[Clips] Biometric bonanza

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: rah@shipwright.com Delivered-To: clips@philodox.com Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2006 10:09:35 -0400 To: Philodox Clips List From: "R.A. Hettinga" Subject: [Clips] Biometric bonanza Reply-To: clips-chat@philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces@philodox.com http://www.cleveland.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/opinion/1157791091303420.xml&coll=2 The Cleveland Plain Dealer Cleveland.com Biometric bonanza There's money to be made bringing security up to date, but Americans will find that privacy just isn't in the cards Saturday, September 09, 2006 Identity technology that once was film fantasy is about to become part of our lives. Credit approved not on a card, but on the scan of a fingerprint. Hospital medications dispensed not according to instructions on a bedside chart, but from those on a patient's computer chip. Banking transactions conducted not on a signature, but on the reading of an iris. And - oh, yes - the driving reason for this sea change in personal identification will be national security. Welcome to the Fearful New World, where real and perceived needs for increased security meet the technological ability to provide it. And the burgeoning biometrics industry is more than willing to sell us the rope by which privacy may be hanged. The Washington Post recently laid out this nexus of profit and protection. It will be driven by the replacement in a few months of federal employees' ID cards. The cards, with similar versions planned for transportation workers, first responders and foreign visitors, will have fingerprints and a computer chip with the capacity to hold far more information than will be necessary for positive identification. That will involve perhaps $8 billion in identity-related contracts, a prospect that has companies from major technology providers down to plastic card providers slavering at the potential market. But that's chump change compared to what could come: the reinvention of the driver's license and state identity cards. Ordered by Congress in the Real Identity Act last year, the redesign will have to meet standards yet to be set by the Department of Homeland Security. Estimates are that the new documents won't demand all of the biometrics included in the federal IDs - at least, several states have expressed hope that they won't. But the technology is ready to apply, and not only national security forces have an interest in its use. Banks may lobby for secure cards that would guarantee the identities of their patrons. Retailers already are working on fingerprint identification of credit-using customers. Hospitals want identity systems that might better prevent treatment mix-ups. They and many other groups that want more positive identification are prepared to lobby long and hard for their concerns to be included in whatever demands Homeland Security finally makes. The one common document that could provide all of this and more is the hitherto lowly driver's license or state identity card, long a low-tech, insecure, readily misused piece of identification. The result, by any other name, will be a national identity card, long the bane of Americans who treasure the disappearing penumbra of privacy. The best hope privacy-seekers have against the massing identity forces is legislation that will strictly limit what information they must carry, allow the bearer immediate access to the card's information so that imbedded mistakes can be corrected, and severely punish its misuse. Beyond that, there's little hope that the infamous World War II movie line, "your papers, please," won't become a bitterly ironic tag line to the war against terrorism. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips@philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'