What's in your wallet? New driver's license debuts

The Clovis and Portales Motor Vehicle Division offices are now issuing new licenses equipped with 12 security features. The New Mexico Motor Vehicle Division released the new driver’s licenses to protect the public from identity theft.

The new license procedure now starts with a temporary license first. Since the secure driver’s license is processed from a central facility, applicants for licenses will now leave the Clovis and Portales MVD office with a temporary extension, which they will use with their hole-punched license until their regular license arrives in the mail within seven to 10 days.

1 - A duller, smaller ghost image is placed under the height is used to make tampering with the license more difficult. In order to tamper with the license, two photos would have to be manipulated and it would have to be placed behind the height, which is difficult.

2 - A Zia symbol constructed with laser perforation. The holes don’t go all the way through and appear to be dots. But if an officer were to shine a flashlight through the symbol from behind, a real ID’s Zia symbol would let light through.

3 - Microprinting winds up the mesa repeating Land of Enchantment. Some of the phrases are misspelled intentionally.

4 - On the right hand corner of the ghost image, there is a minuscule printing of the person’s initial’s and birthday.

5 - Like U.S. paper bills, the new license has tiny lines embedded throughout. On a counterfeit license, lines are usually printed on the surface and are not embedded.

6- License photographs will be sent through biometric facial recognition software. When a first-time New Mexico license photograph is taken, the photograph is compared to all photos in the database to see if that person has any other identities. If it is a renewal license, the photograph is compared to all other photos of that person in the system to make sure it’s them.

On the flip side: On the back of the card, a second bar-code has been added linking the license to an electronic citation system. An officer can scan the bar-code and it will prepopulate the driver’s information on an electronic ticket. The citation information can then be transferred to the motor vehicle division. Moving from paper tickets to electronic ones is intended to increase timeliness and accuracy.

Source: Kenneth Ortiz, New Mexico Motor Vehicle Division director