to the United States. 

This communications campaign should have already begun and 

would better serve the needs of our country in the future. 

In S. 1661, the Travel Promotion Act, all of these factors are included. It is supported by you, Chairman Akaka, by the majority 

of this Subcommittee, and 40 additional U.S. Senators. The Act creates a public-private partnership to explain U.S. policies. It combines private execution with public sector oversight and does not 

require any funding from U.S. taxpayers. 

Last, the Subcommittee should be concerned about whether DHS 

has the staffing and the technology in place for WHTI. We all know 

that there are not enough CBP officers at all of our ports of entry. 

This is troubling in context with WHTI being implemented in 2009 

during the busiest summer travel period, when millions of Canadians will be traveling. We recommend that you immediately lift 

the overtime cap for CBP officers and fund adequate new hires in 

the future. 

41 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Amador with attachments appears in the Appendix on page 

121. 

Our message is simple and clear. DHS and States must successfully and effectively implement WHTI and all other travel security 

programs. We live in a new era. Changing security is not a onetime occurrence, but will continue in the future. We must preserve 

our physical and our economic security. Let us work together to 

protect America and project America and welcome international 

visitors to the United States. Thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Dow. 

I have to step away for a few minutes, and I will call a short recess until Senator Voinovich can return. He has questions, and I 

will have questions for you, as well. 

So at this time, the Subcommittee will stand in a short recess. 

[Recess.] 

Senator VOINOVICH [presiding]. The hearing is reconvened, and 

I apologize that I wasn’t here for the testimony that has gone before. One of the things about being in the Senate is that you need 

to be at three places at the same time and justify all of them, and 

I really appreciate the fact that several of you have come a distance 

to testify today and we are greatly appreciative of your being here. 

We are very concerned about this and look forward to the rest of 

the testimony. 

Ms. Fredrickson, you have testified. Mr. Amador, you are up. 

TESTIMONY OF ANGELO I. AMADOR,1 DIRECTOR OF IMMIGRATION POLICY, U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE; AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AMERICANS FOR BETTER BORDERS COALITION 

Mr. AMADOR. Thank you, Senator Voinovich, for the opportunity 

to present today on the impact of implementation of the Western 

Hemisphere Travel Initiative. I usually refer to it as WHTI, but 

since Senator Collins is not here, I will call it ‘‘witty.’’ 

Before I begin, I would like to ask that the three studies I sent 

earlier to the Subcommittee with in-depth analysis of border issues 

and recommendations on how to fix them be made part of the 

record, together with my written testimony. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Without objection. 

Mr. AMADOR. Thank you. My name is Angelo Amador and I am 

Director of Immigration Policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce 

and I am also the Executive Director of the Americans for Better 

Borders Coalition. 

The Chamber is committed to continue working with Congress 

and the Department of Homeland Security and States to successfully and efficiently implement WHTI. It is important to keep in 

mind that the efficient movement of people, goods, and services, 

and a secure border are not mutually exclusive or competing objectives. 

Furthermore, it is important to note that WHTI is not being implemented in a vacuum. A number of inefficiencies at the borders 

are threatening our competitiveness and WHTI places further pressures on our eroding infrastructure. 

42 

The Chamber is concerned that the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada 

border crossings are increasingly becoming a competitive disadvantage. The North American supply chain for many companies is 

tightly integrated. For these companies, the impact of border 

delays, fees, and strengthened security procedures are magnified 

because their products are required to clear Customs multiple 

times in the manufacturing process. 

The reports I submitted for the record contain many excellent 

recommendations to improve border security. I will mention only 

three of them. 

First, we need proper measurement of border wait times. This 

needs to be addressed so the severity of delays and their costs can 

properly be dealt with. 

Second, there is extreme anxiety in the business community due 

to the level of uncertainty created by border policies announced and 

implemented before the infrastructure is in place. The private sector needs to know what to expect in order to properly adjust. Mr. 

Dow mentioned the Travel Promotion Act earlier, so I am not going 

to go into details on that other than to say that we also support 

it. 

Third, inadequate staffing, reduced or changing hours of service, 

mandates for secondary inspection of some products, new fees, and 

outdated infrastructure are leading to long delays with a significant economic impact on businesses without apparently increasing 

security. We should increase funding for CBP to guarantee the adequate staffing and extended hours of service and upgrade our technology and infrastructure. In the House of Representatives, the 

Putting Our Resources Toward Security Act addresses some of 

these issues and we hope it can also be introduced in the Senate. 

As to WHTI, implementing it without addressing the existing 

border delays and the additional pressures that WHTI imposes 

may generate a new security problem with long lines of trucks 

idling like sitting ducks at the busiest ports of entry. In the final 

rule published this month, DHS stated that it intends to fully implement WHTI on June 1, 2009, the earliest possible date. The 

Chamber believes that more emphasis needs to be placed on doing 

it right versus doing it fast. Before pushing for full implementation, 

pilot programs need to be performed to assess the potential impact 

of WHTI on cross-border commerce. We must avoid the chaos, long 

lines, and 12-week paperwork backlogs that were created in 2006 

with the hurried implementation of the WHTI air rules. The government was not prepared for the changes it made in policy. 

As to passport alternatives, the two most promising at this time 

are passport cards and enhanced drivers’ licenses. However, for either document to be a true substitute to a U.S. passport under 

WHTI, they should be accepted at airports of entry as well as the 

proposed land and sea ports of entry. 

Also, although the passport card application fee at first blush 

seems reasonable—$20 for adults, $10 for minors—there are a 

number of additional fees in addition to the execution fee. You have 

picture fees and others. The approach explained earlier by Senator 

Collins is one that we support of deploying CBP staff to high-demand areas. 

43 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Cope appears in the Appendix on page 220. 

