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April 24, 2006

Will Tagged ID Cards Curb My Freedom?

Starting 2008 thanks to the newly passed Real ID act, you will need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service. Travel documents will be embedded with a RFID tag that can be read from 25 to 30 feet away.

At present Biometrics is used across the US border to verify by means of fingerprints if the person holding the travel document is truly the person the visa was issued to. This method however is slow and cumbersome.

It is expected that identity cards of the future dubbed PASS (for People Access Security Service) will be a wallet sized card which can be read from close vicinity (up to 25 feet). The advantage of using such a method is that before the person reaches the border agent’s desk, the particulars of the traveler would have been scanned and the picture of the person would have been displayed on the computer screen.

However, there is a dispute within the US government about what the readable distance should be – the argument stemming from fears of the possibility of other scanners reading the card thereby stealing valuable information.

There are also plans in place to introduce a RFID tag on the US passport starting this October. Even your driver's license likely will have to be reissued to meet federal standards. However, this has met stiff resistance from New Hampshire. A fear of what information stored in the card would be retrieved each time it is scanned is the prime cause for this.

Further "Having a national ID would promote a surveillance society that we should all dread," adds Jim Harper, the director of information policy studies at the free-market Cato Institute. Clearly there are fears of losing individualistic freedom if such a national ID is introduced – so much for - "Give me liberty or give me death!”

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