Papers please!
Here are two sort of disturbing notes about identification.
First, according to this article at the Register.co.uk, there’s a move afoot to have smartcard, biometric passports in the US by the end of 2004. There’s already a move to have get them in the EU. This will, allegedly, make for more secure documents and identification of US citizens, but… And, there’s always a but, isn’t there? My concern is, how close will this take us to internal passports? How long before even my driver’s license is a smartcard that has all kinds of “security” data on it? I don’t know, this just bothers me a bit.
Secondly, according to this article on Wired News, moving to an “e-system” may not be the best idea. There are already problems with death certificate systems, so, do we want to accelerate those problems by putting them on a network? Would these problems make it harder or easier to get a falsified “smartcard” passport? There’s a lot of stuff that needs to be worked out with these two issues before I’m entirely comfortable with either.
