Biometric ID and Immigration Reform

Poland Installs Europe's First Biometric Fingerprint-Scanning ATM Machine

Biometric Fingerprint Scanning: Leave the ID cards at home; a good finger scan is all you need.

May 11, 2010

Popular Science - Given the financial situations in Greece, Spain, and Portugal in recent weeks, the Euro Zone has plenty of reason to be down on itself. But Poland is showing a bit of financial-sector flash this week, becoming the first nation in Europe to install biometric ATM machines that read fingerprints rather than magnetic cards.

Poland's BPS SA bank set a European -- and if we're not mistaken, a Western -- milestone by installing the biometric cash machine in Warsaw, where customers can withdraw money with nothing more than their index fingers and their PIN numbers.

The machines work on "finger vein" technology, rather than the topographical signature of a customer's finger. The scanning technology, developed by Japanese tech company Hitachi, records the tiny veins that run through fingertips to create a unique identifier for each customer.

Only one biometric machine is currently operating in Poland, though BPS plans to deploy three or four more of the ATMs in Warsaw before year's end. About 200 more will end up in more than 350 bank branches there in coming years.

Though the Japanese have been using the technology for a little while now, this marks the first major commitment to institute biometric security standards by a large Western bank, as well as the first indicator that such technology may soon wash up on American shores.

[AFP via Montreal Gazette]

Oklahoma State Representative Continues Push to Ban RFID-enabled Driver's Licenses

May 6, 2010

RFID Journal - A battle between Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry and Republicans in the state's House of Representatives is brewing over the use of RFID chips on Oklahoma state driver's licenses.

Early this year, state Rep. Paul Wesselhöft (R-Moore) introduced House Bill 2569, which would ban Oklahoma from utilizing RFID in state-issued driver's licenses. The bill is designed to preempt a federal law that the U.S. Congress is considering—the PASS ID Act (S. 1261)—which would turn state driver's licenses into national ID cards, and which includes a provision for enhanced driver's licenses.

The Pass ID Act also contains a provision for enhanced driver's licenses, as designated by the 9/11 Commission Implementation Act of 2004 (which, in that act, is referred to as Real ID).

While neither the Real ID in the 9/11 Commission Implementation Act of 2004, nor the enhanced driver's license referenced in the Pass ID Act, specifically mention RFID, Wesselhöft claimed, when introducing HB 2569, that an enhanced driver's license is an RFID-enabled driver's license.

Earlier this week, Governor Henry vetoed HB 2569, saying, in a prepared statement:

"In a time of constantly evolving and improving technology, it is not in the best interest of the state or its citizens to prospectively ban the use of a specific technology that could provide benefits in the future."

According to media reports, Wesselhöft has indicated he will fight to overturn the veto, adding that the policy of using RFID on driver's licenses would violate the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

"Through technology, governments, corporate and private entities can track a person's location and personal information if one's driver's license is embedded with a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip or special ink," he said in a media statement. "They can be tracked through doors in buildings as one walks through them."

Currently, four U.S. states offer RFID-enabled enhanced driver's licenses: Michigan, New York, Vermont and Washington.

U.S. Government Launches Official Agency to Manage Biometric Database

March 29, 2010

Popular Science - Collecting fingerprints and other biometric data has long allowed law enforcement and the military alike to track down wanted individuals, solve cases, or just keep tabs on people. Now what was a U.S. government task force under the U.S. Army has officially become a full-scale national security agency in charge of biometrics, according to the Secrecy News blog run by the Federation of American Scientists. [See Obama and the Biometric National ID]

The Biometrics Identity Management Agency (BIMA) has a responsibility that spans the entire U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), and would specifically support the DoD's "authoritative biometrics database" in the name of national security.

Scientists have been steadily developing newer and better biometric-recording devices, ranging from 3-D fingerprint scanning to capturing facial features. Or how about tracing specific persons to the keyboards or weapons that they handled simply based on the bacteria that they had on their hands?

The DoD database receives "thousands of [biometric] records" every day, according to a 2009 DoD report. That suggests U.S. warfighters, spooks, and officials have been very, very busy collecting data from potential adversaries or people of interest in the field.

Looks like the smartphones being used by U.S. soldiers might be getting smart biometric scanner upgrades sooner than we thought.

[via Secrecy News]

Flashback: India to Issue Biometric ID Cards to All 1.2 Billion Citizens

July 16, 2009

Popular Science - Everyone knows the headache of waiting on line at the DMV to get a new driver's license. Now imagine repeating that process 1.2 billion times. Thanks to a new ID program, that's exactly what the government of India will soon experience.

The Indian government has just announced a plan to furnish every member of the country's immense citizenry with state-of-the-art biometric identification cards. The cards will carry retina and fingerprint data and credit and criminal histories, and will be linked to a central online database.

The national ID program hopes to clear up current bureaucratic tangles common in India, where citizens might be issued almost 20 different forms of identification. Adding to the confusion, many of those IDs don't work in different parts of the country.

Obviously, the scale of the project is rather daunting. Huge swathes of India's population are illiterate, rural, and poor. Entering the data of that vast, undocumented segment of society will significantly tax India's notoriously political bureaucracy. Even ignoring the fact that neither the huge numbers of biometric sensors needed to compile the information, nor the huge amount of processing power and memory needed to collate the data, have been assembled, registering a large number of Indians to do anything has proven next to impossible. For instance, fewer than seven percent of India's citizens are registered to pay income tax.

Just to give a sense of the scale of the project, if all the cards India plans to produce were stacked on top of each other, the resulting pile would be 150 times taller than Mount Everest.

To coordinate the huge effort of computerizing, storing, and protecting vital information about every Indian citizen, the government turned to Nandan Nilekani. Nilekani is the former head of the Indian technology company Infosys, and the person who coined the term "the world is flat" to describe the effects of outsourcing and globalization.

Nilekani needs to get moving. The Indian government plans on issuing the first of the IDs within 18 months, and they have only given Nilekani around $5 billion to complete the project.

[via Engadget and Times Online]