So I spent part of this week at the RSA conference in San Francisco, where I stopped by a panel that seemed to be created by and intended for state DMV officials. The topic was the Real ID Act, and everyone seemed to either like it a lot or be entirely in love with the scheme. All were former or current government officials, and not one said it was a bad idea. In fact, California and (especially) New Jersey loved it: http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6157813.html One idea they had was for the feds to mandate biometrics (fingerprint, retinal scan, DNA sample) on these federalized ID cards. Right now DHS can but isn't required to do so; we're still waiting for the regulations to be made public. Another idea came from Paula Arcioni, the chief information security officer for New Jersey's Office of Information Technology, and a member of the National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council: http://www.ec3.org/About/AboutBoard.htm Clearly electronic commerce could never happen unless it were properly "coordinated" by some state governments. Anyway, Arcioni not only applauded the law but said it would be made much better if it was turned into a microprocessor-enabled smartcard that both state governments and corporations could use for online authentication. Compare this to what Maine did a few weeks ago: http://www.politechbot.com/2007/01/25/maine-becomes-first/ Guess these states either haven't gotten the message yet, or perhaps these midlevel bureaucrats are simply so caught up in their own fiefdoms that they ignore what the public actually wants. -Declan _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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