COLUMBIA - A plan to save the state money by using inmates to crunch highway data won't go forward if personal information can't be purged from collision reports first, a spokesman for Gov. Mark Sanford said last week.

The measure in the governor's budget proposal would save the state $113,079 in data-processing costs.

But it alarmed privacy advocates who said inmates could use the information to steal drivers' identities.

"If the forms can be provided to corrections in such a way that drivers' privacy rights are not violated, it's something we support," Sanford's spokesman Will Folks said. "If it's something where they can't be, it's something we won't support."

Under the proposal, responsibility for entering statistical highway data would be shifted from Department of Motor Vehicles employees to state inmates..

The inmates would use traffic collision reports to do the work. Such reports filled out by law enforcement officers contain information about the accident -- time of day, weather conditions, location of the accident and the investigating agency, said state Department of Public Safety spokesman Sid Gaulden.

But the reports also contain personal information about drivers -- names, date of birth, sex, race, home address, phone numbers, driver's license number, make and type of vehicle and insurance information, Gaulden said.

Giving inmates access to such information is "an invitation to identity theft," said John Crangle, state director for the Washington-based watchdog group Common Cause.

The state's savings would be no comparison to the possible costs of identify theft, which can run into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for some victims, Crangle said.

And inmates who've committed financial crimes aren't the only prisoners likely to steal identities and use or sell them, said Linda Foley, co-executive director of the nonprofit Identify Theft Resource Center in San Diego.

The highly profitable enterprise lures criminals of all backgrounds, she said.

"We know there is a strong link between drugs and identity theft," she said. Personal information "is a highly sellable commodity," she said.

Inmates working on the data likely would be in the Corrections Department's Inmate Program Services Division, which aims to give rehabilitative opportunities to inmates. Inmate oversight would come from the Public Safety Department, according to the proposal.

Folks said the proposal will be reviewed to make sure there are no privacy violations.

"The intent all along was to have the Department of Corrections work solely on statistical, not personal, data," Folks said.

Asked to respond to the flap over the plan, Folks said the governor's budget plan reflects his libertarian bent toward reducing government, and that Sanford welcomes the scrutiny. "Folks should be concerned about their privacy rights," the spokesman said.

DMV spokeswoman Beth Parks said the Driver Privacy Protection Act, which protects the use of personal information from DMV records, is not applicable to a state or government agency or an entity doing work for such an agency.

But it's not clear into which category state inmates fall. They're not state employees, but would be paid for the work, Parks said.

The DMV uses the statistics to determine who's at fault and who's charged in an accident and makes sure that information gets to the driver's record, Parks said.

The Public Safety Department also uses the information in its annual traffic fact book, Gaulden said.

The information is used to plan road projects -- such as whether to put a stoplight at an area with many traffic crashes -- and is used by insurance companies.

Crangle said the proposal goes against a national trend of governments being more sensitive to privacy issues.

According to Gov. Mark

Sanford's budget proposal, transferring the data-entry work to inmates is expected to result in an annual general fund savings of $113,079.