As to enhanced drivers’ licenses (EDLs), the Chamber has always 

called for the acceptance of a document that is as close to being 

non-discretionary as possible. EDLs have significant promise. However, the Chamber is concerned that there will not be a critical 

mass of WHTI-compliant EDLs in circulation before June 2009, the 

target for full implementation. 

As to REAL ID, the Chamber has never taken a position on this 

issue, but as long as Congress believes it should be enforced or remain law, Congress should also consider statutory changes to make 

REAL ID-compliant documents accepted as WHTI compliant. 

In conclusion, if we want to grow and remain competitive in the 

global market, we need to address the deteriorating problems at 

our borders and make sure that programs like WHTI do not exacerbate the problems we are trying to fix. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify and I look forward to 

your questions. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you very much. Ms. Cope. 

TESTIMONY OF SOPHIA COPE,1 STAFF ATTORNEY AND RON 

PLESSER FELLOW, CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY 

Ms. COPE. Thank you, Ranking Member Voinovich. The Center 

for Democracy and Technology has significant concerns with both 

REAL ID and WHTI. In the few minutes I have here today, I will 

focus on WHTI. However, both initiatives pose serious risks to the 

rights of American citizens and Congressional action is needed 

now. 

CDT takes no position on the requirement that American citizens 

must now present a passport or equivalent document when seeking 

to reenter the United States at the land borders, nor do we find 

unreasonable Congress’s desire to minimize congestion at the border due to this new requirement. However, the problem is that 

DHS and the State Department both have chosen an insecure technology, vicinity RFID, for the passport card and the enhanced drivers’ licenses. 

Also, the Departments have not given any serious consideration 

to the risks to personal privacy and security posed by the use of 

this technology, despite concerns raised in thousands of public comments, two pieces of Federal legislation, and DHS’s own Inspector 

General. 

Additionally, it is not clear why the Departments chose vicinity 

RFID. It does not provide unique operational benefits in the border 

crossing context and there is already a secure infrastructure in 

place for the electronic passport, which makes sense to use here. 

I would like to make two main points and then offer some recommendations for this Subcommittee. First, vicinity RFID technology is insecure and inappropriate for human identification. This 

technology was not created to identify people. Rather, it was intended to track things, like televisions, toilet paper, and toothpaste. 

It was designed to be quickly and easily scanned by standardized 

readers, unencumbered by security features, as products move 

through the supply chain. 

44 

Sensitive information on the RFID chip can be picked up by unauthorized people because the information is stored and transmitted unencrypted and in the clear. The information can be read 

by any reader compatible with the common standard. And finally, 

these readers can secretly read the vicinity RFID chip remotely, 

from distances of 30 feet, and potentially many times more than 

that. 

Second, the risks to privacy here are very real. For example, the 

unique ID number on the RFID chip will, over time, become yet another identifier that can be used to track and profile the movements and activities of innocent Americans. Many citizens will likely not use a protective sleeve, and even those who do will likely 

take their cards out of the sleeve and use the cards for transactions 

that have nothing to do with crossing the border. The unique ID 

number on the RFID chip can be easily collected, along with other 

personal information from a transaction, such as name and address 

from a driver’s license or even a credit card number. 

Therefore, the unique ID number will cease to be an anonymous, 

meaningless identifier as both DHS and States have asserted. Once 

a person’s identity is associated with the RFID chip, he or she can 

be unknowingly identified or tracked by a network of compatible 

readers. 

Also, because the RFID chip includes information about the 

issuing entity, Americans traveling abroad could be identified as 

such and be vulnerable to security risks. Last, because the unique 

ID number on the RFID chip is transmitted in the clear, unscrupulous individuals might be able to use the number to access personal 

information held in government databases. Recent privacy breaches 

at the State Department support this concern. 

Finally, I would like to offer some recommendations for this Subcommittee. This Subcommittee should press DHS and the State 

Department to abandon vicinity RFID technology in favor of a machine-readable technology that requires the card to make contact 

with the reader. This is consistent with the Departments goal of 

prepositioning traveler information before the travelers reach the 

CBP inspection booth. 

In addition, this Subcommittee should insist that the citizen’s 

unique ID number be encrypted or otherwise protected from unauthorized readers. This is how the new electronic passport works 

now. This Subcommittee should also strongly consider supporting 

legislation or regulations that prohibit the unauthorized skimming 

of the RFID chip by businesses and other third parties. And finally, 

this Subcommittee should consider supporting legislation or regulations that prohibit the use of the passport card and the enhanced 

driver’s license by government agencies that have nothing to do 

with border security. 

Thank you, and I welcome any questions. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you very much. 

Were all of you here for the testimony of our two first witnesses, 

Secretary Baker and Mr. Staeben? 

[Chorus of yesses.] 

Senator VOINOVICH. I have been in your chairs before, as President of the National League of Cities and Chairman of the National Governors Association, and I have always thought to myself, 

45 

if I get a chance to be where I am right now that I would give people an opportunity to comment upon the testimony of the people 

that were here before, because I am sure when they were giving 

their testimony, there were some red flags that went up with all 

of you. I would like you to share with me your observations or your 

perspective on what they had to say in terms of its accuracy. Ms. 

Stone. 

Ms. STONE. Thank you very much. 

Senator VOINOVICH. And by the way, Ms. Stone, one of my big 

complaints, we used to have something called the Big Seven. 

Ms. STONE. Yes. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Yes. And I was kind of fortunate, because I 

am a former county commissioner, a former State legislator, and a 

former mayor and governor, and when I was Chairman of the National Governors Association, we did unfunded mandates relief legislation and welfare reform and I want to say that, and you are a 

leader in your organization, it would be very smart, I think, for 

those groups to get together to develop some priorities about what 

they would like to get done down here, because if you get all the 

local government, State Government organizations testifying before 

the Congress on a bipartisan basis on something and you are really 

committed to it, you can move mountains. There is no question 

about it. 

