Remarks by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff at a Press Conference on the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative Land and Sea Notice of Proposed Rule Making

Release Date: June 20, 2007

Washington, D.C.

Secretary Chertoff: Good morning, everybody. I’m joined to my right by Mike Everett, who is the unit chief of the forensic document unit of ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and to my left is assistant commissioner Jay Ahern who is the head of field operations for Customs and Border Protection.

As you know, a major focus and a major mission for this department is keeping dangerous people from entering the United States and that means keeping them from entering through our airports but also through our land and seaports of entry. If we can keep dangerous people out of the country we have substantially reduced our risk because it’s a lot harder to attack us or commit a crime in the U.S. if you can’t get in, in order to do it.

So in order to keep dangerous people out we have to do several things. First, we need to be able to confirm the person’s identity so we know they’re not impersonating someone else, someone innocent, perhaps even somebody here. Second, we need to make sure that once we have identity the person is not a security threat on a terrorist or criminal watch list. Third, we need to make sure the documents that are being presented to validate identity are documents that are valid, that are not phoney, forged, or stolen. And finally we need to do all of these things very quickly at the border so we don’t clog lawful travel and commerce.

Now we currently have a system that doesn’t really do what it needs to do to protect us at the land ports of entry. First of all, individuals can orally assert their U.S. citizenship. That means basically saying, hi, I’m a U.S. citizen, and in many cases we allow that to be sufficient unless the agent becomes suspicious. And even when a Customs and Border Protection officer asks for a document, these same individuals can present up to 8,000 different forms of travel documents from birth certificates to identification cards to drivers’ licenses at our land and seaports of entry.

Now of course, it’s different at the airport. At the airport now you have to have a passport if you come from overseas and under our WHTI air rule we are rapidly getting to the point you’re going to need a passport at the airport. But right now at the land and seaports we’re talking about 8,000 different kinds of documentation. Some example of these documents, including fake and real documents are over to the right. Four of these binders contain just the birth certificates that are authorized to be issued by counties and cities in the state of Texas.

So what does this huge cornucopia of documents for identification mean to our ability to manage security at the border? What it means is that there’s no way that even the most accomplished Customs and Border Protection officer can be familiar with all those documents and in a position to quickly confirm whether they are real or fake.

That puts us at a disadvantage because it leaves the door open for the rampant use of fraudulent documents. It forces officers to eyeball individual documents to try to figure out if these 8,000 documents are legitimate or illegitimate. That slows down the process of crossing the border. And all of this amounts to a greater increase in the risk to our nation and to our citizens.

Now what I have to the right are a number of these fraudulent documents, and let me give you an example of a couple of things that look good and are used in order – have been used in order to try to get by our borders. Here is a certificate of baptism in the name of an individual, purportedly issued from Laredo, Texas.

Now it would be awfully difficult for an agent who’s never seen this before to verify whether this is valid or not. At a minimum, he or she would have to take the time to ask questions in order to make a judgment about whether the person is lying, and at worst this might be accepted. This is a phoney document.

Here is a phoney birth certificate. Again, this is issued purportedly from a hospital – medical center in Beeville, Texas, again, a phoney document, no biometric, no secure tamper-proof element, nothing on its face to help you identify whether this is real or false.

So that’s the challenge that we have at the border. How do we find a way to reduce the vulnerability that all these documents pose to our national security with people coming in through the land border literally millions every single week?

Well, the 9/11 Commission gave us its opinion of the vulnerability that this proliferation of documents presents. As it says right up there, the commission said for terrorists travel documents are as important as weapons. And that was a very sad lesson we learned on September 11, 2001.

Travel documents are what allow terrorists to enter countries, establish false identities, plan and execute their attacks. So one of the highest priorities for my department is to seal off this very significant vulnerability, particularly along our land borders where we face an ongoing threat.

Let me give you some perspective on what we’ve already done at the land borders to give you also a sense of what we still need to do. Since 2005, Customs and Border Protection officers have intercepted over 90,000 fraudulent documents and apprehended over 60,000 individuals trying to cross the border with fraudulent claims of citizenship or phoney documents.

And because of the multitude of documents acceptable at the land border, these 8,000 different kinds of documents, we don’t have the ability to screen at the land border in the way we can do it in an air environment. Also, the volume is of course very much greater.

