Chertoff touts ID program

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff boasted about the value of the federal Real ID driver?s license program with lawmakers from around the country at the National Conference of State Legislators meeting here, but Maryland lawmakers said he offered little of anything new about an unfunded federal requirement that burdens the states and creates a threat to privacy.

“We are not mandating a federal responsibility,” Chertoff told some of the 1,700 state legislators attending. States can opt out of the program that makes driver?s licenses more difficult to counterfeit and requires more identity checks to get them, but then drivers from those states will not be able to use them for federal purposes, such as getting on an airplane.