And my observation in the last number of years is that it hasn’t 

happened. And so Mr. Quam, I am going to share that same thing 

with you. I have talked to Ray Sheppach about it and so forth, but 

you guys could be doing a better job of getting your act together 

and coming down here to testify, and I can tell you, if you have 

problems with this legislation and all of you get together, we are 

going to respond to your concerns. So I want to start with that. 

Ms. Stone. 

Ms. STONE. Well, thank you very much for those comments. 

NCSL’s position on REAL ID has been very consistent from the beginning and our message has been as follows. Fix and fund the 

REAL ID or we call for its repeal. And our message is still consistent on that. We have asked the Administration to provide $1 

billion in start-up costs for REAL ID. We have been very proactive 

since the bill was passed. Unfortunately, we were never invited to 

the table before the bill was crafted. And as very big stakeholders 

in what will happen as a result of REAL ID in the States, we 

should have been at the table. We should have been part of the entire process. After REAL ID—— 

Senator VOINOVICH. Actually, it violates UMRA. I have asked the 

question why it wasn’t raised, but the way it came in, it was a supplemental and I think it was one of the House members that stuck 

it in at the end and there was very little discussion about it and 

it just got zipped through here. I am going to do some research on 

it. Indeed, it is an unfunded Federal mandate. 

Ms. STONE. It definitely is, and I thank you so much for concurring with that because that is our position. And as you know, sir, 

the States are required, at least 49 of them, to have balanced budgets and that is—we do not have the luxury of operating at a deficit. 

And every time an unfunded Federal mandate is put down onto the 

States, it makes our fiscal lives that much more challenging. 

46 

Senator VOINOVICH. Listen, I understand that. I was at the 

White House when the President signed that legislation, represented all the local government and State groups, so I understand that. 

Ms. STONE. I know you do. That was quite a victory for NCSL, 

too. We played a huge role in UMRA and our President then, who 

happened to be a Senator from Delaware, was actually present at 

the signing of that agreement and that was one of his proudest moments, I think, as President of NCSL. 

We have appreciated being part of the conversation during the 

rulemaking process and many of the concerns that were raised by 

NCSL were listened to and have been addressed. But we believe 

that there is much more room for conversation. We believe that a 

return to a negotiated rulemaking process can be very valuable. We 

believe it can move from a top-down coercive process to more of a 

collaborative process, which has always been what we are asking 

for, that brings all interested stakeholders to the table. 

We think it could produce more and even better buy-in from the 

States. I don’t remember if you were in the room when the large 

displays were up here that Ms. Fredrickson brought, but I probably 

don’t have to bring to your attention the number of States that 

have literally passed legislation that says we are not going to comply. All the States—— 

Senator VOINOVICH. It is just a set up for a gigantic crash—— 

Ms. STONE. Absolutely. 

Senator VOINOVICH [continuing]. And you have to regroup the 

troops, and because we didn’t touch the bases before this thing was 

passed, we are now running into that problem—— 

Ms. STONE. Absolutely. 

Senator VOINOVICH [continuing]. In which you are basically saying, now is the time to pull back on it, reevaluate it, get into some 

of the issues that you have raised, Ms. Fredrickson and Ms. Cope, 

about how we are going about doing it, and maybe just reevaluate 

where we are at right now and see if we can’t remedy some of these 

things and understand that it is going to take resources, but more 

important than that, cooperation. 

And I want to say one other thing to all of you, we are really in 

bad shape in terms of the Federal Government. One of the things 

that I am looking at right now is all the money that we are spending in Homeland Security and where is the money going. A 374- 

or 375-mile wall down on the Mexican border, I mean, you are looking at some things that make me ask—are we allocating resources 

as wisely as we should be? 

I don’t need to tell you that our national debt today is going to 

be over $10 trillion around the corner. We are the biggest violator 

of the credit card in the world today. And we have got some very 

serious problems facing our country, and the truth of the matter 

is the resources that we need to deal with our problems across the 

board are not available to us. No one wants to talk about it, but 

it is a fact of life and everyone should get it. 

I wish that we had to balance our budgets, like I did when I was 

mayor and governor. 

Ms. STONE. Yes. 

47 

Senator VOINOVICH. But we have become—they talk about one 

group being ‘‘tax and spend.’’ We have become the group of ‘‘tax 

and borrow,’’ and I think tax and spend is better than tax and borrow because at least you have some tension there that is going on. 

Ms. STONE. Right. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Other comments about the witnesses? Yes, 

Mr. Quam? 

Mr. QUAM. Thank you, Senator. My biggest concern would be 

that of tone, and something I mentioned to Chairman Akaka, Assistant Secretary Baker had said that the choice governors were 

faced with was one of do I want to improve the security of my license or do I want a less-secure license. That is ridiculous. There 

is no governor who faced that choice with regard to these extensions. 

Every governor wants a secure license. Every governor works towards a secure license. Every governor wants to fight identity 

theft. The choice was, we don’t know what REAL ID is, we don’t 

know what we are being asked to sign up for, we have some serious 

questions, and yet we are asked to sign on the dotted line that we 

want an extension and possibly imply that we are going to meet 

you at the end of the day when we don’t know what the house is 

going to look like that supposedly you are building. 

And the retaliation was against our citizens, governors’ own citizens who might have to go to the airport and not be able to use 

their ID to get to Walt Disney, take the family out, and that, at 

the end of the day, was no choice at all. And so the governors came 

in, some with great reluctance, and eventually an extension was 

given, and you heard some of the dance that both DHS and States 

went through to get to that point. 

The other part would be funding. 

Senator VOINOVICH. By the way, I will never forget on Christmas 

Day getting a call, and the reason they were able to call me was 

that my telephone number is published in the church bulletin. 

[Laughter.] 

The caller said ‘‘I am at the airport with my family.’’ I am not 

sure where they were going to, but it was for mom and dad’s fiftieth anniversary and they couldn’t get the baby to go because they 

didn’t have a birth certificate for her and the office were closed. 

