Ontario Issuing High-Tech Licenses

The Canadian province of Ontario has issued 15,000 new high-tech driver licenses to help combat identity theft, the Associated Press reported.

Within a year, the IDs will likely be an acceptable travel document for crossing the U.S.-Canada border, AP reported, citing Canadian Transportation Minister Jim Bradley.

The new driver licenses began going into circulation Dec. 6 and include a number of security features to make them much more difficult to counterfeit or tamper with, AP said.

The province hopes that within a year it will have sought permission from the federal government to encrypt citizenship data into the cards and the U.S. government will allow them to be used instead of a passport, AP reported.