Fake IDs are usually thought of as a teenage problem - used by underage kids to buy alcohol and tobacco or get into trendy night clubs. However, in the last five years, falsified ID cards have shown to cause many more problems than underage drinking.

While fake IDs have begun to present large scale security issues on a national level, they still are a major problem for small businesses like restaurants, bars and convenience stores. Penalties for steep for establishments caught selling alcohol and tobacco to minors, and with ID card technology developing every day, it has become even more difficult to determine if an ID is real or forged.

A campus-wide system at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay allows students, faculty and staff to use their university identification cards to purchase everything from books, meals and photocopies, to tasty vending machine treats.

Whether you notice or not, there are some major changes taking place in the ID card industry right now. New technologies, new laws and the continual push for maximum efficiency have created several new and important ID card developments in recent months. Here are some things to keep your eyes open for:

In Mexico, and throughout Latin America, the use of smart card technology is on the rise. 30 percent of the bankcards in Mexico are smart cards, and the country plans on pushing that statistic to a full 100 percent by 2008. In Brazil, where nearly 98 percent of payment terminals are equipped for smart cards, the fraud rate has reportedly dropped by 80 percent. Governments are also using the technology for such applications as healthcare cards. All told, Latin American countries spent upwards of $200 million (USD) on card technologies last year, a 70 percent increase over the previous year.

We're all accustomed to the DMV - waiting in line, filling out endless forms, the people in line who can't seem to read the signs and obey the rules, the curt  employees...and the really, really, really bad photos that always seem to end up on our state-issued IDs. It seems that they're an inevitable part of life - birth, death, taxes and the crummy license photo.

Since the dawn of time, schools have been havens for junk food. With hallways illuminated by the welcoming glow of vending machines, and lunch rooms serving up burgers and fries with reckless abandon, the nutritional value of a meal at school is rivaled only by that of dinner at 7-Eleven. In the case of my elementary school, we even had the infamous “Barquito,” a soggy Mexican pizza curiously served within a plastic bag.

Since the dawn of time, schools have been havens for junk food. With hallways illuminated by the welcoming glow of vending machines, and lunch rooms serving up burgers and fries with reckless abandon, the nutritional value of a meal at school is rivaled only by that of dinner at 7-Eleven. In the case of my elementary school, we even had the infamous “Barquito,” a soggy Mexican pizza curiously served within a plastic bag.

After a recent baby snatching, maternity wards all over the country have been looking to increase their security in order to protect newborns and parents alike from kidnapping, baby switching, and other nightmare situations.

Giesecke & Devrient, one of the initial companies to employ Extended Access Control (EAC) protocol in national ID systems, has declared that by 2009 all EU member states will outfit their ID cards with facial images and fingerprints. The projection was made at the CeBIT show in Hanover, where a central focus has been identity theft. The company also envisions the EU implementing a single-card standard that will be used by citizens for not only personal identification in the real world, but also in the virtual world.

In an effort to ease the minds of parents, the National Recreation and Park Association has launched a new program that will help to ensure that youth coaches and volunteers are first rate individuals. The program, called Operation TLC2, uses background checks to screen candidates for criminal offenses, and then issues photo identification badges to those who are selected. Since its launch in the fall, the program has thwarted 4,500 prospective volunteers with records showing sex offenses, violent crimes, and a variety of other felonies.

Maternity wards in Lubbock, TX have been aflutter lately - not with multiple births, Siamese twins or "ER"-style floods and firestorms, but with the threats of babynapping.