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US/Canada border cards already exist, was Feds Release Pass Card details
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 04:00:06 -0800
________________________________________ From: John Levine [johnl () iecc com] Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2008 4:23 PM To: David Farber Subject: [IP] US/Canada border cards already exist, was Feds Release Pass Card details For IP if you think it's still interesting.
The government has decided to go with a technology that is more suited to tracking inventory and can be read from up to 20 feet away. Govt. officials counter by saying privacy protections will be built into the cards.
A widely underreported fact is that people who travel between the US and Canada already use passport cards every day. The system is called NEXUS. It works differently depending on how you're crossing the border. If you're crossing by car, the crossings have dedicated NEXUS lanes (or in one case, there's a bridge that's NEXUS-only). As you approach the inspection booth, you wave your card at a reader, so that when you get to the booth it's looked you up and your picture appears on the officer's screen. Assuming you still look like your picture, you're on your way. The readers are non-contact, you really do just wave your card. In a modest instance of mission creep, the crossings in Niagara Falls are toll bridges and the tolls are paid via a prepaid account keyed to the RFID in your card so you wave your card at the toll machine to get the gate to open. The bridge people make it quite clear that they have no idea who you are, the account is tied to the physical card and if the feds give you a new card, you need to clean out the old card's account first or lose your balance. At airports (all in Canada due to US preclearance) they use biometrics, pictures of your retinas. You look into a machine, and when it recognizes you, it prints out a paper card you hand in as you leave customs. The early machines were single-eye and were tricky to use, the new machine is dual eye and tells you where to stand, e.g., "move back please". This saves a lot of time since there is never a line at the NEXUS machine, no matter how long the line is for manual processing. To get a NEXUS card, you need a US or Canadian passport, but I presume that will change in the new program. There's something called SENTRI on the Mexican border that appears to be the same idea. Regards, John Levine, johnl () iecc com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly. ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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- US/Canada border cards already exist, was Feds Release Pass Card details David Farber (Jan 07)