As the
debate rumbles on around the use of smartcards and advanced
biometrics as a means of establishing identity within
organisations, the US government is making strides to take such
technologies into the public domain.
The US Department
of Homeland Security has just announced that it is to begin a major
trial of passports embedded with radio frequency identification
(RFID) chips at San Francisco International Airport.
The trial will
start in mid-January and will see visitors from countries including
Australia, New Zealand and Singapore have their passports checked,
processed and tracked using RFID technology. All three countries
have already started issuing passports equipped with RFID chips,
which can store the personal information of the passport
holder.
As San Francisco
airport is one of the main entry points for visitors to
California’s Silicon Valley, a large number of IT workers will now
experience RFID systems at close hand.
The Department of
Homeland Security tested RFID passports for a three-month period
last autumn at Los Angeles International Airport.
Such mainstream
acceptance of RFID will be welcomed by both the security industry
and the mainstream IT industry, in particular by companies such as
Intel, which is reporting great business benefit from the use of
RFID.