The idea of creating a hard-to-counterfeit identity card has been kicking around for quite a while. Originally, it was proposed as a way to defeat illegal immigration and identity theft. But since the Sept. 11 attacks, the issue has taken on a new sense of urgency.

Every Sept. 11 hijacker except one was able to acquire identity documents, such as a Social Security number or driver license, that allowed them to more easily navigate American society. They rented apartments, opened bank accounts and boarded airplanes with documents that were both legally and fraudulently obtained.

''Fraud in identification documents is no longer just a problem of theft,'' the 9-11 commission report said. ''At many entry points . . . sources of identification are the last opportunity to ensure that people are who they say they are and to check whether they are terrorists.''

The commission recommended that the federal government set national standards ''for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as driver licenses.''

In case you didn't hear it, a shoe just dropped.

Standardizing driver licenses will turn them into de facto national ID cards, just as our Social Security numbers have morphed from a narrow use into general identifiers. Once Americans are carrying around a uniform driver license connected to a central database, it will be used, undoubtedly, as a form of internal passport.

Maybe at first, showing a driver license will be required only when boarding an airplane, but soon, inevitably, it will have to be presented and scanned when entering all forms of public transportation - then government buildings, then public events. Our right to travel anonymously, to ride a train, enter a public library or go to a political rally, without the government knowing who we are or making a record of it, will disappear.

Who needs neighbor spying on neighbor like the East German Stasi or John Ashcroft's Operation TIPS program when our own identity papers will keep track of our movements? Security measures should not destroy our liberty and privacy in the process, but that is what's coming.

Both houses of Congress have passed legislation implementing some or part of the 9-11 commission's recommendations. And although the House and Senate have passed wildly divergent versions, both legislative proposals would standardize driver licenses.

The Senate would grant the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security the discretion to determine what documents had to be presented to obtain a driver license and what data would be included in the license. This could include embedded biometrics, such as a fingerprint or iris scan. Although states wouldn't be forced to go along, the secretary could require that only federally approved licenses be accepted at airports - a condition that would leave states little option but to comply.

The House would go further and require states to link their driver license information to a central database. In addition, the legislation calls on the secretary to create ''an integrated network of screening points that includes the nation's border security system, transportation system and critical infrastructure facilities.'' In other words, entrants should be screened at any building or public transportation node where there is potential for a terror attack.

Here is the death of anonymity coming to pass. Just as private businesses have expropriated the Social Security number for their own internal recordkeeping, expect them to piggyback on this, too. Landlords will scan your driver license before renting an apartment, and private security will use it to know who is entering the building. With today's computing power and data storage capacities, every scan would be indefinitely stored and instantly retrievable.

And with all this intrusion, would we really be safer?

No. The terrorists would find a way around it.

Ultimately, every identity document, no matter how ostensibly tamperproof, can be altered or forged. Also, Department of Motor Vehicle employees are not immune to bribes. Very likely a black market in driver licenses would arise. There is no foolproof system, and terrorists will be particularly motivated to defeat whatever is put in place.

Rather than erect a huge national system to identify and track law-abiding Americans, it makes far more sense to continue to thoroughly check all passengers at airports for weapons and bombs, and use our homeland security resources to investigate real terrorist leads.

For example, before the government makes us get our irises scanned, how about translating the thousands of terrorist-related intercepts that are sitting backlogged at the FBI? First things first, don't you think?

---

Tribune Media Services, Inc.