The Federal Government Is Now Issuing Us Good Citizens A Number And Chip

unapatriciated

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Mon Aug-04-08 12:58 PM
Original message

The Federal Government Is Now Issuing Us Good Citizens A Number And Chip

Edited on Mon Aug-04-08 01:00 PM by unapatriciated

I recently applied for and received an updated passport due to a name change (got married to lame 54).
I received a notice today from the federal government saying I would receive a passport card by September.
Since I did not knowingly apply for one(I paid a fee of $95 not the $120 that is charged for both) I checked it out. Here is what I found.

http://travel.state.gov/passport/ppt_card/ppt_card_3926.html

THE U.S. PASSPORT CARD IS NOW IN PRODUCTION!
We began production of the U.S. Passport Card on July 14. To date, we have received and adjudicated well over 350,000 applications for the U.S. Passport Card. Customers who submitted an application for the U.S. Passport Card prior to production, will receive their Passport Card between now and early September.

The passport card facilitates entry and expedites document processing at U.S. land and sea ports-of-entry when arriving from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda. The card may not be used to travel by air. Otherwise, it carries the rights and privileges of the U.S. passport book and is adjudicated to the exact same standards.

To facilitate the frequent travel of U.S. citizens living in border communities and to meet DHS�s operational needs at land borders, the passport card contains a vicinity-read radio frequency identification (RFID) chip. This chip points to a stored record in secure government databases. There is no personal information written to the RFID chip itself.

http://travel.state.gov/passport/ppt_card/ppt_card_3921.html
What is RFID Technology?

Radio Frequency Identification technology (RFID) has been used successfully along our land borders with Canada and Mexico since 1995 in the Department of Homeland Security�s trusted traveler programs, such as NEXUS, SENTRI and FAST. U.S. border officials are able to expedite legitimate cross-border travel and trade of those trusted travelers who carry membership cards with vicinity read RFID chips that link to government databases. Membership in these programs currently exceeds 400,000.

RFID technology has been commercially available in one form or another since the 1970s. It can be found in car keys, highway toll tags, bank cards and security access cards. The Department of Homeland Security�s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, who staff the ports of entry, anticipate that the speed of vicinity RFID will allow CBP officers, in advance of the traveler�s arrival at the inspection booth, to quickly access information on the traveler from secure government databases, and allow for automated terrorist watch list checks without impeding traffic flow. In addition, they foresee that multiple cards can be read at a distance and simultaneously, allowing an entire car of people to be processed at once.

The RFID technology embedded in documents will not include any personally identifying information; only a unique number that can be associated with a record stored in a secure government database will be transmitted.

In their frequently asked questions sections, they did not state if we were required to use it or could we just use our passport since it is an accepted form of ID.
I don't trust that it would not have some sort of tracking capability embedded in the chip.