Where rubber meets the road in privacy debate

Other measures on the table
Although Real ID is getting the most attention right now in the privacy-vs.-security debate, it’s just one of a host of U.S. and international moves aimed at increasing security in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Others, including high-tech passports and the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which tightens ID requirements for travel between the United States and other nations in the region, have fueled similar arguments over the proper use of technology for such programs, as has a massive plan to create a single ID for federal employees and contractors to access both buildings and computer networks.

"There's a mess,” said Jim Harper of the Cato Institute. "Congress was stampeded into passing a whole raft of 9/11 initiatives. … This is all part of what I think is a collective overreaction to the terrorist threat.”  Harper was speaking at a recent press conference to blast the Western Hemisphere proposal. But he just as easily could have been railing against the Real ID Act, which he did a day earlier in an interview with MSNBC.com.

Harper, Cato’s director of information policy studies and author of “Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood,” is arguably the staunchest critic of Real ID on privacy grounds.

“The average person does not see the privacy consequence,” Harper said. “The one that I prioritize the most is the likelihood that Real ID will be used for tracking and surveillance. That’s not an immediate concern but down the line you can be sure it will used that way.”

Harper and other foes of Real ID fear that its potential for misuse rests chiefly in the combination of “machine readable” technology and the linking of state databases.

“Machine readable” technology suggests the use of Radio Frequency Identification chips or a similar technology, which critics like Chris Calabrese of the American Civil Liberties Union say open up whole new horizons for fraud and abuse. Because the chips emit radio signals that can be read at a distance, the possibility exists for them to be read by criminals and the data used for nefarious means, said Calabrese, counsel to the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program. He also has no doubt that commercial users will capitalize on the neat data package, gleaning and storing personal data much more easily than they can now when a driver’s license is part of a business transaction.

Real ID proponents and tech industry representatives say such fears are overblown. First, they say, true RFID chips that were made for simple tasks like tracking cattle and retail merchandise can transmit their signals 30 feet or more and should not be used in ID card systems. Rather, ID card reading systems would use “contactless security controllers,” said Joerg Borchert, a California-based official with Infineon Technologies. The German company is supplying such chips to the U.S. State Department for use in new “e-passports” that some U.S. travelers began receiving in August.

'A little tiny computer'
The passport chips are "basically a little tiny computer,” Borchert said. "It can do computations like your PC," meaning that it can be programmed to be far more secure than a typical RFID chip, he explained.  There is little risk of its signal being intercepted, he said, because the card needs to be held within three to four inches of a card reader to work.

Borchert’s confidence in the chip technology and other high-tech features of identity cards was echoed by other industry representatives. Neville Pattinson of Gemalto, which along with Infineon is seeking part of the giant e-passport pie from the State Department, said his firm currently does passport work for 11 nations. As to security breaches with “contactless” chips, there have been “none whatsoever.”

Added Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the industry’s Smart Card Alliance, "This technology has been around for more than 20 years. There's a lot of good, solid data that shows that this technology works. Give it a chance."

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