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April 2006 • Volume 11 Number 4 |
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Executive Director's Letter Dear members and friends of the Alliance: 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.
 This month Smart Card Talk spoke with Bruce Davis, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors, for Digimarc . Bruce Davis has served as Digimarc's Chief Executive Officer since December 1997. He also has been chairman of the Board of Directors since May 2002, a director since December 1997, and Digimarc's President from December 1997 through May 2001. Prior to joining Digimarc, Mr. Davis served as president of Titan Broadband Communications, a provider of information technology and satellite communications systems and services. Prior to that, Mr. Davis served as president of Prevue Networks, Inc., a supplier of electronic program guides and program promotion services for the cable and satellite television markets. Prior to that, Mr. Davis founded and served as president of TV Guide On Screen (which later merged with Prevue Networks, Inc. and is now part of Gemstar TV Guide International), a joint venture of News Corporation and TCI (now part of Comcast) which supplied electronic program guides and navigational software for the cable television market. Mr. Davis received a B.S. in accounting and psychology and an M.A. in criminal justice from the State University of New York at Albany, and a J.D. from Columbia University.
1. What are Digimarc's main business profile and offerings? Digimarc is the leading provider of technologies and solutions that secure and advance important economic and social relationships in media and entertainment and government-issued credentials. Digimarc's digital watermarking technology extends the value of media content by protecting it from piracy and enabling new methods of distribution. Digimarc's secure credentials help citizens secure their identities and enhance their personal safety, as well as protect them from identity theft and fraud, and address critical homeland security needs of government. Digimarc is the leading supplier of government-issued citizen IDs in North America, and produces more than two-thirds of all U.S. driver licenses as well as the Mexican voter identification document and driver licenses for a number of Canadian provinces. The company's state-issued driver licenses have become the de facto standard for establishing citizen identity in the U.S. We deliver high quality, secure driver licenses and issuance systems that enable citizen access to a wide range of services and privileges such as applying for a passport, authorization to operate a motor vehicle, boarding an airplane or purchasing age-restricted products. The company's digital watermarking technology allows imperceptible digital codes to be embedded in all forms of media content, including personal identification documents, like driver licenses. Digital watermarks can be detected and read by software or hardware detectors in personal computers or other digital devices. Digimarc and its partners have deployed digital watermarks in billions of media objects and hundreds of millions of digital devices around the world, enhancing the security of banknotes, music, movies, photographs, digital images, printed materials, television and radio programming, and government-issued credentials.
Top Identity Topics: Is Technology a Threat to an Individual's Identity? Our shrinking world compels individuals and societies to be constantly thoughtful of the need to protect our own identities and to know with certainty the identity of those with whom we trust our wealth, our privacy, and our security. When confronted with new opportunities for increased commerce, freedom of movement, communication, and knowledge, we've almost always chosen to move forward and have repeatedly turned to technology to enable us to do so and to protect us against the threats accompanying these new opportunities. All changes to the status quo entail costs and risks. The challenge is to find ways to make informed decisions about the costs, risks, and benefits of using new technologies to protect our identities. The process we use to evaluate new technologies is critical to achieving benefits from their adoption.
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Executive
Director's Letter