And even though none of the 9/11 hijackers came into the U.S. through our land ports of entry, other terrorists have attempted entry in the past through our land ports of entry, including Ahmed Ressam, the so-called millennium bomber. And of course recent events show that terrorists continue to be active in Canada, as witnessed by the arrest last year of a terrorist cell in Toronto.

In May of this year, a Canadian citizen originally from a country of interest, where we are concerned about terrorist activity, arrived at the Buffalo port of entry and applied for admission to our country. This individual was the subject of a lookout alert and was referred to secondary inspection. After that secondary inspection took place our Customs and Border Protection officers determined that this individual had previously been refused entry along with several other people linked to known terrorists after attempting to enter our country to film ground zero.

We of course did not let this person into the country. But here’s what you have to think about. If the person had been able to come in with a phoney piece of identification, we might not have caught them. Maybe we would have. Maybe the alert Customs and Border Protection officer would have spotted suspicious behavior, but we would at least have increased the possibility this person might have slipped by.

I want to emphasize that the Canadians are tremendous partners of ours with respect to intelligence sharing and law enforcement and they’ve taken some important steps to tighten security, passing tough antiterrorism laws and prosecuting dangerous terrorists including as part of this Toronto cell that we saw arrested last year, and we’re going to continue to work with them to elevate the level of security. But even with that we still have a responsibility of our own to reduce our vulnerability to terrorists coming into this country across our land borders.

As recently as last August, government accountability office investigators told Congress that they had successfully entered the United States via the land border on multiple occasions using bogus documents. So Congress has been put on notice that this proliferation of documents that are accepted at the border is a vulnerability that continues to persist.

As demonstrated by the recent public health tuberculosis case, even the tuberculosis patient who came back into the United States understood that it’s easier to slip in by flying to Canada and coming down through the land border than it would have been to come in through our airports of entry. Of course, part of that reflects the fact that coming in by air directly there are multiple trip wires you have to cross, TSA’s no fly list, our immigration advisory program overseas and of course the Customs and Border Protection people and the passport requirement.

But still, when everybody from GAO investigators to a tuberculosis patient understands that the land borders are vulnerable it tells us we have to continue to drive forward on reducing that vulnerability by drastically curtailing the number of documents that can be presented so that we can give our Customs and Border Protection officers a real ability to separate phoney documents from real documents.

We have to ensure that we do not create an opportunity for people who execute attacks against us to be exploiting these document vulnerabilities. And I would add something else. To the extent that the volume at the border puts stress on officers because it requires them to make a lot of evaluations in a very short period of time, the fewer the number of documents they have to evaluate and the easier the system for evaluation of those documents, the more time they have to spend doing other things like watching the behavior of people, which is probably the number one tip-off when somebody is up to no good.

With all this in mind of course, following the 9/11 Commission recommendations, in 2004 Congress passed legislation requiring our department and the Department of State to develop a plan to implement the secure document requirement and that gave rise to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative.

Now we took the first step to implement this initiative in January through the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative Air Rule. This rule requires all U.S. citizens as well as citizens from Canada, Bermuda and Mexico to present a passport when they enter the United States by air from within the western hemisphere. And initially compliance rates under this rule rose above 99 percent. People got the message.

Now we also recognize that regrettably, as a consequence of the unprecedented demand for passports, there has been a hiccup in getting those passports out there. The State Department is taking very aggressive steps to address that hiccup, and they’ve informed Congress that by the end of September the backlogs will be reduced to about eight weeks, by the end of the year six weeks. And therefore we’ve made an accommodation in the implementation of the air rule until September 30 so that individuals who have applied for but not yet received their passports can continue to use air traffic. But we are still driving to getting this rule in effect at the airports of entry by September 30 of this year so that we can achieve the first stage of what is a deliberate and very important progression towards getting robust document security regime all around the borders of this country.

So having addressed the issue of the Air Rule, now we need to talk about the next phase of Western Hemisphere travel, the Land and Sea Rule. And to this end, we’re releasing a Notice of Proposed Rule Making. Before I get into the particulars of the new rule though, let me briefly speak about what our process is.