And I had to spend probably an hour on the phone back and forth 

and finally got TSA to get involved and they let the baby go and 

then they had to fax the birth certificate down to wherever they 

went to so the baby could get back in the country. But that is the 

kind of stuff that goes on. 

Mr. QUAM. Senator, REAL ID is one of those few laws that actually comes out of Washington where at the end of the day every 

citizen is actually going to know the term REAL ID. As this thing 

moves forward, this is going to be one of those that everybody will 

have REAL ID on the mind as they go through their DMVs or they 

go through the airport, depending on how this plays out. If they do 

it right, we will be OK. If we don’t, then there is going to be some 

serious concerns. 

With regard to the funding, States do not appreciate, and I think 

the Subcommittee echoed it, this whole idea that through SHSGP 

funds, hundreds of millions of dollars have been made available. 

48 

Nobody really believes it. What you really have is $90 million that 

has been appropriated, $6 million that has gone to one State to 

start a pilot project. I think the Department of Homeland Security 

has actually used $1.3 million to start its own program office and 

not one other dollar has actually gone to States to help implement 

REAL ID, what States are seeing out there is an unbuilt house, 

being asked to pick up a tab and sign on the dotted line, not a dollar in the coffers yet and wondering what is going ahead, and then 

asking Congress if this is your priority, then shouldn’t there be 

money behind it to help States fund it? 

And so it is one of tone. Collaboration and cooperation, as you 

know, governors can work with an adversary type of situation, 

which sometimes we face in REAL ID, isn’t actually going to get 

this done. So my biggest question would be that of tone and whether or not we can change it to something more cooperative. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Ms. Fredrickson. 

Ms. FREDRICKSON. Thank you, Senator, for letting us have this 

opportunity. I wanted to talk more about the privacy issues and 

the concerns we have with REAL ID, and I think Mr. Baker spent 

quite a bit of his testimony telling a story about a woman who had 

been the victim of identity theft. 

Senator VOINOVICH. From Madison, Ohio. 

Ms. FREDRICKSON. From Ohio, exactly. It was Maureen something. 

I think Senator Tester asked the right question, which wasn’t 

really answered by Mr. Baker, which is about the fact that the information that is on the machine-readable part of that REAL ID 

is not encrypted. There is no requirement by the DHS in the regulations that those kinds of requirements are built into the REAL 

ID. And so Senator Tester asked Mr. Baker, doesn’t that mean that 

the woman from Ohio is actually going to be much more subject to 

identity theft than she is under the current system, and I think 

that is a real danger that we run into. 

DHS really kicked that to the States, I think, to develop something called State security plans. Each State can develop a different plan. And how does that protect the woman in Ohio if another State has a plan that is not as secure as Ohio’s and her information is being accessed through this nationwide database by that 

other State? 

So there are some very serious questions that I think certainly 

lead us at the ACLU and several of the other panelists to implore 

you to go back to the negotiated rulemaking process, have the different parties at the table, the States, the governors, the privacy 

experts, the technology experts, to really hash this out to make 

sure that the system that is put in place actually protects our security because it is our very strong belief that if privacy is compromised, security is compromised. Thank you. 

Senator VOINOVICH. I think that, first of all, from a practical 

point of view, if what you say is true, and I have no reason to 

doubt it—I am not that familiar with all of these various systems 

that they are putting in place. I think States are going to be reluctant to go forward with it if they feel that you have got a real privacy issue, and I think individuals will be very reluctant to participate because of their concerns. 

49 

Ms. FREDRICKSON. I think Senator Tester also asked about the 

fact that this is unencrypted information and that when somebody 

goes into a bar, for example, and they have to give their ID, that 

bar can swipe the card and take the information off and store it 

in a database, and we all know—we have seen what happens with 

DoubleClick and all of these other companies. Where we go, what 

we buy, how we spend our free time is very valuable commercial 

information and the incentive to create databases and track people 

and their habits through the REAL ID card, I think is an inevitable fact of life if this issue is not addressed. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you. Mr. Dow. 

Mr. DOW. Yes, sir. I would like to shift gears to WHTI. One of 

the things that is so critical is that we have botched communications of WHTI implementation. 

And the challenge we have got, we have to have some really robust and coordinated communications, and my two colleagues at 

DHS and the State Department earlier talked about each hiring a 

unique and different PR firm to start sometime in a few months 

to get the word out. Well, this takes more than PR. With WHTI, 

we are changing a lifestyle, a culture, a tradition of how people 

come to Ohio. 

Maybe it was glossed over, but when you asked about Cedar 

Point, you have 500,000 Canadians that come to Ohio. Sixty percent do not have a Canadian passport. My math says that is 

300,000 people that may not come to Ohio and Cedar Point and no 

communication is out there. 

So we are pushing very importantly, that is before the Senate 

right now, S. 1661—the Travel Promotion Act. New security is not 

a one-time occurrence. We have got an ongoing change of life here 

that we have to communicate. This is public diplomacy. This is how 

America is seen, and we are going to be seen as the hard-handed 

folks that don’t want Canadians, as we are being seen around the 

world as the hard-handed folks that don’t want anyone else from 

around the world. That is a problem. 

Senator VOINOVICH. I understand that fully. I was the main 

sponsor of the visa waiver legislation, and we didn’t get really what 

we wanted on that, but it is a step forward. But you are right. 

From a public diplomacy point of view, things are very bad. From 

that point of view, public relations, public diplomacy, it is bad, but 

it is also, as you point out, very bad for our economy. 

I mean, one of my goals as Governor of Ohio was to increase 

travel and tourism. It is a big industry. And to not take that into 

consideration and to not get the information out there and just to 

leave it to public relations, there should be a joint effort by your 

organization and the government to figure out how we are going 

to get that information out to the best of our ability, using your resources and the government’s. 

Mr. DOW. And that is the opportunity we will have with the 

Travel Promotion Act because we use the best of private with public oversight, and that is important. 

