State Department Response
The State Department itself has said that the passport cards will not contain any identity information such as name, date of birth, social security number, or place of birth. Instead, all it will contain is a unique identifying number that will be used to access a card holder's identifying information, which is stored separately on a secure Customs and Border Patrol system.
But the identification number itself is personal information, the CDT noted, because it is unique and corresponds to a computer file with personal identification information in a government database.
The use of passport cards will also require a separate infrastructure from that used for electronic passports and is unlikely to significantly speed up wait times at the border, Schwartz said.
David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) in Washington, said the government's decision to go ahead with the RFID-enabled passport cards "was disappointing but not unexpected.... Once the government gets something in its head, it usually doesn't change anything."
Like Schwartz, Williams also expressed concern over the potential for such cards to be tampered with, with relative ease. "We are very concerned about any kind of RFID technology for any kind of identification [purposes]," from both a cost and security perspective, he said. The fact that the cards can be read from distance, makes it a more attractive hacking target, he said: "RFIDs are great for tracking packages or for going through tolls. The problems begin when you attach it to a person's identity."
In its final ruling in the Federal Register, the State Department acknowledged that it had received over 4000 comments from a range of individuals and organizations including Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer of New York, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and Representative Louise Slaughter of New York. "The vast majority of the comments were generated from an e-petition launched by Citizens Against Government Waste opposing the choice of technology," the ruling noted. "While State and DHS appreciate the comments received, the vast majority reflected an improper understanding of the business model that WHTI is designed to meet and how the technology selected would actually be implemented."
In making its case for vicinity-read cards, the department noted that the unique identifying information stored on such cards had meaning only within the secure CBP system and was useless to anybody when taken out of context. It also added that protective sleeves would be provided to card holders to protect against the card number being inadvertently transmitted and said that use of the card was entirely optional. That claim in turn raises further questions; the technology as described would meet the description of a Faraday cage, but it's unclear whether an expenditure for such technology is explicitly covered in the budget.
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