First, I want to put you at ease and say something that I was not able to say during the regulatory process. We are not going to implement this rule all at once or overnight on January 1, 2008. We’re going to take a phased approach beginning with a transition period that will allow people to get the necessary documents to satisfy the Land and Sea Rule and to get accustomed to those new requirements at our land and sea ports of entry.

Second, during this period we’re going to afford a degree of flexibility to certain travelers based upon their unique circumstances. We did spend a lot of time listening to concerns expressed in anticipation of the rule. We’ve done a lot of outreach. We’ve worked closely with our Canadian colleagues, and we’ve come to understand that it’s important to build flexibility into our system, so we have made some accommodations.

But I want to emphasize this. We cannot abandon or substantially delay steady progress to reducing the number of documents that are used to get into our land and sea borders. That would be a very shortsighted approach.

Those who believe that we shouldn’t have a WHTI Land and Sea Rule, those who believe we should continue to allow 8,000 documents and oral declarations are playing with fire. They are gambling with the security of this country, and while I want to make sure we transition into this in a deliberate way that is as convenient and flexible as possible, at the end of the day we cannot reverse course and we cannot take the risk that people will come across the border using phoney documents to do harm to Americans.

So now let me lay out what the rule proposes. First, beginning on January 31, 2008, in about six months, we anticipate ending the practice of accepting oral declarations alone at our land and seaports of entry. That means, apart from the unusual or exceptional case, merely saying, hi, I’m an American citizen, let me in, is not going to work anymore after January 31, 2008.

At that point, U.S. and Canadian citizens will need to present either a Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative compliant document like a passport or a pass card, once those get issued next year, or a compliant driver’s license. Or, during this first phase, beginning on January 31, 2008, they’ll have to provide two current forms of identification, a government issued photo ID like a driver’s license and a birth certificate.

What that means, in other words, is that come January 31, everyone will need to show documentation that establishes citizenship and identity to enter through our land and sea borders but we will not, as of January 31, require that only WHTI compliant documents are acceptable. We will allow existing photo IDs and birth certificates to qualify as of January 31, 2008.

At the same time, during this first phase, which is going to last for at least about six months until the summer of 2008, we will begin some special alternative procedures for children, which is something that we first announced in February. Under the first phase and in fact eventually under the final phase of the WHTI rule, children aged 15 and under will not need a passport or a pass card. They’ll be able to present a certified copy of their birth certificate to enter our country provided they come in with their parents or a parent. In addition, groups of children aged 16 through 18, if they’re traveling with school or religious groups, social organizations or sports teams, will be able to enter under adult supervision with birth certificates.

This accommodation which we announced in February recognizes the fact that we have hockey teams going back and forth and we don’t want to impede those kinds of regular school activities which are a feature of life along the border.

So again, it’s a modification. I think there’s very little risk to school groups and to children coming with a parent, and so we’re trying to accommodate in our risk management approach some of these practical dimensions to life along the border.

As I said, this first phase, beginning in January 31, 2008, where we will accept non-WHTI documents but will require at least two documents, meaning a driver’s license with a photo or an ID with a photo and a birth certificate, will last for about six months, maybe seven or eight months. And as early as the summer of 2008 we will then move to the second phase of the rule where we fully implement WHTI. And that’s the phase where we will require a WHTI compliant identification, passport, pass card, WHTI compliant driver’s license, NEXUS card, FAST card or SENTRI card, valid Merchant Marine Document or a valid U.S. military ID.

You’ll see by the way there’s still going to be a broad range of documents that are acceptable even under the final phase of WHTI, but we are going to continue to shrink the number of documents until, as of the summer of 2008 when we’ve gotten what I would describe as a wide distribution of acceptable documents, we will finally have in place a fully implemented Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative rule.

This of course is going to apply as well to citizens of Canada who, as of the summer of 2008, will also be required to show a comparable, WHTI-qualified card, NEXUS, FAST, SENTRI, passport or similar type of trusted program card that we’re working on with the Canadian authorities.

Finally I want to emphasize that Mexican nationals who are already under a heightened requirement with existing law will continue to be required to comply with the current requirements by carrying a passport and visa or a border-crossing card.

