In the mad rush to have RFID for everything there have been a lot of goof ups. We had the naked Irish passports and the naked credit cards. There has even been a move afoot to address the legal aspects of RFID. But, I was pleasantly surprised to see a report that slams the use of this technology by none other than the DHS. This is a draft report but, it is a interesting spin. Not to say I’m one way or the other on this subject. I’m just glad to see someone is employing a sober second thought. Although I would imagine that the Bush White House would be less than amused. From the report:
A number of DHS programs are premised on the identification of human subjects. At the
border in the US-VISIT program, at airports in the CAPPS I program, and at entrances to
secure facilities of all kinds, checking identification cards is a routinely used security
measure. Behind many of the current ideas for using RFID in human identification is a
commonly held misperception that RFID improves the speed of identification. RFID is a
rapid way to read data, but RFID does not identify individuals. If RFID is tied to a
biometric authentication factor, it can reliably identify human beings; but tying RFID to a
biometric authentication negates the speed benefit.
It will be interesting to see if this makes it out of draft. Case in point is the footer on the report:
This report has not been considered or approved by the Full Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory
Committee and has not yet been provided to the Secretary or the Chief Privacy Officer of the Department
of Homeland Security as a formal recommendation.
This is an interesting report that should be shown the light of day. Whether or not that happens will be interesting to watch.
Tags: RFID, RFID Security, DHS, Emerging Applications Subcommittee, Human Identification, Bush, White House
