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January 2007 • Volume 12 Number 1 |
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Executive Director's Letter Dear members and friends of the Alliance, For all of you regular readers of this monthly newsletter, and especially those of you who put up with my rambling stream-of-consciousness letters, you will recall that last month I chose to deliver an abbreviated “2006 year in review” about the highlights and lowlights of the year from my vantage point at the Smart Card Alliance. (If you missed it among all of the “happy holidays” messages you had to sort through, you can find the December newsletter on the Alliance web site.) I concluded my letter by promising that this month I would dispense with the past and talk about the future, which seems appropriate for a New Year's letter. I am excited about 2007 for a number of reasons. Smart card industry conferences are one of those reasons. February kicks off the busy conference schedule with the RSA 2007 Conference in San Francisco (Feb. 5 -9). Maybe it's the technology buzz that permeates the conference tracks and exhibits at this annual mecca for the IT crowd, or maybe it's the chance to see and hear Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, in person and hopefully hear him boldly proclaim that passwords are dead and smart cards are the answer, that makes this a "can’t miss" event on my calendar. Even better, the Smart Card Alliance Educational Institute team was asked back again in 2007 and will deliver an all day pre-conference tutorial, "Smart Cards in IT." The Alliance is also back with a sold-out Smart Card Pavilion exhibit space, where 12 quality technology vendors will showcase the best IT security technology available. And lastly, I will join an international panel to discuss the adoption of government smart cards from a U.S. perspective.
The Right Choice for Secure U.S. Border Access and Citizen Privacy: Contactless Smart Card Technology As part of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), a new passport card has been proposed as an option that can be used instead of a regular passport book when U.S. citizens are re-entering the United States at land and sea entry points from Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean. Today, only about 25 percent of U.S. citizens carry passports. Starting no later than June 2009, all Americans will need to provide proof of citizenship and identity when re-entering the U.S. The Department of State and Department of Homeland Security have announced that the proposed passport card will use vicinity read RFID technology that conforms to ISO/IEC 18000-6, Type C, "Radio frequency identification for item management -- Part 6.” This standard, published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in July 2006, is based on the EPC Gen 2 Class 1 UHF standard developed by EPCglobal. EPCglobal is the organization working to develop standards for the Electronic Product Code™ (EPC), a new system that uses RFID for the automatic identification of consumer products. According to the State Department Federal Register notice, machines at border crossings would read information on the RFID tag, connect to a secure U.S. government database containing biographical data and a photograph, and display that information to the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official. While the RFID tag in the card itself would not hold any personal information, each card will transmit a unique reference number that can be read from up to 20 feet away when interrogated by a reader.
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This month, Smart Card Talk spoke with Christopher (Chris) C. Cipperly, Assistant Treasurer of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). Chris has spent the last 32 years in various areas of investment and cash management, encompassing responsibilities from check writing, commodity hedge execution, day-to-day portfolio management, and municipal bond financing. During the last decade, Authority cash management has been focusing more on technology solutions to make operations more efficient. As a result, a great deal of Chris's time over the last several years has involved electronic payments. He managed the first privatization of any WMATA revenue operations function by contracting out customer service support for SmarTrip®7 to ACS. Chris participated in the conversion of WMATA parking to SmarTrip® only payment facilities. He has worked closely with the installation and testing of the new WMATA bus fareboxes and has been involved with the planning and coordination of the Regional SmarTrip7 project. Chris has also had the pleasure of working and contributing as a member of the Transportation Council of the Smart Card Alliance over the last several years. Chris has a Bachelor of Economics from Clemson University, 1971, and is Past President of the Government Financial Officers Association of the Washington Metropolitan Area. 
Executive Director's Letter
