Illinois officials plan to ask for an extension to better prepare for a federal program that would standardize driver's licenses nationwide for security purposes.

Under new rules released Friday, the Real ID Act won't take full effect for nearly 10 years. Previously, the program called for states to begin issuing more secure driver's licenses by May of this year.

The federal Department of Homeland Security released rules Friday allowing states to get extensions until late 2009 to begin the program.

"We expect to file for an extension very soon," said Henry Haupt, spokesman for Secretary of State Jesse White.

With several deadlines coming in the years after, U.S. citizens would have to have a new ID card to fly on airplanes or enter federal buildings by 2017.

The idea is to increase national security especially because a majority of the plane hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks carried valid state ID cards.

The act requires new licenses to have tough-to-fake security measures, including markings that can only be detected under ultraviolet light and other characteristics that can only be detected by a chemist in a lab.

New Illinois licenses already have some of those characteristics.

Still, the program has faced criticism from privacy advocates and state officials alike.

Estimates from last year suggested implementing the program would cost Illinois $150 million over five years with little help from the federal government. Haupt said he didn't know how the new rules would affect the cost.

"I think it's not a reasonable thing for us to do, to mandate those things at the federal level, without appreciating the impact on states in terms of cost," said U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

Last year, Illinois lawmakers joined more than a dozen states to urge Congress to repeal the Real ID Act. Other states went further, approving laws to bypass the program altogether.

Haupt said Illinois plans to comply, but state lawmakers' public disapproval of the program could make asking them to pay for it difficult.

"So funding is a concern," he said.

The American Civil Liberties Union has fought the law, citing privacy concerns it says can arise when government agencies share personal information. ACLU of Illinois spokesman Ed Yohnka said he hopes Congress would change or repeal the act before it takes effect.

Yohnka argued the federal government's willingness to push compliance back several years means the program must not be very urgent.

"I think it's an admission that the process doesn't work," he said.

Online: http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2008/01/11/news/doc478822d42b9e8785329475.txt