Is it legal to scan your drivers license and social security card to a disk?

it is OK to scan licenses and IDs as long as scanning doesn't decode "encrypted" information.

The magic word is "encrypted." The law says it is illegal to have or use any hardware or software that can be used in reading the encrypted language from the bar code or magnetic strip of an Illinois driver's license or ID card.

"Encrypted" means more than the information is in code-it means that the information is in a secret code. Secret codes can't be cracked without secret information. Cracking the secret code that encrypts certain information, then, is what the new law specifically prohibits.

The Secretary of State, for example, encrypts most of the information that appears in text on your license. Your address, sex, height, weight and eye color, for example, are encrypted. Without access to some secret code or information, an ordinary ID scanner can't read that information (even though that information is right there on the front of your license for anyone to read or copy). The only un-encrypted information on your license is your name, date of birth, your card number, and its expiration date. Because that information is not encrypted, it is OK for a scanner to read it.

A legal scan of a license or ID could, therefore, read your name, birth date, card number and expiration date, but nothing else. That information may be translated into lines in a bar code, or into an inkblot-like magnetic strip, but it is not encrypted. Ordinary scanners can read it.

Since an ordinary scanner should not be able to read your address, a merchant should not be able to use an ID scanner to create a mailing list. Nevertheless, the web sites of many ID scanners claim to be able to create mailing lists by reading addresses. Apparently, this is what the Secretary of State wants to protect us from.

How would you know if an ID scan illegally decoded encrypted information? The only tip-off would probably be mailings from a merchant. Invitations to Lady's Night from a bar that had scanned your ID might therefore warrant a report to the Secretary of State.

Violating this law is a Class 4 (less serious) felony, which carries a possible 1 to 3 year sentence, or a $25,000 fine. The law does not apply, however, if Federal or state law "requires that the card holder's address be recorded" or if the encrypted information is "obtained for the detection or possible prosecution of criminal offenses or fraud."