By William Etling

Enhanced Border Security
U-S Visit and National ID Cards

After September 11, 2001, the United States went into security overdrive. Desperate to prevent another horrific attack on American soil, a wide variety of improvements, changes and new programs were discussed. Some were rejected, some were approved, but they had a singular aim: to keep any would-be terrorists out of America.

U-S VISIT
The U-S Visit program is, at its heart, a new version of the age-old system of using fingerprints and photos to verify someone’s identity. It works like this: when a foreigner is granted a visa to visit the United States, their fingerprints and photo are recorded digitally (Homeland Security, perhaps in homage to Star Trek, likes to call this your “biometrics”). When the traveler arrives in the U.S., a digital scanner is used to compare their fingerprints and photos to their actual fingers and actual face.
If their face and fingerprints don’t match up, they’ve stolen someone else’s visa, and they will be detained.

At least that’s the theory.

Of course, it’s easy to come up with flaws and worst-case scenarios. A potential terrorist could get a visa to visit Mexico or Canada, which do not record biometrics when granting visas, and then cross somewhere in the thousands of unmonitored, un-patrolled miles of U.S. border.

Or, a potential terrorist could simply lie about their identity from the very beginning of the visa application process. Assuming they are not already on a terror watch list, they could give a fake occupation and a fake excuse to visit the U.S., and use their own photo and fingerprints, which would match up perfectly and grant them access.

A New York Times article from December 2005 pointed out that flaw. “Critics say any would-be terrorist who has no prior record or encounter with law enforcement officials could most likely escape suspicion,” the Times said.

This is not to say that the U.S. immigration system does not need this drastic updating. In the wake of 9/11, it was obvious that changes were needed. Perhaps the most illustrative example was when a flight school in Florida received a letter from INS approving the student visas of two of the hijackers – six months after they had already piloted planes into the World Trade Center.

The U-S Visit program has the potential to stop terrorism, but only if it is deployed on an extremely wide scale, a scale of Big Brother proportions. If the hijackers had been required to give fingerprints and digital photos when applying for their student visas today, perhaps the FBI would have noticed the trend. Multiple foreigners with tourist visas, all applying for student visas to attend flight school, all Saudi nationals. But there’s the problem – it’s not a crime to be a Saudi national learning to fly.
According to the New York Times, the U-S Visit program has completed fingerprints and photos for 45 million visitors since it began in January 2004.

“The fingerprint check at the borders has turned up just 970 hits of vista violators of criminal suspects… Most such instances are relatively modest: those of people who have previously been denied visas or committed some kind of immigration violation,” the Times said.

But the system did identify one person in Jordan applying for a visa who had been detained by the Army in Iraq for charges related to terrorism.
In essence, the U-S Visit program (which has cost $1 billion so far and may cost $10 billion to fully implement) is a long overdue improvement to U.S. immigration bureaucracy. To think, however, that the system will completely eliminate potential terrorists and other “bad folks” from immigrating to the U.S. as tourists, students, or workers is naïve.

National ID Cards
In early 2005, Congress approved a bill to require standardization of state drivers licenses by 2008. Called the Real ID Act, the law says state licenses have to be electronically readable. If they don’t comply, federal employees could reject them as a valid ID.
But critics say the Real ID Act gives Homeland Security so much power that it is the equivalent of creating a national ID card – a move that some feel is a massive blow to states’ rights. In a Cnet article from February, 2005, Rep. Ron Paul, a Texas Republican, said “supporters claim it is not a national ID because it is voluntary… However, any state that opts out will automatically make nonpersons out of its citizens. They will not be able to fly or take a train.”

There are also concerns that the Real ID Act is the first step towards using radio tracking devices on American citizens. The language of the law says the state cards should have “machine readable technology.” That could be the magnetic strip like California drivers licenses now feature, or it could be something more extreme, like RFID (Radio Frequency Identification.)

On Monday February 6, 2006, Hitachi announced a new paper-thin RFID chip. Such a device could be planted in an ID, allowing the government to validate your ID card quickly and easily – or, the darker option – to track your movements and habits. In fact, the State Department is already issuing passports with RFIDs implanted in them, and Virginia may become the first state to have RFIDs installed in drivers licenses.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has said that he believes security concerns will ultimately make the national ID card a reality. Many European, Asian, and South American countries already have national IDs.

A national ID, however, would not have prevented 9/11, because all of the hijackers had valid identifications. The fact is that they were not here in hiding, undocumented and with fake immigration papers. They were here with valid student and tourism visas, attending flight schools, renting apartments.

The security that would come with a national ID equipped with radio-tracking comes at a great potential cost: a loss of all personal privacy. If a national ID card could trace locations, purchases, internet searches – imagine the possibilities.
Yes, it could have alerted the FBI to the odd patterns of Saudi national students taking flight lessons. But what if a law-abiding citizen develops an interest in Islam? Or wants to do research on the Middle East? Will they be watched, spied on, and possibly detained using library records and radio-tracking devices?

The State Department started issuing so-called “e-passports,” with tiny microchips embedded in them, last spring. Their first test market for the devices? Los Angeles. The balance between preventing terrorism, monitoring immigration, and protecting personal privacy continues to unfold.