DMV drops the sinister hologram

Submitted by BruceSiceloff on 10/21/2008 - 20:41

Tags: Crosstown Traffic | NC DMV | Real ID

The state Division of Motor Vehicles has stopped decorating driver’s licenses with a silvery hologram that was designed as a nationwide security tool — and derided as the symbol of an anti-American plot.

The foil stamp features the shimmering images of an automobile and a globe centered on North America. It appears on the flip side of 4.6 million licenses issued since December 2006.

It was conceived by a national group of motor vehicle officials for possible use as a tool to mark the authenticity of licenses issued in each state. North Carolina was the only state to use it, in what DMV calls a pilot program.

U.S. homeland security officials decided not to take the hologram nationwide, so North Carolina stopped putting it on new licenses this week. The two-year experiment cost the state $1.5 million.

“What this hologram was supposed to do was to show that this was an official document of a state DMV,â€