Automation: 1410 Is Watching

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Today's Americans are a submissive lot. A generation ago, when someone suggested collecting everyone's fingerprints and filing them with the FBI, the civil libertarians shrieked with rage. But these days, hardly any U.S. auto driver knows—or seems to care—about a big grey machine in Washington that clicks and whirs month in, month out, at the task of monitoring a motorist's habits on the highway.

The machine is the IBM 1410 computer of the U.S. Commerce Department's National Driver Register Service, a little-known Government body set up by an Act of Congress 2½ years ago. It is a step toward a computerized Big Brotherhood that may one day be keeping elaborate tab on everybody.

All U.S. citizens who have had their drivers' licenses revoked for drunken driving or who have been in a fatal crash are listed in a master file, against which the computer can check any new license application and flash a reply within 24 hours to the state that sends it. Although there is a move on to broaden the machine's purview, present law prevents the computer from registering any other offense (parking, running red lights, etc.), and subsequent acquittals, or other altered court judgments are caught by interstate exchange of records. So far, only the District of Columbia, Missouri and Maryland send all their applications in for checking. Most states check only names that are new in the state or seem to be "suspicious characters"; Massachusetts, Delaware, Georgia and Florida do not participate in the project at all. But no fewer than 24,000 fraudulent applications have been turned up to date, and the states are sending in more and more applications for checking—300% more in fiscal 1963 than in the previous year.

The 1410 handily nabs such types as one Washingtonian who lost his District of Columbia license, got another in Virginia, and when that was revoked, picked up one in Maryland—which he was carrying when he killed a five-year-old child. The computer also has a wily way of watching out for name changers; when, for instance, someone named A. Joseph Doaks applies in another state as Aleysius J. Doaks.

Sometimes the electronic brain casts a long shadow. A man at the drivers' license bureau in Phoenix read about the checking system on his application and turned tail so fast that he ran right through the license bureau's plate-glass office door.