Senator VOINOVICH. You heard my remarks about the whole Department of Homeland Security, and that is our fault. It is very interesting that when we were going through that, I said, you ought 

to ask the people who are going to do the job how they think they 

50 

best should be organized, and we said, no, we are smarter than 

they are. And I said that when the screw-ups happen, we will 

blame them instead of taking the responsibility ourselves, and we 

are starting to see part of that, and of course, it is always their 

fault. But we haven’t got clean hands in this, either, in terms of 

the way this organization came together, and we don’t have clean 

hands in terms of allocating resources to the various agencies. 

I am just doing a survey right now of all the places, all the Departments in the Federal Government where we have asked people 

to do jobs and we have not given them the resources to get the job 

done. And any of you that have been in business or government, 

if you ask somebody to do a job and you don’t give them the resources to get the job done, then basically what you tell them is 

you don’t think very much of what you are asking them to do. 

So this is not only the administrative side, but also the legislative. We have a big responsibility here and that is why I am interested in your suggestions that we had better pull this thing down, 

look at it, start all over again, touch the bases so we will be far 

better off than just to continue meandering down this stream. You 

think if we do, this thing is going to continue to explode here, 

there, and everywhere. 

Mr. DOW. When you talked about resources, my wife and I returned from Mexico 2 weeks ago into Houston and there are 40 

booths to process people and 22 of the 40 had ‘‘closed’’ signs up. 

Just multiply this by 40 million Canadian travelers, by the billion 

dollars coming across the border every day, and it dwarfs anything 

we have seen coming across the air borders where we are understaffed right now. 

Senator VOINOVICH. That is why we are going to get them in. Mr. 

Amador. 

Mr. AMADOR. Yes, thank you. I would just follow with some of 

the things that were said earlier. One of the issues we have is 

transparency, obviously, and communication. The tone that they 

take translates into the actions that they are taking, as well. When 

they use hyperbole and they talk about, well, it was time to stop 

letting people come in with a smile, that was never what we were 

asking for. That is not what many Senators who wrote to Chertoff 

were calling for. We had some very good solutions to the issue that 

we presented. The same thing with other issues with homeland security, whether it is a fence on the Southern border or other issues. 

And to rely as a PR campaign on negative publicity from the 

media as the way of getting the word out, we don’t think that is 

the way to go because it does damage not only our tourism and our 

view abroad, but businesses of people that might be thinking of investing in the United States versus someplace else. So those are 

the kind of things that need to improve communication and transparency and it doesn’t seem that it is taking place right now. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Well, the Chamber, I think, could do a better 

job of capturing the total amount of exchange between the United 

States and Canada, the number of trips. As I mentioned, I think 

back when I was Chairman of the National Governors Association, 

we set up a new thing with Canada, because for 36 of us, they were 

our No. 1 trading partner, and so we tried to find ways that we 

could enhance the relationship between Canada and the United 

51 

States. I think we need to capture the amount of money that it is 

costing our respective economies because of this lack of movement 

back and forth and how it can even become worse with some of the 

things that we are talking about doing. 

Mr. AMADOR. And one of the reports is a joint report with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and another one, so we are trying 

to capture that data. GAO is working on a report and we have 

asked DHS to wait until all these economic data start coming out 

because even when they did their airfare analysis, they only really 

looked at tourism and we said, what is the cost to the economy 

from the commerce being delayed and from all these things? 

And again, with the changes and reasonable talk going back, it 

seems that all of the changes, and Mr. Dow knows from all the battles that we have fought, have to come from Congress. It seems 

that we tell them, you are not ready, you should do it later, maybe 

in June 2009, and they wait for Congress to mandate it before moving the deadline. And it seems that is happening with everything 

else, as well. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Ms. Cope, you are clean-up. 

Ms. COPE. Thank you, Senator. Well, first off, I think the first 

panel completely glossed over the privacy concerns related to the 

enhanced drivers’ licenses and the passport card. But with that 

being said, they also completely glossed over the cost issue. This 

hearing has focused a lot on the costs of both programs and one 

thing they didn’t address is that the passport card and enhanced 

driver’s license programs, are going to mandate a third reader system. 

So at this point, if these programs move forward, we are going 

to have three different infra reader structures at our land borders 

and that just seems inefficient and probably a waste of money, as 

well. The Trusted Traveler programs require one type of infrastructure. The electronic passport requires a second type of reader and 

technical infrastructure. And then now the passport card and the 

enhanced driver’s license will require yet a third reader infrastructure. 

Senator VOINOVICH. So it is not only the manpower, but it is the 

technology and the quality of the technology and then how are we 

kind of making it seamless so that we don’t have three different 

systems that we are going to have to put up and train people to 

operate. 

Does anyone else want to make another comment? I only can 

hear from the witnesses, sir. Yes, Ms. Fredrickson? 

Ms. FREDRICKSON. I just wanted to point out, there was a really 

terrific op-ed by Governor Sanford of South Carolina that was in 

the Greenville paper just a couple of days ago, and I think one of 

the reasons that several of us up here have urged you to go back 

to the negotiated rulemaking process that Congress actually passed 

and then repealed shortly after REAL ID is because, as Governor 

Sanford points out, steroid use in baseball has now received more 

Congressional attention than REAL ID. 

We think Congress needs to go back, allow a negotiated rulemaking process to go forward to allow some real thinking to go into 

how to solve what are some very significant problems in setting up 

a system like this. We think that having all the stakeholders at the 

52 

table can actually result in a much shorter implementation time 

and a much better outcome than what REAL ID envisions, where 

potentially, at DHS’s best estimate, it will reach the public by 2017 

and cover the full population. That is a really long window if this 

is really a security imperative. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Well, thank you all for coming, and the gentleman that wanted to say something, I will be glad to talk to you 

after this meeting. 

