Katrina shows why a national registry is sorely needed

The foundation for security and enterprise management

I ended the last issue by saying that had the U.S. Real ID Act been in effect prior to this year, lives could have been saved and suffering could have been averted. Here's how.

In the wake of the devastating destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, which was further compounded by the arrival of Hurricane Rita before recovery could even be said to be fully started, one of the major problems was the need to identify people and their location.

Dead bodies were recovered from storm drains, streets and shelters. People were rescued from rooftops and taken to temporary evacuation sites only to be swept up again and moved - perhaps multiple times. People were frantic for information about family, friends and loved ones. But telephones weren't working and it was impossible to reach the last known location for lots of folks - either flood waters kept searchers at bay, or hurricane winds had wiped out all evidence of the habitation.

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I ended the last issue by saying that had the U.S. Real ID Act been in effect prior to this year, lives could have been saved and suffering could have been averted. Here's how.

In the wake of the devastating destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, which was further compounded by the arrival of Hurricane Rita before recovery could even be said to be fully started, one of the major problems was the need to identify people and their location.

Dead bodies were recovered from storm drains, streets and shelters. People were rescued from rooftops and taken to temporary evacuation sites only to be swept up again and moved - perhaps multiple times. People were frantic for information about family, friends and loved ones. But telephones weren't working and it was impossible to reach the last known location for lots of folks - either flood waters kept searchers at bay, or hurricane winds had wiped out all evidence of the habitation.

Well-meaning people, hundreds of well-meaning people, started Web sites where they hoped to co-ordinate information about the missing and the found. But one person sitting in front of a PC in California has very few resources to find anyone who could be anywhere in the U.S. - evacuees were being sent to almost every state in the union.

In the frantic effort to rescue people stranded by the storms, families became separated. Parents couldn't find their children, nor often their spouses. Privacy and child protection laws kept both governmental and non-governmental agencies from creating databases of the missing or the found.

I've said more than once in this newsletter that the technology is easy; it's the people aspect that's difficult. Well-meaning people couldn't understand why there weren't coordinated efforts to establish a national registry of the displaced. Others cautioned that creating such an aid would only hasten the establishment of a national ID database with identity cards for everyone and ushering in the era of Big Brother.

But if the Real ID Act had been in place, if each state's Department of Motor Vehicles had established a uniform system, then we would have been able to track folks as they were shuffled from the Superdome to the New Orleans Convention Center to the Astrodome to a temporary refuge in Arkansas - and then back on a cruise ship docked in Mobile, Alabama (and some people did make that journey).

We can pass laws to restrict how the data that states have in their DMV database is used. We can prosecute those who misuse the data. We can require a panel of judges to approve any linking of the data. We should do all those things. Because there will be another national disaster. There will be more displaced and missing people. And when it strikes it will be too late to construct the database we need in order to find and identify them.

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Dave Kearns is a consultant and editor of IdM, the Journal of Identity Management.