A smart driver's license

"Without something like this, border crossing guards are no better than a bouncer at a bar," said Reed Stager, vice president for public policy at Tualatin, Ore.-based Digimarc Corp. His company makes IDMarc, a digital watermarking technology that has been adopted by six states to enhance driver's license security.

IDMarc is a covert, machine-readable security feature that can be embedded in licenses. Holograms and other security features used in IDs are based on published standards and can be counterfeited.

The Digimarc technology is in its infancy, but as states adopt it they will require integration services to deploy the supporting hardware infrastructure, Stager said