Just how important a document do we want to make a driver's license? It's already almost a de facto national ID card, the first thing asked for in nearly all financial transactions. Soon, it will serve that function in an even stronger fashion, as Congress works on national standards.

The Real ID requirements, passed in the wake of Sept. 11, have been resisted by many states as intrusive and too expensive, so they might be replaced with weaker standards known as Pass ID.

But Indiana isn't waiting. Starting Jan. 1, the state will put in place the tougher standards called for by Real ID. For one time only – the next time they get their licenses renewed – Hoosier drivers will have to prove who they are, what their Social Security number is and where they live.

This will require them to provide documents some people have lying around and some don't – birth certificate, Social Security card, passport, utility bill, bank statement.

This is being objected to by, among others, the League of Women Voters, which has already challenged Indiana's photo-ID requirement for voting as being too much an infringement on the fundamental right of the poor and elderly to vote. The new requirements to get a driver's license – the principal form of photo ID – are even more of an infringement.

The group has a point, though the logic of the state seems impeccable. If a voter must prove who he or she is by providing a driver's license to vote, how can we not require them to prove who they are when they get the license in the first place?

But that may be easier said than done.

In 2003 and 2004, investigators from the General Accounting Office wanted to test for weak links in our national security chain, so they visited Bureaus of Motor Vehicles in seven states, armed with fraudulent birth certificates, utility bills and other pieces of identification purposely made to look as fake as possible.

The scary part isn't that they were able to get licenses in all seven states. It's that nobody confiscated any of the phony paper or notified any authorities.

In some cases, the investigators went back the next day, after slightly altering documentation that had been rejected, and got licenses on the second try.

So if we put everything into that one document – make it the be-all and end-all of identification for most Americans – what might we have? An invasion of ordinary citizens' privacy and phony documentation in the hands of identity thieves and potential terrorists that we believe too readily is authentic.

This is something to talk about before a national ID becomes reality, don't you think?