ProfNet Wire: Government & Law: Standardizing Driver's Licenses
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LEADS
1. Education: College Grads Reinventing Themselves for Future Careers
2. Education: More Older Adults Pursue Post-Retirement Studies
3. World Affairs: Uganda's Struggle to Restore Legitimate Power
ROUNDUP: STANDARDIZING DRIVER'S LICENSES
Following are experts who can discuss The Real ID Act, a federal law calling for the creation of standardized driver's licenses nationwide to make them less vulnerable to fraud. Legislators in several states have decided to reject the law, saying it would cost the state too much to put into place and would leave residents more vulnerable to identity theft:
**1. JIM HARPER is director of information policy studies at CATO INSTITUTE, author of "Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood," and member of the Department of Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee: "The Real ID Act is a federal law that blackmails states into producing federally approved driver's licenses and identification cards. If a state is not participating in Real ID by 2008, the federal government threatens to bar its citizens from air travel, entry to courthouses and other areas and activities controlled by federal checkpoints. Real ID also requires states to put information about their citizens into a massive federal database. States are now moving to reject Real ID, and they are sending an important message. If Congress wants Americans to carry a national ID, Congress should vote for it openly, pay for it directly and answer to voters itself. It should not slough its national ID policies onto the states." News Contact: Evans Pierre, Mediastaff2@cato.org Phone: +1-202-789-5200 (2/21/07)
**2. TERRENCE DeFRANCO is chairman, founder and CEO of EDENTIFY, a leading identity management company with the only patents issued for identity manipulation detection and identity verification systems: "There is definitely an argument for standardizing driver's licenses. However, the danger in this is if an identity is stolen, the point at which the identity document is created still needs to be strengthened. Whether getting a new driver's license, applying for a federal ID card, or obtaining any other identification where there is an enrollment, the identity of the individual still needs to be scrutinized." News Contact: Mike Lizun, Mike@GregoryFCA.com Phone: +1-610-642- 8253, ext. 113 (2/21/07)
**3. ROBERT SICILIANO, CEO of IDTHEFTSECURITY.COM: "A biometric secure and smart form of identification that authenticates is essential. Citizens have not been authenticated, relying on Social Security numbers, photos and signatures as identification. The 'privacy' argument is political grandstanding that doesn't address the issue. Politicians, who scream about privacy, give up all their personal information for 10 percent at shoe stores. Privacy is an illusion that has been dead for a decade. Until everyone is properly identified and authenticated, issues of identity theft will continue unabated. With today's dumb IDs, anyone can become anyone with a computer, scanner and printer. The Real ID Act may have been sold as a tool for stopping terror, but that is nonsense." Siciliano: Robert@IDTheftSecurity.com Phone: +1-617-257-1870 (2/21/07)
_____ LEADS
**1. EDUCATION: COLLEGE GRADS REINVENTING THEMSELVES FOR FUTURE CAREERS. ANNA IVEY, career and admissions counselor, advises college grads to think beyond their degrees and to prepare to reinvent themselves more than once throughout their careers: "These days, it's impossible to predict what kind of career someone is going to have -- jobs change, technology changes, the economy changes, specializations come and go, and personal preferences change -- so it's best to focus on developing broader, transferable skills rather than planning on working within a narrow niche for the rest of time. College students need to plan on reinventing themselves many times over the course of their careers." News Contact: Michelle Tennant, michelle@tenannt.org Phone: +1-828-749-3200 Web site: http://www.annaivey.presskit247.com (2/21/07)
**2. EDUCATION: MORE OLDER ADULTS PURSUE POST-RETIREMENT STUDIES. RON MANHEIMER, Ph.D., executive director of the award-winning North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement at the UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT ASHEVILLE: "Beginning a second career, including starting a business, often requires additional study, and there is also a large segment of older Americans who want to study for the sheer joy of learning. A recent study found that the percentage of seniors 66 to 74 who took at least one adult- education course more than doubled between 1990 and 2000. Planning should examine additional study needed to achieve retirement goals." News Contact: Michael Henry, mhenry@wwlcreative.com Phone: +1-704-926-1364 (2/9/07)
**3. WORLD AFFAIRS: UGANDA'S STRUGGLE TO RESTORE LEGITIMATE POWER. DR. JOSHUA RUBONGOYA, professor of political science at ROANOKE COLLEGE in Salem, Va., and author of the new book "Regime Hegemony in Museveni's Uganda: Pax Musevenica" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007): "Uganda's political past is rife with zealous dictators like Idi Amin -- the ghost of whom is invoked in the Oscar- nominated film 'The Last King of Scotland' -- and his successor, Milton Obote. Uganda has seen relative stability and economic growth since Lt. Gen. Yoweri Museveni took control in 1986. In terms of U.S. national and economic security, Africa is critically important. Twenty-five to 30 percent of oil used by the United States will soon be coming from Africa. Stability on the continent keeps terrorists at bay and keeps oil flowing into the west without interruption." Rubongoya, who lived in Uganda during the rule of both Amin and Obote, can discuss the impact of those two regimes, the weakness of democratic institutions in Africa and the factors contributing to it. He has contributed a chapter on the role of political leadership to "Democratic Transitions in East Africa" and wrote a synopsis on the politics of Uganda for the second edition of "International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences." Rubongoya: rubongoy@roanoke.edu Phone: +1-540-375-2444 News Contact: Laura Snyder, laura@dickjonescomm.com Phone: +1-814-867-1963 (2/21/07)
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