[Moderator's note: I edited this to add reasonable line breaks. Also, the content is only weakly on topic, but... --Perry]
Canadian Immigration Minister Denis Coderre is promoting the idea of a Canadian national id card, which uses "high tech" biometrics. When confounded by arguements of security he suggests that it for a good thing for convience. I guess my biggest complaints are that it makes a very attractive single source for a huge reward (of information) for white collar criminals and organized crime, several single points of failure, losing all your government issued data on your one card makes it harder to securely replace, and lastly the failure to demostrate an analysis that suggests an actual improvement in national security. On a lesser note, I don't like the idea of handing my digital "passport, driver's license, social insurance number, and gov't employee id / security badge" over some bouncer at a bar, clerk at a car rental counter, or any time in everyday life when asked for government id by private sector that has lower privacy barriers than government(s) and federally regulated industries (telecom, banking, airlines, insurance). <http://rtnews.globetechnology.com/servlet/ArticleNews/tech/RTGAM/20030207/wxcard0207> By CAMPBELL CLARK >From Friday's Globe and Mail Ottawa Canadians should fingerprint themselves before U.S. border guards do, Immigration Minister Denis Coderre argued Thursday, as he asked MPs to consider a national identification card with a biometric identifier such as fingerprints or eye scans. Echoing deep concern within the federal government that the United States will expand its registration and fingerprinting of foreign travellers to include Canadians, jamming the border, Mr. Coderre suggested a national ID may be a way to avoid the brunt of tighter U.S. entry-and-exit measures. Mr. Coderre appeared before the House of Commons immigration committee to formally ask for their recommendations on a national ID card, but made it clear he favours it. He told MPs the time when they could cross the U.S. border with a driver's license "may well be over." ... Mr. Coderre said that a so-called off-line biometric system one where a fingerprint or eye is checked only against the coded scan on the card, but not against a central database would be less invasive than keeping a central registry of the fingerprints of all Canadians. However, Andrew Clement, a University of Toronto information technology professor who has studied national identity cards, warned that such an off-line system is not much use as a security tool since someone could obtain a card under another name, but with his own fingerprint or eye scan on the code bar. A central database with the fingerprints or eye scans of all Canadians would be needed to make it work. Even with a central database, such a card would not be much of a deterrent for terrorists, he said. Anyone would be able to obtain such a card by presenting other fraudulent documents such as a birth certificate. "That's one of the big flaws," Mr. Clement said. "The creation of the secure card depends on the presentation of much less secure documents." --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]