A bill approved by a Senate committee Friday could give some companies the ability to verify the authenticity of a driver license. Senate Bill 7 would combat fraud and the illegal sales of alcohol and tobacco, according to the bill's sponsor, Sen. Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville. The bill would give the Department of Public Safety the responsibility of drafting rules for access to the state-run database, which is now used to identify uninsured motorists. Insure-rite, the private company that now runs the uninsured motorist database, plans to create a secure Web site to which companies could buy access. Those companies would then be required to type in certain information from a driver license. They would then know instantaneously if they were holding a legitimate license or a fake, according to Bart Blackstock, executive vice president of Insure-rite. Waddoups said the bill does not violate a person's privacy because a customer would volunteer the information to be checked. The bill now goes before the full Senate. - Matt Canham