washingtonpost.com— Packed with biometric data and a computer chip, new federal employee IDs represent potential boon to technology companies eyeing an estimated $8 billion in identity-related contracts.
Aug 28, 2006View in Crawl 4
After reading through the entire article and studying the picture of the example identity card, I'm confused as to why people think this card is using RFID. It sure looks like a Contact Smart Card chip and not RFID, and they never mention RFID in the article.Contact Smart Card chips do not transmit through the air like RFID. They are already very widespread on credit cards and security access cards for private and public organizations. The story here is that the U.S. government is finally standardizing their employee and contractor ID cards to use this proven technology, which means the price of using the technology will go down for everyone else. This is a Good Thing. I've been wanting to use Smart Card IDs for my small business for a long time now, but the cost has kept me from making the jump.<a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartcard">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartcard</a>They aren't saying they are going to embed chips under everyone's skin or that they are going to tag our garbage bins with RFID, they are just issuing better ID cards for people who need access to government facilities. Having biometric identification stored on the cards is a great way to make sure the person using the card is the right person.That all being said, storing personal information on the card other than identity (like time entry) is just silly. There is no reason an employee's logged hours need to be known by every security guard in every government building they enter. It would make more sense to me to store that type of information in, oh, a time entry system.
gwolfAug 29, 2006
Mark of the beast
lpferrisAug 29, 2006
Bad idea...ouch. But stay complacent, Americans, you're doing a great job of giving up your freedom.
phbradleyAug 29, 2006
time to invest
spurtleAug 29, 2006
Godwin bar codes.
btsidersAug 29, 2006
After reading through the entire article and studying the picture of the example identity card, I'm confused as to why people think this card is using RFID. It sure looks like a Contact Smart Card chip and not RFID, and they never mention RFID in the article.Contact Smart Card chips do not transmit through the air like RFID. They are already very widespread on credit cards and security access cards for private and public organizations. The story here is that the U.S. government is finally standardizing their employee and contractor ID cards to use this proven technology, which means the price of using the technology will go down for everyone else. This is a Good Thing. I've been wanting to use Smart Card IDs for my small business for a long time now, but the cost has kept me from making the jump.<a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartcard">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartcard</a>They aren't saying they are going to embed chips under everyone's skin or that they are going to tag our garbage bins with RFID, they are just issuing better ID cards for people who need access to government facilities. Having biometric identification stored on the cards is a great way to make sure the person using the card is the right person.That all being said, storing personal information on the card other than identity (like time entry) is just silly. There is no reason an employee's logged hours need to be known by every security guard in every government building they enter. It would make more sense to me to store that type of information in, oh, a time entry system.
scbysnxAug 29, 2006
nah the mark of the beast is on the body
scbysnxAug 29, 2006
Yeah digg down the accurate post and up the sensationalist post