And, as we continue into this second phase we’ll continue this accommodation with respect to children and we will continue to allow alternate documents for members of the U.S. armed forces, members of certain tribes of American Indians and an exception for first responders and medical patients crossing the border in emergency situations.

One of the very encouraging things about this is, I announced sometime back we’re working with the state of Washington. They’re planning to start issuing their WHTI compliant card in January and we are in active discussion with other states, and with Canadian provinces on similar measures.

I think the bottom line is, although there was an initial resistance, I think the authorities on both sides of the border have come to grips with the fact that we do have to move forward on this initiative. For our part, we’re trying to do it in a way that is flexible, that is realistic, that recognizes that we’re going to have a big chore in getting this documentation out to the people who want it but also in a fashion that is deliberate, disciplined, and makes it very clear that we will, at the end of the day, have a WHTI program implemented during 2008 and one that will substantially reduce if not eliminate the vulnerability that posed by all the documents you see to your right.

Let me maybe step back and then conclude by saying this. I know there’s a lot of resistance to change that’s involved in getting new documents. It can be expensive. It can be inconvenient, and it certainly is a little bit disruptive in terms of the way people are accustomed to doing business. I am particularly aware of the fact that along the border there are patterns of behavior built up over a long period of time which we do not want to disrupt.

We have spent a lot of time, and I have spent a lot of time personally, over the last year meeting with governors, with my counterparts in Canada and Mexico, with the travel and tourism industry, with the business community, with local officials and all kinds of stakeholders to take account of their perspective. And we’ll continue to be hearing from them over the next 60 days.

I think the message I’m sending today is that we are not acting precipitously. We are not going to drop the axe on January 1, 2008. We are, as I promised a few months ago, going to develop a glide path to get this implemented in a way that gets it done in real time but doesn’t jam it in a way that causes an enormous amount of disruption.

But we will need cooperation from others. Early planning on travel and early applications are going to make this process smoother. And of course working with states and getting alternatives in terms of drivers’ licenses is going to make it less expensive and more convenient for travelers.

But let me end by saying something coming back to this statement from the 9/11 commission report. I got to come back to a fundamental point. Over five years ago we had an experience on 9/11 which was a transformative experience. And I think we all remember how committed people were in the wake of that terrible attack to making sure we closed all the vulnerabilities we reasonably could.

I wish I could tell you that our land borders are invulnerable, that there will not be threats that come across our land borders, but you know better than that and I know better than that. And I know one of the main ways a threat is going to come across is going to be somebody coming up with a phoney document and trying to get by, and I know the more documents that we allow people to present and the less stringent our requirements about what is acceptable, the more burden we’re putting on the agents and the harder it’s going to be to stop somebody.

And I’m just not prepared to accept that risk. I think we’ve got to reduce that risk. We’re doing a lot of other things to close the gaps as well. We’re moving our USVISIT system to ten fingerprint collection. We’re strengthening our watch lists. We’re increasing our information exchange with Canada and with Mexico and with people overseas. But at the end of the day part of securing ourselves, our families and our communities is requiring a little bit of sacrifice and a little bit of inconvenience.

And excuses and interminable delay will ring very hollow in a year or two if it turns out there is an attack and somebody has come through using phoney identification because we didn’t get this done. That is what I have in front of my mind.

So we’re going to get this done in a way that is as flexible and as convenient as possible but in the end we must get this done. So with that I think I’ll be happy to take some questions.

Question: Mr. Secretary, if the bill moves through the House to put this all off until June 1, 2009, are you going to recommend the President veto that bill?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, I think we’re very concerned about the appropriations bill. A lot of —obviously the administration issued a statement of position with respect to the bill before it went to the floor and there are some things on the floor that have raised some additional issues, so I’m quite sure that as that bill moves through the process we’re going to be raising our concerns with Congress.

And I’m hoping one of the things we can do with this regulation is, at least as it relates to this particular issue, sit down with Congress and see if we can reach an agreement with them on what will address their concern, which I understand. They want to make sure that we get this implemented—but also gets this done in real time.

You know, I think most members of Congress are reflecting a legitimate upset over the fact that we had a hiccup with the passports and a desire to make sure we don’t unduly disrupt the flow of travel and commerce. I’m very sympathetic to that. I know there are some members of Congress who actually hope they can kill this thing and have the belief that if it can get kicked into the next administration the next president will abandon it. That I don’t understand.

