DMV Director Wants SC Driver's License Changes

You might have to get your South Carolina driver's license renewed twice as often as you do now as a way to protect the security of that license. SC DMV director Kevin Shwedo says the state's current 10-year driver's license gives criminals too much time to figure out the license's security features and how to duplicate them so they can make passable fake IDs.

DMV director of operations J.R. Sanderson says, "If you have a 10-year span, what happens to you is that you're safe the first couple of years and then the hackers, the intruders, the fraud people, then they begin to catch up with you."

There are websites, including one based in China, that sell fake South Carolina driver's licenses that are difficult to spot as fakes. They even have the holographic images that the state's real driver's licenses have for security purposes. The fake licenses are the ones from a few years ago that have the red stripe across the top. In October 2010, the SCDMV started using a new design that includes two photos and other new security features. But the old real licenses are still valid until they expire, which means the fakes that copy them are hard to spot.

State lawmakers would have to agree to go back to a five-year renewal period on licenses. Shwedo says he doesn't know how much it would cost to develop a new, more secure license, so he doesn't know yet if the driver's license fee you pay would have to go up.

Fake licenses are often used by minors to buy alcohol, but law enforcement officials say they're also used by illegal immigrants, scam artists, identity thieves and even terrorists.

After waiting for more than an hour-and-a-half Monday at a Columbia DMV that was packed, David Lockett didn't like the idea of having to renew his license more often. "You can see they're overcrowded now. So every ten years, instead of coming up here, every ten years is a good thing instead of every five years," he says.

And DMV customer Dave Tapp says, "I kind of think that if criminals are going to make fakes, they're going to figure out how to do it in five years anyways."

Sanderson says the Chinese website that sells fake South Carolina licenses may install viruses or malware on the computers of those who buy the fake IDs, which could make the personal information of those customers vulnerable.