N.H. Driver’s Licenses to Have Key Security Features Required by Real ID

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In postponing enforcement of the Real ID law in New Hampshire, the Department of Homeland Security took note recently of new security features the state is adding to its driver’s licenses and identification cards.

Stewart Baker, the department’s assistant secretary for policy, responded to a letter last week from Earl Sweeney, assistant commissioner for New Hampshire’s Department of Safety.

Baker said New Hampshire’s new security measures “will provide the principal security features required at this time by Real ID.”

In his letter, Sweeney said New Hampshire has two levels of security in the license card, a unique New Hampshire laminate and month and year of birth hidden in the Old Man of the Mountain logo.

In addition, “our governor and council has just awarded a contract to a new vendor,” and starting in May, driver’s licenses will include additional features, Sweeney wrote: a ghost image and hologram, micro-text and invisible ultraviolet ink, and microscopic print.

“We will also have a central print farm for the production of driver licenses and non-driver’s ID cards,” Sweeney wrote.

Other driver’s license changes that have taken place, or are in the process of being implemented since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are the use of digital photography to prevent issuing the same license to more than one person and requiring license applicants to sign a declaration that the information they are providing is valid, Sweeney said.