Mo. Revenue Department faces questions
Print Email
1 hour ago • By Elizabeth Crisp [email protected] 573-635-6178
Is Missouri tracking personal info through drivers licenses, gun permits?
The Missouri Department of Revenue faced a first round of questioning today over whether private information is being tracked through the state’s new drivers’ license system.
A Missouri House committee is preparing to hold a hearing next Monday regarding allegations that the Revenue Department and local license fee offices have been scanning documents that contain personal data, including that related to concealed carry permits, and sharing those documents with a third party and the federal government.
In a House Budget Committee hearing today, DOR Deputy Director John Mollenkamp said the department is still working on gathering data for Monday’s meeting but assured members that documents are scanned, encrypted and sent only to the state data center in Jefferson City.
“It stops there – the scanned documents go no further,” he said.
The Revenue Department recently rolled out new drivers’ licenses with enhanced security features that are supposed to curb the risk of identity theft and fraud. Because of the new security features, the licenses are mailed to recipients from a third-party vendor that prints them.
Mollenkamp said the printers are high-tech and too expensive for the state to own its own.
“They are the printer – the printer for the new-style license,” he said.
He said the outside company never receives copies of the original source documents and instead gets basic information from a data file, including the driver’s license photo, name, address and descriptive details, like height and weight, which appear on the front of the license.
The equipment used in local fee offices to collect the documents – scanners and computers – is owned by the third-party vendor, Mollenkamp said. Routers that have been used to transmit the data were purchased through a Homeland Security Department grant, he said.
“It is my understanding that there is not any information being sent to the federal government,” Mollenkamp said.
Rep. Jay Barnes, a Republican from Jefferson City who chairs the House Government and Accountability Oversight Committee, has sent a letter to the Revenue Department, the state Office of Administration and other agencies, requesting copies of all rules and procedures related to the copying and transfer of personal information of Missouri residents applying for drivers’ licenses or concealed carry permits. According to the letter, Barnes’ committee is planning a hearing for Monday, and he wants the information before then.
A Stoddard County man filed a lawsuit this week claiming that the new state system for issuing those violates privacy rights because it allows personal and private information to be collected and then disseminated to a private party and the federal government.
In the suit, Eric Griffin claims he was trying to complete the process of having a concealed carry permit added to his driver's license when he was told digital copies of his documents would be saved in the Department of Revenue's system..........Rest of the story at the link
