Problems with a Biometric National ID Card

From a data management perspective biometric id cards present many problems. For example, if the ID card was not somehow embedded into the person it still seems like it can be open to abuse or transference. For instance, if it is encoded somehow with my DNA yet someone else carries it does that mean that they are automatically trusted to be me or is there some check on my DNA to the DNA in the card?

If there is a check between the individual and the card then how could you create an unobtrusive data collection method that would allow checking of the individual to the card to ensure they are one and the same? You can’t be pricking people’s fingers every time they go to the bank. Fingerprinting would be difficult as well but not quite as obtrusive.

The question then arises of hygene. In a world that has moved to washrooms in airports where you don’t need to ever touch anything, how could we go backwards and start making people touch things again?

The idea of retina scanners seems logical at first but then you have to consider what the long term affect of having your eyes scanned would be. What kind of long term studies would be needed to ensure no harm would come to people’s sight as a result of this type of on-going stimulus of the eye. Would this put the potential implementation of the product too far into the future as to be a feasible option?

Stalder and Lyon in Surveillance as Social Sorting, bring up a good point that the initial identification system would have to be based on our existing identification systems. We have a phrase for this in the technology industry, it’s called garbage in, garbage out, and it is where a lot of the problems in technology systems start. Data collection errors are always a huge problem, particularly when you have a large data conversion project like this and you get low paid workers to do the work to keep the costs down. The problem is they don’t care because they’re low paid and in this case, as Stalder and Lyon suggest, they could likely benefit greatly from being bribed.

Finally, my last point is the potential for categorization. There would have to be something in the identifier that pointed out whether the person had a primary identifier or secondary identifier. Primary identifier would be an “at birth” biometric id rather than an id created based on secondary identification documents. This in it's essence is reminiscent of the potential beginnings for the movie GATTACA.

RFID potential uses and abuses

I decided to look in the patent database to find out what sort of patents might be out there for RFID technology development.

I only found one result which, funny enough, is for monitoring attendance. I was actually expecting to find something related to products and inventory tracking seeing as this is what is getting the attention in the popular media.

http://patents1.ic.gc.ca/claims?patent_number=2442895&language=EN

I find it interesting that the mass media is focussing on the inventory aspects while the only related patent I found was focussed on the human surveillance aspect, particularly where the patent is concerned with monitoring the length of time at the given device.

Vancouver's Urban Apartheid

I was struck by the term "urban apartheid" used in the article by Davis, "LA Fortress". Then when he went further to describe the "swaggering white cop" I was immediately reminded of a recurring theme in downtown Vancouver where both terms seem accurate. The instant visual for me was of the security guards of the downtown businesses which swagger up to skater kids and urban riders who trespass on their property and force them to stop having fun and go on their way. In one case I witnessed a guard turning a garden hose on the skater kids that he was having difficulty convincing to leave the premises.

The guards have video surveillance cameras which they monitor the business fronts so that they can quickly respond to the undesirables on their doorstep. These undesirables are just typical teenagers enjoying a sport together. I never thought about it in the sense of a segregation of society before but it does seem to apply. These kids likely live with their families in downtown condominiums. That makes downtown as much their neighborhood as the businesses, perhaps more so because they are actually "living" here. The kids' activity is typically after 5 p.m. when the businesses have closed for the day. It makes one wonder where the harm is.

Architects are planning ways to "skate" proof the foyers in front of their buildings to go even further to prevent youth from making use of this space. This further entrenches the sense of segregation, not unlike that which is described in the Davis article.

In a world where children grow up in a concrete jungle, I wonder where we expect them to play? If we continue this form of “urban apartheid” then I wonder what kind of culture our children are expected to develop. Why not turn the cameras on the so called planned urban spaces to see why they aren't used by youths? Maybe if urban planners study visuals and statistics of the drug addicts in Andy Livingstone Park and the young urban professionals and their dogs that frequent the park spaces in both coal harbour and and Yaletown, they can understand why the youth turn away from these parks. Then maybe we as a society can consider better options for youth within their neighborhoods instead of just shutting them out.

RFID - another look

RFID Tags as the New Product Code
http://www.accenture.com/xd/xd.asp?it=enweb&xd=services\technology\vision\sil_rfid_tags.xml

According to this article RFID enables the electronic labeling and wireless identification of objects using radio communications. In this article Accenture talks about the future of the technology as they see it in terms of inventory tracking using RFID and a Global Positioning System. They call it “silent commerce”.

WalMart discusses the usefulness of this technology, also in terms of inventory tracking but in a more traditional sense. RFID is supposed to have more benefits than the UPC because the UPC has to be scanned in a clear line of site to the bar code. Now the key issue is proximity, which as with most technologies will likely improve at an exponential degree and not be an issue for very long.

There are inherent problems with current UPCs that I would suspect would be similar to the new RFID codes such as erroneous readings and corrupt data. The fact that the RFID chips can be read leaves me to suspect that they will be prime for tampering by unauthorized individuals. It seems like wide spread use of RFIDs is risky because, every time data is transmitted, either to be read or written, the data is more susceptible to intervention and tampering. Plus the more data that is stored in one place, the more we need to look closer at the associated privacy laws. The technology isn’t at the point of being profitable to be applied to individual items yet but once they are then some commercial outlets may decide it is a good idea to encode them with your personal customer information id. Combining identifiers is where the real meaning comes from.

This makes me think of the security of my garbage in the future. Currently it is widely known that you should shred any garbage that contains identity information so as to prevent identity theft. What form will the implementation of these RFID codes take in the future and how will we as individuals manage the thorough destruction of the codes to ensure our privacy?