So I want to work with Congress to see if this will accommodate a lot of their concerns. I think we’ve indicated we’re open to being flexible in bringing the final requirement into place over the course of 2008 as we see how we’re doing. But in the end, you know, security has to come first.

Question: Can you talk a little bit about the pass card and how it will work and who’s going to issue it, how do people apply for it? And also, with 60-days notice we can hope that the State Department can produce passports in that time frame a year from now but – what is your recommendation on when people should start applying?

Secretary Chertoff: That’s a very good point. The State Department will issue the pass cards. Obviously the state of Washington will issue its WHTI compliant pass–license. Other states will do what they’re doing. And I’m going to emphasize that people ought to deal with the issuing agency to get the most precise information.

I think at some point later this year or at the very beginning of next year the State Department, my understand is, will be in a position to start getting applications in for the pass card. Obviously the passports are still in process. And we expect to be able to start issuing various kinds of alternative identification starting in January of next year. Exactly when is going to depend on the procurement, and obviously the state driver’s licenses may differ depending on when each state begins its process.

I should say that we have—NEXUS and SENTRI cards are currently being issued, so I would encourage those who are really thinking ahead to be applying for a NEXUS card or a SENTRI card, which are existing identification cards that we will accept under WHTI. So those are out there already, we’ve talked about other kinds of cards, military identification card—and so we’re going to have these things that are currently in place, capable of being issued, and then starting next year these alternative forms of identification like the pass card and the driver’s licenses will start to come on line.

As to when you should send your applications in and exactly where I think I’m going to let the State Department talk about what they’re doing and then let the state of Washington talk about what it’s doing. I don’t think they’re ready to receive applications yet, but I do think some planning ahead and either looking at the possibility of getting a passport or a NEXUS card or a SENTRI card would be something people should start to consider.

Question: Just one quick follow up. The process will essentially be the same if you don’t have NEXUS or SENTRI. You go up to the booth, you’re just going to show your document, you’re still going to get questioned—do you have any weapons, where have you been.

Secretary Chertoff: Correct, that’s right.

Question: Mr. Secretary, you said that part of the reason for delaying this was the hiccup over passports. What assurance do you have from the State Department that they’re drinking water or holding their breath or however you cure a hiccup and that it’s not going to be, come January, a full-blown seizure?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, I mean I think the State Department has been working very hard. My understanding is there was an issue with the contractor. That’s been corrected. I don’t want to make myself their spokesman, but my understanding is that in late March they opened up a new passport center that’s going to be able to produce more than 10 million passports a year. They’ve sought reprogramming from congressional sources to hire 400 new government staff, and they’re going to have 800 new contractors on board. They’ve expanded hours of operation.

I think that they have taken very seriously the problem that arose with apparently a delay in some of the processing, and they’re on a path to getting back on track, which as I said would be eight-week delays by the end of September and then by the end of the year on a six-week backlog pattern. There is obviously always some processing backlog.

With respect to this, because we have other kinds of identification, I’m hoping the burden will be less because presumably people in the state of Washington who are interested in this will be doing it as part of a licensing process.

The pass card will create another avenue the NEXUS card and the SENTRI card will create another avenue. So we’re trying to broaden the – create a broader pipe through which people can operate.

Yes.

Question: Mr. Secretary, I have a question on a bit of a different subject, and that’s cyber break-ins at the Homeland Security Department. And as you know the House subcommittee is set to address this issue later this afternoon.

How vulnerable is your department to cyber attacks and how would you like to see this problem—

Secretary Chertoff: You know, there are literally probably every week hundreds of thousands if not millions of cyber attacks all across the country, ranging from very sophisticated, dangerous attacks to pretty minor attacks that are quickly and readily repelled.

I remember some years back I was in Silicon Valley and somebody showed me—one of the software companies showed me—they have a big board and they can literally see, you see it light up every time someone attacks. So I don’t think we’re particularly vulnerable, but I think we share the general sense of vulnerability that the whole country does.

We have a head of our cyber security and communications component who is focused on working with our government partners as well as the private sector in elevating our protection against a cyber attack and there are a number of elements to that. Part of it is working with the private sector through our team to disseminate warnings when there’s an attack in progress.

