file photo Boyd Loving
N.J. drops plan to require extra documents to get driver’s license
Published: Friday, October 05, 2012, 3:53 PM Updated: Friday, October 05, 2012, 7:17 PM
By Mike Frassinelli/The Star-Ledger
The state is abandoning its plans to pursue stricter new driver’s licenses that would have required 6 million New Jersey drivers to show additional proof of residency and disallowed previously approved documents such as military cards.
The more stringent license — which would have had a gold star in the upper right corner signifying it was a federally approved document New Jerseyans needed to board a plane or enter a federal building — initially was touted as a necessary security measure in a post-9/11 world.
But in May, the ACLU of New Jersey won a court order blocking the new ID over privacy concerns and a lack of public input regarding the changes.
The state Motor Vehicle Commission, which will keep its existing ID verification, is addressing security in other ways. Earlier this year, it began implementing “facial recognition technology” to fight license fraud, scanning photos of applicants with such accuracy that the distance between eyeballs on a photo could distinguish an individual applicant.
https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/10/nj_drops_plan_to_require_addit.html
