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RFID Drivers' Licenses Debated

Posted by michael on from the mylar-wallets-suddenly-popular dept.

meganthom writes "How would you feel about having an RFID chip in your driver's license? Virginia is considering just such a measure, largely because several of the 9/11 hijackers were licensed there. Civil rights advocates are obviously unhappy with this turn of events, and it seems the ACLU has already taken the case. Proponents claim it would help law enforcement determine that you are who you claim to be and would make forgeries less common. The Federal government is also considering uniform 'smart card' standards."

2 of 514 comments (clear)

  1. New wallets for everybody! by erick99 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Can you imagine how quickly wallet manufacturers would come out with new wallets that either sandwich your drivers license between two pieces of metal (aluminum foil I guess) or shield the entire wallet? I don't usually get too excited about privacy issues because I don't believe we have any these days. But, it is way too easy to imagine thieves walking around with readers and harvesting drivers licenses numbers and info in crowds. A drivers license often has all you need to get a credit card, especially if your state uses your social security number as your drivers license number (do any states do that anymore?).

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  2. Re:Oh great... by Jhon · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Maybe some voyeuristic ID thieves might have a reader implanted in a glove and grab your ass some night at a bar and they could get the number then
    Or a small scanner/recorder/transmitter is placed under a theater seat, a park bench, a restaurant...

    Just my opinion, but I have serious problems about ANY form of identification that doesn't need to be PHYSICALLY viewed/handled...
    This could be (should be) just adding another layer of authentication to the "getting carded" process.
    To what end? If it's another layer, and you STILL need to pull out your ID, how does this help? Perhaps as a replacement for the mag strip? I doubt this would be more efficent or accurate... At least with the mag-strip, you can hawk-eye your cards as someone handles them and you can SEE if they swipe it with some type of hand-held reader... It would be kind of hard to do that with RF if they had a scanner in their pocket they never had to remove...

    Dont get me wrong, you brought up some interesting points -- but nowhere near close enough to convince that this is or can be a 'good' thing...