Wednesday, August 25, 2010


Scanners help U.S. troops ID insurgents in Afghanistan
Soldiers — based outside Spin Boldak, a hotbed for Taliban activity in recent years — scan about 3,000 men a month.

That identifying information is then collected in a database that the military can reference when a suspected insurgent is caught to determine his recent travels or whether he has taken part in attacks where military investigators have previously discovered fingerprints.

Soldiers are encouraged to keep a friendly attitude while scanning subjects.

"We just try to be polite and tell them we are trying to separate the good guys from the bad guys," Lt. Scott Browne says while scanning subjects at the Freedom Gate, a bustling border entry point in the town of Wesh.

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The Gym Wants My Fingerprints
This week at my 24-Hour Fitness club in Silicon Valley, I noticed the installation of fingerprint scanners at the front desk. It's all part of the giant gym chain's national cardless check-in program, designed to eliminate the need for members to carry gym cards and make it easier for them to validate their identities.

When biometrics get down to the local gym, however, serious questions must be raised. Your biometric identifiers are immutable and, once stored on a computer, impossible to take back. So if the 24-Hour Fitness database gets hacked and some enterprising Black Hat team of computer experts makes off with this sensitive information, many people could forever lose control of this permanent identification marker. Of course, you could scrape off your fingerprints and replace them with new ones. (This is probably possible). But that's getting a little too close to Total Recall for my taste..."

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Biometric National ID Card?
The Democrats' immigration-reform proposal (pdf) is 26 pages long. Pages 8 through 18 are devoted to "ending illegal employment through biometric employment verification." I don't think the Democrats are going to like me calling this a biometric national ID card, as they go to great lengths to say that it is not a national ID card, and make it "unlawful for any person, corporation; organization local, state, or federal law enforcement officer; local or state government; or any other entity to require or even ask an individual cardholder to produce their social security card for any purpose other than electronic verification of employment eligibility and verification of identity for Social Security Administration purposes."

But it's still a biometric national ID card. It's handed out by the Social Security Administration and employers are required to check it when hiring new employees. Essentially, if you want to participate in the American economy, you need this card. "Within five (5) years of the date of enactment, the fraud-proof social security card will serve as the sole acceptable document to be produced by an employee to an employer for employment verification purposes," the bill says. "This requirement will exist even if the employer does not yet possess the capability to electronically verify the employee by scanning the card through a card reader."

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