That happened with the Estonian attack we had a month or two ago. Some of it is working with them to disseminate better security practices. Some of it, frankly, is pretty basic stuff like don’t leave your password sitting on a piece of paper on your desk because that will defeat the best firewall, and then we’re doing some things which are classified and somewhat less visible that are more sophisticated that we’re working on in order to raise the general level of protection.

So I don’t think that there’s a particular vulnerability at DHS. Scott Charbo, our IT head has actually done a very good job of consistently raising the level of security. And we’ve been getting better and better grades in our security for cyber security, but I will say that —this is an international issue, and with the fluidity of the internet comes the greater vulnerability.

All of us have to work together to—we’re not going to stop the attacks. What we can do is blunt them and respond to them more effectively.

Yes.

Question: In February you said that WHTI was proceeding flawlessly. What do you say now to all those Americans who think this has been anything but flawless and there’s going to be more requirements down the road?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, actually, I was correct in the sense that the American people did actually do their part of the bargain. They understood that they needed to have their passports and we had basically 99 percent plus compliance at the airports. So at least as of that point—I had to praise the American public for stepping up to the plate and listening and paying attention.

I’m obviously dismayed that there was a problem in terms of producing passports and I’m pleased that the State Department has taken some very aggressive measures to correct that. And in part the experience of this delay has led to our considering adding this extra level of flexibility in our glide path, which we’re doing for next year.

So like anything else, when you’re producing millions and millions of transactions, human existence being what it is there are going to be some problems. The best we can do is build a little more flexibility into the system. Again, I express our appreciation to the American public for understanding its role to play and then making sure we built some processes in place to allow flexibility so we can get to where we need to get in a somewhat gentler and less disruptive way.

Question: If this proposal goes flawlessly you’re still going to end up with several hundred different varieties of state driver’s license identifications that accept other forms. Can you play this out? Will it end there or do you see a day when only five or six or seven?

Secretary Chertoff: Let me be really clear. In phase one, you are right. We are going to —in phase one, which is from January 31 to the summer, we will be reducing that, but there will still be a lot of IDs. There will be 50 different state driver’s licenses and then there will be a second document, which is a birth certificate. So that will be closing the window of vulnerability but it will not have closed it.

Phase two starting, we anticipate in the summer of 2008, will be the point at which we will have WHTI-compliant documents. Now there will still be probably 10 documents or a dozen documents that comply with WHTI but that really will be the point at which we’ve closed the window of vulnerability. So to try to deal with this issue of avoiding – I don’t want to get too anatomical, avoiding hiccups, we are taking it in two bites.

The first bite is going to be to somewhat close the window and at least get ourselves down to where we have two forms of documents, one of which is a government photo ID and the other is a birth certificate and then by two is let’s get it down to one of a dozen or so WHTI-compliant documents which really will have completed the process of digesting this.

No more food and eating metaphors. Yes.

QUESTION: What exactly is a WHTI-compliant driver’s license? And second, when you talk about birth certificates, are we seeing that only American and Canadian issued birth certificates would be acceptable?

Secretary Chertoff: Right. I mean Mexicans are under the existing law required to have a passport and a visa and a border control card. Bermuda, for example, requires a passport. So with respect to everybody else, existing requirements already exceed what we’re talking about for phase one. So it’s Americans and Canadians who will be having to combine a license or comparable photo ID with a birth certificate.

Yes.

Question: One of the problems with this waiver that you’ve had over the summer is that people needed their passports to go into Mexico and—I mean their birth certificates, but they were stuck in the pipeline with the State Department. Isn’t that same thing going to happen in the first few months of next year when they’re trying to apply for a passport, they send in their birth certificate but they’re going to need their birth certificate to go across the border?

Secretary Chertoff: You know, actually, I have a recommendation. Why don’t people get two certified copies of their birth certificate? I mean I personally wouldn’t put a valuable—if I have only one birth certificate I’m going to be reluctant to put it in the mail unless I have a backup copy. I’d get a couple of copies.

Question: And just one other followup question. So I thought that the Washington driver’s license project was still a pilot that had to be—so you haven’t—it’s not definite that that’s going to be—

Secretary Chertoff: What the governor said at the time when he announced it, that they are going to begin issuing it in January as part of a pilot program. It will be accepted at that point. Obviously if it becomes a problem with the issuance then it won’t be available.