Folks, I don’t know what your schedule is, but Senator Akaka 

said he is on his way back. I thought he wasn’t coming back. So 

why don’t you stay, please. I would appreciate it. 

We will stand in recess until Senator Akaka gets back. 

[Recess.] 

Senator AKAKA [presiding]. This Subcommittee hearing will be in 

order. Thank you all for waiting. 

Representative Stone, I am pleased to see that NCSL supports 

my bill, S. 717, to repeal the REAL ID Act and reinstate the negotiated rulemaking process for the Intelligence Reform Act. Since 

some of NCSL’s recommendations were incorporated into the REAL 

ID regulations, I would like to hear what you believe to be the benefits of repealing REAL ID and reinstating the negotiated rulemaking process. Would it ensure secure drivers’ licenses faster 

than REAL ID? 

Ms. STONE. Thank you for the question, and thank you for the 

opportunity to be with you here today and for having this hearing. 

NCSL does see benefits to returning to the negotiated rulemaking process. We believe that it would move from a top-down, 

what we perceive as a coercive process, to a more collaborative 

process that would bring all interested stakeholders to the table. 

We believe that it would produce more and better buy-in from 

State policy makers, and we think that is key because it is the 

State policy makers who will deal with all of the implications and 

all of the results when it is finally implemented. 

It provides an opportunity to address needed fixes that have not 

been addressed so far in the final rule, such as exempting populations as I discussed in my remarks, folks who already hold passports, folks who hold military IDs, folks who actually have Federal 

IDs. 

It also provides an opportunity for the stakeholders to negotiate 

the cost implications, and NCSL’s message on REAL ID has been 

very consistent. Fix and fund, and certainly the cost is every bit as 

important to us as fixing the actual rules. It also allows the process 

to accommodate State experiences, best practices, and existing 

business practices and systems. 

So even though we have had an opportunity during the rulemaking process to be heard, we wish we had had that opportunity 

prior. We have appreciated that, but we do not think that the process is complete by any means and we would like to be able to participate as it moves forward. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much for your response. 

Mr. Amador, if States reject REAL ID, its citizens cannot enter 

Federal buildings because they do not have a REAL ID card. This 

will affect their access to private entities in addition to Federal 

agencies. For example, the DC Chamber of Commerce Visitor InforVerDate Aug 31 2005 09:43 Oct 24, 2008 Jkt 042752 PO 00000 Frm 00058 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 P:\DOCS\42752.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
53 

mation Center is located in the Ronald Reagan Building, which 

houses Federal agencies. What will the DC Chamber of Commerce 

and other businesses across the Nation do if they are located in 

Federal buildings and individuals do not have REAL ID cards? 

Mr. AMADOR. Well, it is really a question for—and it was asked 

during the previous panel. What are you going to do for those individuals that do not have a REAL ID? And we are still waiting for 

that answer. It is the same idea—they have so many requirements 

and it is not clear how they interact with each other. They used 

to call it a passcard. They themselves chose to call it a passport 

card and they said it is like a passport card unless you want to use 

it to get on a plane. Well, then it is not a passport, it is a different 

card. It is something else. They were asked whether the passport 

card would be able to be used as a REAL ID to get into buildings 

and they were like they never thought about it. 

So what other IDs are they going to accept to be able to go into 

a Federal building and how secure are these IDs going to be if it 

is not a REAL ID? We need to see what answers they come up 

with. I think they are complicating themselves by continuing to 

create more and more programs that don’t necessarily interact with 

each other. But again, we are just trying to give them recommendations. We are not telling them how to do their job. But 

it is confusing, the more IDs and the more programs that they create instead of working together to make these things easier for everyone. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. Mr. Quam, as you know, the final regulations for REAL ID reduced the cost to States from $14 billion 

to $4 billion. While the delayed implementation time line helped 

reduce the cost, the Department made several assumptions that 

lowered the cost estimate, including that not everyone will want a 

REAL ID card. 

You mentioned in your testimony some skepticism about the cost 

estimate for the States to implement REAL ID. What do you think 

the real costs to the States will be? 

Mr. QUAM. I think the likelihood is that it is actually higher than $4 billion. The Office of Management and Budget used some of the 

information that was developed by States early on when States had 

to try to establish a baseline for what this could cost. Certainly a 

lot of it is bringing people through the actual physical plant. The 

faster you have to bring 245 million people in, the more draw-down 

there is going to be on your resources, on overtime, on your physical buildings. And so the 10-year time line that has been given 

was a recommendation of both NGA and NCSL and AAMVA as a 

way to help monitor and manage the line. And so there is some 

savings there. There is also savings in the flexibility to choose the 

type of security for your card. 

What is missing, again, is the fact that they have a new assumption that one out of every four drivers will choose not to get a 

REAL ID. The problem with that assumption is if REAL ID comes 

online and now you need it for a Federal building and you need it 

for an airport and you need it to get benefits and you need it 

maybe to get across the border and it fits all these different definitions, this is a card now that you can’t do without. And so rather 

than one in four people not having it, I think everybody will actuVerDate Aug 31 2005 09:43 Oct 24, 2008 Jkt 042752 PO 00000 Frm 00059 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 P:\DOCS\42752.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
54 

ally want it, and so just reducing your price by 25 percent, I think 

we would all love to be able to do that. I don’t think it actually 

comes to fruition. 

The other one, however, and a real troubling one for a lot of governors, is with all of these databases, there is an assumption that 

a lot of them will be paid for by fees, that with every query, ask 

if thy are to check with DHS, there is going to be some price tag 

attached to it. We do not know what those price tags are. I talked 

about the SAVE system, and this is through DHS. The minimum 

amount is 50 cents per query. You have 245 million drivers’ licenses. Take half of that and all of a sudden, there is $100 million 

just for that one database. We have five that have to be queried 

for every single license. 

