US/Canada border cards already exist, was Feds Release Pass Card details

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
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.




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