Big Brother Marches On, Relentlessly - Well, it's inevitable, really, isn't it?
Future government-issued travel documents may feature embedded computer chips that can be read at a distance of up to 30 feet, a top Homeland Security official said Tuesday, creating what some fear would be a threat to privacy.
Jim Williams, director of the Department of Homeland Security's US-VISIT program, told a smart card conference here that such tracking chips could be inserted into the new generation of wallet-size identity cards used to ease travel by Americans to Canada and Mexico starting in 2008. Those chips use radio frequency identification technology, or RFID.
"If you haven't been to some of our busiest land crossings, I always refer to them as economic choke points...We ought to use technology to improve that," 
said Williams, whose office operates the biometric program used to verify that the fingerprint of a person using a U.S. visa to cross a U.S. border matches that of the person who was issued the visa.
Williams' remarks at an industry conference are likely to heighten privacy concerns about RFID technology, which has drawn fire from activists and prompted hearings before the U.S. Congress and the Federal Trade Commission. One California politician has even introduced anti-RFID legislation.
Many of the privacy worries center on whether RFID tags--typically miniscule chips with an antenna a few inches long that can transmit a unique ID number--can be read from afar. If the range is a few inches, the privacy concerns are reduced. But at ranges of 30 feet, the tags could theoretically be read by hidden sensors alongside the road, in the mall or in the hands of criminals hoping to identify someone on the street by his or her ID number.
Williams defended a remotely readable RFID'ed identity card to audience members who suggested selecting one that could be scanned from only a few inches away. Border police oppose that idea because
"they're concerned about people dropping cards, about people sticking their hands out the window," he said. "They don't think that meets their mission needs"--that is, speeding up the border-crossing process.
Those forthcoming cards, called "PASS" (for People Access Security Service), are part of a federal requirement that, starting Jan. 1, 2008, anyone entering the United States from Mexico or Canada must carry a passport or "alternative" travel document. Homeland Security envisions that document will take the form of a "vicinity-read" wallet-size card that will capture information from a distance and automatically display the cardholder's picture and other biographic information on the border agent's computer screen.
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