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April 2006 • Volume 11 Number 4
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Executive Director's Letter
First, let me apologize for the late release of April's Smart Card Talk newsletter. Our 5th Annual Smart Cards in Government Conference last week required every minute of my time over the last few weeks and as a result, the newsletter had to be the victim this time. So how do you begin to describe in a few paragraphs what took nearly 4 days to experience and more than 4 months to plan? Let me begin with a few of the comments that I received and questions I was asked as we finished the last day of the conference. "Great conference .... again." "How many people are here this year?" (The answer is 632, give or take a few.) "This panel was so good, it should have been given on the first day's plenary session." "When is next year's conference going to be held? (Unfortunately, I don't have the date or location yet.) This year's conference was definitely special. Maybe it was so good because we had so many interesting programs to talk about. The Alliance can't take credit for that. We are just responding to the market and our biggest ID sector customer - the Federal government. HSPD-12 and FIPS 201 still generate a huge amount of interest, and the topics certainly got a great deal of attention throughout the conference. Yet, I noticed that attendance was balanced between the 2 conference tracks - one focusing on HSPD-12 and one focusing on other non-HSPD-12 smart card technology and implementation topics. This showed me that the government market continues to generate new interest and has something different and important to say each year across a number of different smart card programs. Some of these programs, like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Western Hemisphere Traveler Initiative's plan to implement a new lightweight alternative to a passport called the PASS card (People Access Security Service card), have never been discussed in an open forum before. News about other programs - the First Responder card trials, the soon-to-be-awarded Registered Traveler Card, and reports on the readiness of the worldwide deployment of ePassports - kept part of the audience looking ahead, while others were dealing with the immediate realities of FIPS 201, part 2 compliance that Federal agencies and industry are grappling with every day. The PASS card created the great stir during the conference. We were fortunate to have Jim Williams, Director of the U.S. VISIT Program at DHS, as a keynote speaker. Mr. Williams explained why DHS is leaning toward using a long range "vicinity" RFID technology based on the Electronic Product Code Gen 2 standard that was designed to track merchandise up to 25 feet away, rather than the ISO/IEC 14443 contactless smart card technology that was chosen by ICAO and implemented by the State Department for the new electronic passport. Although Mr. Williams stated that testing was still underway, he defended the DHS position on the grounds that improving speed at border crossing points was an operational requirement for the PASS card and that the current contactless smart card technology used in ePassports, with its 4-inch reading distance, was not a satisfactory option. Later in the program, Frank Moss, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Passport Services, Department of State, reviewed his past year caught in the crosshairs of privacy advocates and anti-RFID zealots, who called him the "Anti-Christ," until improvements in ePassport shielding and implementation of Basic Access Control anti-skimming measures silenced the critics. Mr. Moss carefully talked about the differences in opinion between the State Department and DHS on PASS card technology, and concluded that decisions would be made in the very near future concerning what technology would be used. Another change for the better was the introduction of several panels and speakers who discussed some of the more pressing public policy issues and legislative actions in Washington, DC and across the country. This stimulated healthy discussion about driver's license reform, part of the REAL ID Act legislation, with technology choices for state-issued identity documents and Federal government-issued traveler credentials presented from a variety of perspectives. Sessions on some of the larger consumer and citizen-facing issues like privacy, identity management, and the use of biometrics were heavily attended and enlisted the most spirited question and answer exchanges between the speakers and the audience. A lesson learned is that not all of the battles in this industry occur in the standards and committee meetings, but that there is a fight for the hearts and minds of the public and the lawmakers as well. So my heartfelt thanks and appreciation go out to the 600-plus government, industry, and media representatives who made it to our conference last week and to the hundreds more who would have been there if their schedules allowed, for making this year's conference a huge success. I also want to thank our dedicated board and especially the program committee for supporting me in keeping the Alliance focused on our organization's educational mission. I also want to thank Michael Butler of the Department of Defense and chair of the IAB for continuing to foster the strong government-industry partnership we have with the IAB, Curt Barker of NIST and his HSPD-12 team for keeping industry informed and part of the standards-setting process, and Judith Spencer from GSA and chair of the FICC for engaging GSA's Office of Government-wide Policy in the many Smart Card Alliance working committees and public events to discuss critical HSPD-12 program and policy issues. Without this partnership with the Federal government leaders, we would be just a bunch of vendors talking to each other, rather than doing what we all believe we are doing - making our world more secure for everyone.Randy Vanderhoof, Executive Director
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