Real ID Chip Implants and RFID Real ID chip implants have been around for several years, in one form or another. In the earlier stages of their development, they were used to identify stray animals, and return them to their homes.
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- Enhanced License Security Feature/RFID chip. Enhanced Driver's License and ID Card Security Feature - RFID Chip. Your enhanced driver's license or state identification card contains a Radio Frequency Identification chip to facilitate border crossings and homeland security efforts.
- The bill also directs Texas DPS to embed an “integrated circuit chip” (RFID chip) in these individuals’ drivers licenses and/or personal identification cards. This RFID chip would be machine readable, allowing ‘authorities’ or a person with an RFID reader and decryption savviness to gain access to this information.
Some federal and state government officials want to make state driver's licenses harder to counterfeit or steal, by adding computer chips that emit a radio signal bearing a license holder's unique, personal information.
In Virginia, where several of the 9/11 hijackers obtained driver's licenses, state legislators Wednesday will hear testimony about how radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags may prevent identity fraud and help thwart terrorists using falsified documents to move about the country.
Privacy advocates will argue that the radio tags will also make it easy for the government to spy on its citizens and exacerbate identity theft, one of the problems the technology is meant to relieve.
Virginia is among the first states to explore the idea of creating a smart driver's license, which may eventually use any combination of RFID tags and biometric data, such as fingerprints or retinal scans.
'Nine of the 19 9/11 terrorists obtained their licenses illegally in Virginia, and that was quite an embarrassment,' said Virginia General Assembly delegate Kathy Byron, chairwoman of a subcommittee looking into the use of so-called smart driver's licenses, which may include RFID technology.
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The biometric data would make it harder for an individual to use a stolen or forged driver's license for identification. The RFID tags would make the licenses a 'contact-less' technology, verifying IDs more efficiently, and making lines at security checkpoints move quicker.
Because information on RFID tags can be picked up from many feet away, licenses would not have to be put directly into a reader device. If there was any suspicion that a person was not who he claimed to be, ID checkers could take him aside for fingerprinting or a retinal scan.
States need to adopt technologies that can ensure a driver's license holder is who he says he is, said Byron.
Federal legislators may also require states to comply with uniform 'smart card' standards, making state driver's licenses into national identification cards that could be read at any location throughout the country. The RFID chips on driver's licenses would at a minimum transmit all of the information on the front of a driver's license. They may also eventually transmit fingerprint and other uniquely identifiable information to reader devices.
But federal mandates for adding RFID chips to driver's licenses would create an impossible burden for states, which will have to shoulder the costs of generating new licenses, and installing reader devices in their motor vehicle offices, said a states' rights advocate.
'It could easily become yet another unfunded federal mandate, of which we already have $60 billion worth,' said Cheye Calvo, director of the transportation committee at the National Conference of State Legislatures.
RFID tags incorporate computer chips, radio transponders and coiled antennae. The tags, many as small as a postage stamp, already pervade the day-to-day lives of millions of Americans, and are expected to eventually replace barcode labels on retails goods.
Drivers with E-ZPass tags on their windshields can already cruise through many highway toll booths without stopping, thanks to RFID technology.
RFID tags, which respond to signals sent out by special reader devices, have in some tests demonstrated broadcast ranges up to 30 feet. Reader devices have proven to possess similar 'sensing' ranges. This is what has some privacy advocaters worried, including one testifying tomorrow before the Virginia legislators.
'The biggest problem is that these tags are remotely readable,' said Christopher Calabrese, council for the American Civil Liberties Union's Technology and Liberty Program.
RFID tags inside driver's licenses will make it easy for government agents with readers to sweep large areas and identify protestors participating in a march, for example. Privacy advocates also fear that crooks sitting on street corners could remotely gather personal information from individual's wallets, such as their birth dates and home addresses – the same information many bank employees use to verify account holders' identities.
Information from card readers could also be coupled with global positioning system data and relayed to satellites, helping the government form a comprehensive picture of the comings and goings of its citizens.
Driver's licenses with RFID tags may also become a tool that stalkers use to follow their victims, said Calabrese. 'We're talking about a potential security nightmare.'
But opponents of the use of RFID and other technologies in driver's licenses and state issued ID cards are conflating RFID's technological potential with its potential for abuse by government authorities, said Robert D. Atkinson, vice president at the Progressive Policy Institute.
'Putting a chip or biometric data on a driver's license doesn't change one iota the rules under which that information can be used,' said Atkinson.