Again, I think I have a plan that’s a sensible plan. I think there are other states that are looking at this. And this is part of the reason we’re trying to do this on what I describe as a glide path because I want to keep the process moving because that vulnerability is really worrisome to me, but I don’t want to ram it through to the point that it actually causes the system to foul up.

So this is all about kind of a steady movement to where we need to go. If it turns out that there’s a problem it may delay it a little bit longer. If it turns out it happens more quickly then we’re on track to get it done over the summer.

I think it’s just a question of being reasonable and commonsense.

Question: The installing plan—how many state driver’s licenses do you expect will be WHTI compliant by—

Secretary Chertoff: It’s going to depend on what the states choose to do. Washington has indicated an interest. A couple of other states have indicated an interest. It could be that 20 states decide they want to do it.

And by the way, once you have the architecture, you have the card, the card stock, the chip and the business process every state can use the same process. Obviously it will have different words printed on the card, but it’s the same basic mechanism. So I can’t tell you because I don’t know how many are going to sign up. I’d be happy to have 20 or 25 because it’s going to be the same basic document just with a different covering on the top of it.

Question: Well, thank you. Speaking of driver’s licenses, the states seem to be running away from the REAL ID requirements. Everyday we seem to see another state legislature passing a law saying we’re not going to do it. How much does this concern you and what’s the answer?

Secretary Chertoff: It does concern me. I understand part of it is money. I should say a lot of states actually are embracing this, particularly the larger states. California is embracing it. New York is embracing it. So a lot of states are recognizing that as they move into the 21st century we need to have a secure driver’s license. I know some of the states are anxious about money, and I think that’s an issue we’re hoping to address with Congress.

I mean frankly the immigration bill actually authorizes a slug of money for REAL ID because the current version of the bill in the Senate if I recall correctly actually envisions REAL ID as being an employment verification document, one of a number of documents.

Then there are some people who seem to have a philosophical problem with a secure driver’s license. And here I do want to say something. I want to go back to that. Whether it be terrorism or identity theft, the fact remains that increasingly we rely upon driver’s licenses as a form of identification.

When I was in civilian life I used it to get into government buildings, used it to get on airplanes, and the premise has to be that it’s reliable. Under the existing system where in many states I can get a—basically I can get a phoney driver’s license by hanging out in the parking lot at the 7-11, that’s a huge vulnerability.

I have real difficulty understanding the argument of people who say that’s a good system, let’s keep it; let’s keep it easy to phoney documents up; it’s a bad thing if the government makes the documents secure and tamper proof. I’m waiting to hear the compelling civil liberties argument to enable people to forge documents and steal the identities of others.

So I think we have a process in place that we’ve worked on with the motor vehicle association that is a sensible process using some of their existing techniques. I’ve been down to the motor vehicle bureau myself. I think we can devise a system that’s not going to be substantially additionally burdensome.

We’ve built a lot of extra time into place here to get this done in terms of when we’re going to put the deadlines in place and Congress is certainly looking at supporting this with funding. But at the end of the day this is part of a fundamental choice that underlies everything we’re talking about, whether it’s WHTI or REAL ID or the question of employment verification.

Increasingly, as somebody said to me, actually it was John Reid the Home Secretary who said to me yesterday—he said, you know, in this world the most valuable thing you now have is your name. And that means people are going to want to steal it, and that means you’re going to want to protect it. And in the same way that you lock your money up in a safe or you put it in a bank to keep it secure, how do you lock your identity up? How do you prevent it from being stolen with someone masquerading to be you?

The answer has to be in some series of identification documents that we can rely upon. And people who say either it’s too burdensome—are simply pushing down the road what is admittedly difficult but I think an absolutely compellingly necessary decision, which is we need to offer people identity security in the twenty-first century. And without secure identification you’re not going to be able to do that.

So I think that we all ought to—you know, we can always work together to smooth it out and adjust a little bit and give a little bit here and a little bit there, but I do think we have to commit ourselves to the principle once and for all that we are going to secure people’s good names against being stolen or trashed.

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This page was last modified on June 20, 2007