Wouldn a secure national ID card with biometrics save us billions in homeland security tasks?
No, it will only create a false sense of security. The current “high tech” proposal for a national ID such as the passport with the embedded RFID chip uses a very low level of encryption and can easily be counterfeited by any government or government-supported terrorist group. They can also be easily read from a distance of several feet, making identity theft a major concern. The card carried by the military uses a very high level of encryption and cannot be read unless it is in direct physical contact with the card reader. Additionally the military access card carries limited personal information; it is primarily an access “key” to a secure database. The information in the database is what is used for authentication. The problem with biometrics is in the security of the back-end database. If that database is hacked and the biometric data is captured it becomes totally useless. Since you can’t replace someone’s fingerprints or retinal scans, any compromise of the database renders it pe