Having those costs not part of those cost estimates, I think raises 

suspicion for governors. I think it should raise suspicion for the Department of Homeland Security and Congress. We need some hard 

numbers so that we know what the tab is that States are being 

asked to pick up. Governors, just like NCSL, are on a fix and fund 

policy. Those cannot be separated. A workable regulation with no 

funding does not work. Total funding with unworkable regulations 

doesn’t work. They have to go together. Only if they go together do 

I think REAL ID can get done. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you so much for your response. 

Mr. Dow and Mr. Amador, most land border crossings were built 

at a time when there was a lower volume of travel and less recognition of the need for security. According to GAO, CBP estimates 

that $4 billion in infrastructure improvements at ports of entry are 

needed. In addition to increasing CBP staffing, do you believe that 

investments in infrastructure at ports of entry could help with the 

problems you highlighted? Mr. Dow. 

Mr. DOW. Chairman Akaka, I do believe that we have a crisis on 

staffing and on the pinch point of going through these physical 

areas. If you look at the land crossings or even if you look at something as simple as Dulles Airport, that it is so antiquated for the 

volume we are trying to pull through, just think of all the Chinese 

that will be traveling here. 

And also, the other thing is the confusion factor that we have 

had among very educated, knowledgeable people in this room about 

what is going to happen with WHTI. Think of the poor Canadian 

or the poor U.S. citizen who has no idea about WHTI. That is why 

we need a comprehensive communications plan, and I want to just 

thank you as I close for your support of the Travel Promotion Act. 

You realize how important it is to our country, and to your State. 

Your colleague and friend, Mayor Hannemann, has been a good 

friend also on this with all the mayors and I appreciate that. 

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Amador. 

Mr. AMADOR. Yes. As I said, it is in the written testimony and 

also in the oral testimony, we are supporting a bill in the House 

of Representatives called Putting Our Resources Towards Security 

Act, and that bill authorizes $5 billion over 5 years for the General 

Service Administration to address infrastructure deficiencies at 

land ports of entry. I think that will be a good start, together with 

increasing the staffing so the booths will be open and the hours 

will be extended. So we think that will be a good beginning. We 

55 

would encourage the introduction in the Senate and we will be 

happy to talk to you and your staff about doing that. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. Mr. Quam and Ms. Stone, while both 

of your organizations have similar concerns with the REAL ID Act, 

I am interested in your views with regard to WHTI, specifically enhanced drivers’ licenses. Do States have similar concerns with 

EDLs as with REAL ID? 

Mr. QUAM. Let me start. With regard to WHTI, the governors’ 

position with regard to WHTI and any cross-border security measures is that security and commerce can coexist and must coexist, 

and that as DHS moves forward with any of these plans, the biggest mistake that it could make is not to work with the States who 

are on those borders to find a program that works for its citizens, 

because it knows—I think Senator Collins did an excellent job of 

talking about the golf course. That is a local issue. Only local officials are going to know that issue and find a way to solve it. And 

so you have really got to work with local officials, State, and local 

officials, when devising those programs. 

With regard to the enhanced driver’s license, I know the Washington State project has had some success in working with DHS to 

get that off the ground. They have a great interest in having that 

program in place because of all the activity that happens on their 

border and with regards to the upcoming Olympics. Several other 

States are looking at that issue and seeing, does an enhanced driver’s license make sense for their States? 

The important thing is that becomes a State decision. I think as 

Ms. Stone said, there cannot be a cookie cutter approach, that each 

State is a bit different. And so I think States are going to want to 

take the best practices from some of the others. They will have concerns on privacy that they will want to address. They will have 

concerns on cost and implementation. But if it is done at the State 

level, then it is much more possible to get that balance between security and commerce across the border. 

Senator AKAKA. Representative Stone. 

Ms. STONE. Yes. Thank you very much. Very good question. It is 

our belief that DHS is actually using the economic impact of WHTI 

on border communities especially to pressure the border States into 

acting on EDLs. As we all know, the State of Washington has recently concluded a Memorandum of Agreement with DHS and they 

have launched the first EDL program. They cannot take a cookie 

cutter approach because it will not work. Every State’s needs are 

different and we really are hopeful and insist upon a collaborative 

process. 

Probably the biggest problem for us with DHS on these issues 

has been that they seem to bypass the legislature and legislators 

when it comes to these issues and we are truly stakeholders in 

these processes. We are the ones who ultimately will fund anything. We are the ones that have to deal with the privacy concerns. 

We are the ones who make the policies. 

DHS has recently formed a working group with members from 

the Governors Association, and we are delighted to see that they 

are including them in a collaborative process. When we approached 

DHS to participate in that same working group, we heard a resounding no, and although we are delighted that they are including 

56 

the governors, we believe that as legislatures and legislators, we 

are every bit as important to this process as the governors are. 

And so once again, our philosophy always has been, include us 

as stakeholders. Give us a seat at the table and allow us to participate in the process. It will ultimately result in better buy-in and 

it will ultimately result in a partnership, which it must be if we 

are going to be successful with providing the kind of security that 

we believe we need to have. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you for your response. 

Ms. STONE. Thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. Ms. Cope, you have written in great detail about 

the problems with vicinity-read RFID chips. If DHS and States 

could not use vicinity RFID, how else could travel information be 

prepositioned? 

Ms. COPE. Thank you, Chairman Akaka. As I touched upon earlier, both Departments could use a machine-readable technology 

that requires the card to actually make physical contact with the 

reader, and those readers could be placed 20 or 30 or however 

many feet away from the CBP inspection booth such that individuals either walking across the border or in a car would have to 

have their cards scanned well in advance of them actually being 

interviewed by the CBP officer. That would allow the information 

to be pulled up on the CBP computers, and be checked against various law enforcement and other terrorist watch lists. And so the 

goal of prepositioning can still easily be achieved with different 

technology that is more secure than vicinity RFID. 

