02/17/1993
By DONALD B. AYERS
   SPRINGFIELD, ILL. (UPI) -- It may be harder for strangers to get
their hands on your drivers license information if Secretary of
State George Ryan gets his way.
   Ryan said Wednesday he'll ask the General Assembly to approve new
laws sharply limiting who can view the more than 15 million drivers
license and motor vehicle records his office controls.
   "I firmly believe that personal information like a person's
height or weight shouldn't be released to just anyone who walks in
the door and asks for it," Ryan said.
   "The information we gather is collected for good reasons, but
those do not include handing it over to a stranger who wants to know
where a woman lives or where an expensive car might be parked
overnight."
   Legislation to be introduced this spring would only authorize the
release of addresses or other personal information to those with a
legitimate business interest, such as police, insurance companies or
the media, Ryan said.
   The secretary of state's initiative would also allow drivers the
right to remove their name from the mailing lists his office sells
to businesses. Companies that purchase drivers license and vehicle
registration lists would also have to disclose how they plan to use
the material, Ryan said.
   The state currently earns more than $10 million each year by
selling vehicle information to private industry.
   The new proposals are based on recommendations from Ryan's
Advisory Council on Public Records and Privacy, a group formed after
the 1989 murder of Hollywood actress Rebecca Schaeffer.
   Schaffer was shot to death in the doorway of her apartment by a
stalker who had obtained her address through California motor
vehicle records. Her murder also prompted Illinois lawmakers to
approve a tough new anti-stalking law last year.
   Ryan said he knows of no confirmed cases where an Illinoisan has
been harmed as a result of information obtained from his office.
   Requests for personal information dropped sharply after the
secretary of state's office adopted new disclosure rules last year.
The rules imposed a 10-day waiting period on any license information
requests and informed individual motorists when someone requested a
copy of their records.
   However, even the tougher rules were not enough to stop one state
prison inmate from using drivers license records to track down the
address of his victim's family.
   "They were very uneasy about the fact that we were going to
release the information to him," Ryan said.
   The inmate would not have been able to obtain that information
under the proposal Ryan made Wednesday.