The Virginia legislators may balk at the use of RFID in driver's licenses, however, unless they can be proven to be immune from use by spies and identity thieves.
'I can't see us using RFID until we're comfortable we can without encroaching on individual privacy, and ensure it won't be used as a Big Brother technology by the government,' said Joe May, chairman of the Virginia General Assembly's House Science and Technology Committee.
Following complaints from privacy groups, California lawmakers on Friday suspended legislation to embed radio-frequency identification chips, or RFIDs, in its driver's licenses and state identification cards.
The legislation, S.B. 397, was put on hold by the state Assembly Appropriations Committee, despite it having been approved by the California Senate, where it likely will be re-introduced in the coming months. Had the measure passed, it would have transformed the Golden State's standard form of ID into one of the most sophisticated identification documents in the country, mirroring the four other states that have embraced the spy-friendly technology.
Radio-frequency identification devices already are a daily part of the electronic age — found in passports, library and payment cards, school identification cards and eventually are expected to replace bar-code labels on consumer goods.
Michigan, New York, Vermont and Washington have already begun embedding drivers licenses with the tiny transceivers, and linking them to a national database – complete with head shots – controlled by the Department of Homeland Security. The enhanced cards can be used to re-enter the U.S. at a land border without a passport.
Privacy advocates worry that, if more states begin embracing RFID, the licenses could become mandatory nationwide and evolve into a government-run surveillance tool to track the public's movements.
The IDs are the offspring of the 2009 Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative requiring travelers to show passports when they cross the U.S. border of Canada and Mexico. Those carrying the EDL 'Enhanced Drivers License' or an 'enhanced' state ID, do not have to display a passport when traveling across the country's government-run land borders.
The RFID-enabled card would have been optional under the California measure. It was aimed in particular at Californians who make frequent visits to Mexico, and want to ease their return back into the U.S.
'It's not difficult to imagine a time when the EDL programs cease to be optional—and when EDLs contain information well beyond a picture, a signature, and citizenship status. The government also tends to expand programs far beyond their original purpose,' writes Jim Harper, the Cato Institute's director of information policy studies. 'Californians should not walk – they should run away from 'enhanced' drivers licenses.'
According to DHS, about 95 percent of land-border crossings are equipped with RFID-reading technology, making it easy for Customs Border Patrol officials to know who you are. The RFID chip 'will signal a secure system to pull up your biographic and biometrics data for the CBP officer as you approach the border inspection booth,' the DHS says.
'An individual that does not understand the privacy and security risks of an Enhanced Driver's License (EDL) might think, 'Why not get an one so that I can use it to drive and also cross the border?' It seems like common sense,' said Nicole Ozer, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer. 'But the cost to privacy and security far outweighs any benefits. If you carry one of these licenses in your wallet or purse, you can be tracked and stalked without your knowledge or consent.'
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Sen. Ben Hueso, a Democrat whose district touches the Mexican border, maintains the legislation he sponsored makes both financial and security sense.
'Enhanced Driver’s Licenses can provide a significant economic benefit to the state of California, while strengthening border security,' he wrote in a press release last May. 'They will greatly reduce wait times at the border thereby incentivizing economic development in our border region.'
The California measure's shortcomings, among other things, was that it did not prevent state law enforcement officials from eventually tapping into the chips.
Law enforcement already monitors drivers' whereabouts via the mass deployment of license-plate readers. But the ability to scan for identification cards in public areas could evolve into another surveillance tool.
As the 'Identity Project' sees it:
Logs of citizens' border crossings and movements through non-border checkpoints are obviously of interest to the Feds and their state and local law enforcement partners, especially in conjunction with logs of vehicle movements obtained from automated license-plate readers. Cops don’t need to ask, 'Can I see some ID?' when, from outside your vehicle, they can obtain the EDL chip number and corresponding lifetime DHS travel history of every occupant of the vehicle. And as more people carry EDLs, how soon will not broadcasting your ID number be deemed sufficiently suspicious to justify detention, search, or interrogation?
To be sure, the Orwellian nature of these new IDs is – to an extent – speculation.
For the moment, the DHS says that 'No personally identifiable information is stored on the card's RFID chip.' The DHS said 'The card uses a unique identification number that links to information contained in a secure Department of Homeland Security database.'
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But things could easily change. Government-issued cards routinely evolve away from their original purpose.
Consider the Social Security card. It was created to track your government retirement benefits. Now you need it to purchase health insurance and even obtain employment.