Senator AKAKA. Ms. Fredrickson, the ACLU has developed a 

REAL ID scorecard, a list of potential problems that have been 

identified with the REAL ID law by a variety of parties, including 

privacy advocates and survivors of domestic violence. I understand 

that many of these problems were identified prior to or soon after 

the enactment of the REAL ID Act of 2005. Others were raised in 

numerous meetings between interested parties and DHS since that 

time. 

According to your scorecard, DHS has failed to fix most of the 

problems you identified. Did DHS respond to any of these 

unaddressed problems in the regulations, and if so, what was the 

response? 

Ms. FREDRICKSON. Well, I think if you look at our scorecard, it 

is very lengthy. It identifies a very long list of concerns. There were 

certainly areas where DHS took some actions that made the regulations somewhat less problematic. But I think I would actually tell 

you to look at the rest of the list that is on the scorecard because 

there, the biggest concerns that we had were left unaddressed, and 

in those areas, DHS clearly failed to respond. 

And I think I would go back to the discussion that we had earlier 

about the privacy concerns, because for us as the ACLU, that is obviously first and foremost and that is something that DHS completely threw up its hands about, kicked it to the States and said, 

develop your security plans. We are not going to have any standards. And that will somehow protect Americans’ private information. 

I think, again, I would go back to Mr. Baker’s testimony where 

he talked about the dangers of identity theft and having insecure 

57 

identification cards. Well, I would put to you that the system that 

would come about through the REAL ID would be much more 

prone to identity theft and to those dangers, to have a vast nationwide database with very little thought put into some kind of standards that would protect privacy. 

And that is why we are very strong advocates for your bill, S. 

717, because we think we need to go back to the drawing board. 

We need to get the partners back at the table. We need to go 

through those kinds of concerns, because really, if you don’t protect 

privacy, you can’t protect security. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. I want to thank all of you again for 

being here today. Thank you for your statements and your responses. As you know, the purpose of today’s hearing was to review 

the impact of the implementation of the REAL ID Act as well as 

the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. You have certainly responded. Your participation has helped us understand whether or 

not the Federal Government is prepared to implement REAL ID 

and WHTI. 

Unfortunately, the concerns I had coming into this hearing have 

not been addressed. Privacy, funding, and overall planning remain 

critical issues that need to be addressed for us to have successful 

implementation of secure identification cards. 

I look forward to working with my colleagues to make this a reality and look forward to your participating in this, also. 

The hearing record will be open for 2 weeks for additional statements or questions from our Members. 

Again, I want to thank you very much for your patience. This 

hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 1:09 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(59) 

A P P E N D I X 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR STEVENS 

I would like to thank the witnesses for coming here today to provide us with an 

update on the status of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative and the REAL 

I.D. 

Implementation of both the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative and the REAL 

I.D. has caused serious concern to many Members of the Congress and their constituents. 

When the REAL ID Act of 2005 passed the Senate, I voted in favor of it. A driver’s 

license has long been used for much more than just proving that a person can legally drive a vehicle. A state driver’s license is the principal form of identification 

American’s use to enter federal buildings, fly on airplanes, and for any number of 

places proof of identification is required. 

When a document is this integral to our everyday lives, we need to work together 

to make sure it is as secure as possible. As a matter of fact, many of the 911 terrorists had driver’s licenses they acquired fraudulently. This allowed them to rent vehicles, open bank accounts, and ultimately to fly on that fateful day. 

I understand there are valid concerns surrounding the REAL ID, and I hope we 

can work together to address those concerns. I believe the Department of Homeland 

Security has been quite flexible in allowing states an extension for implementation, 

and I commend the Department for this. 

I have two main concerns about implementation of REAL ID. The first is the cost 

to states. I hope we in Congress can work on all possible ways to aid states in the 

drastic costs associated with meeting the REAL ID requirements. 

I am also concerned that DHS has not executed sufficient public outreach on the 

REAL ID. Many citizens have serious privacy concerns about this, and although I 

believe the privacy of every American will continue to be protected, I do not feel as 

though DHS has been able to sufficiently get that point across. It is an important 

concern of the American people, and I hope DHS will work hard to ensure they understand that this is in no way intended as a national identification card. 

As many of you know, I have had serious concerns about the implementation of 

the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, W.H.T.I. 

Although I understand the importance of these new regulations, I continue to be 

concerned about the effect they will have on travel and trade with Canada. 

Alaska is the only state in which residents must drive through another country 

in order to reach another state. Many border communities in Alaska rely heavily 

on travel to and from Canada on a daily basis. As a matter of fact, if a resident 

of Haines, Alaska wanted to drive to Anchorage, another city in their own state, 

they would have to drive through Canada and re-enter Alaska. 

I was pleased that Secretary Chertoff sent DHS staff to Alaska last month to visit 

with some of our border communities about the new and upcoming border document 

requirements. 

It was very helpful to have DHS personnel there to answer questions these communities had, and to listen to the unique aspects of these communities that must 

be kept in mind when implementing new requirements. 

Many in Alaska do not have the correct information when it comes to what is currently required at the border, and what will be required once WHTI is fully implemented. Again, as with REAL ID, I am concerned that DHS is not doing enough 

public outreach to these communities to ensure they, and all Americans, understand 

exactly what is needed now and what will be needed in the future. 

I hope DHS will move forward with aggressive public outreach campaigns so that 

we can avoid any delays or problems at our borders. 

I am also concerned about another backlog for passports as the land and sea implementation date nears. 

60 

As you know, the State Department suffered a severe backlog of passport requests 

as the air implementation deadline neared. Some waited 12 to 13 weeks for their 

passports, and travel, in some cases, was impeded. So much so in fact, that passport 

requirements had to be changed during the backlog to accommodate those who had 

applied for, but had not yet received their passports. 

Before air implementation, I was assured by the State Department that they were 

well prepared for the increase in passport requests they would receive. This was not 

the case. I hope the State Department is better prepared this time to accommodate 

those requesting passports and passcards. 

Thanks you, and I look forward to your testimony today. 

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Æ 


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