SPECIAL REPORT: REBUILDING THE FUTURE
SMARTCARDS
Seven out of 10 Americans want it. Dick Gephardt endorsed it. Larry Ellison liked the idea so much he volunteered Oracle's services. Indeed, since Sept. 11, few USproposals have taken hold as firmly as the idea for a national identity smartcard. Sound like something better suited to a police state? Perhaps: Two of the three countries now using smartcard IDs, Malaysia and Brunei, can hardly be considered bastions of liberty. But one democracy, Italy, has signed up. Here's a look at the story behind its smartcard IDs, known as the Carta d'Identità Elettronica, or CIE, and how it stacks up against others.
Italy has issued some 200,000 CIEs and aims to put smartcards in the hands of all 55 million citizens before 2004. In Malaysia, 600,000 of its 22 million people have received cards. The US Department of Defense intends to issue 4.3 million cards to its staff and contractors by September 2002 and is looking at Malaysia's card as a model. Other governments experimenting with smartcards: Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, and Finland.
Italy's cards bear three identical photos - two visible and one digital. The main image is reproduced using a dye-diffusion printer, then secured with a holographic layer. The photo is replicated as a hologram on the card's optical memory stripe. The third image is coded into the stripe.
Italy's ID card states personal traits like gender, date of birth, and signature - but doesn't record faith. In Malaysia, where Islam is the majority religion, all Muslims are identified as such on their card, but non-Muslims have no religious affiliation mentioned on their IDs. Last year, Greek Orthodox church leaders were outraged when religious affiliation was dropped from Greece's new national ID card. One church leader accused the government of "bleaching religion from Greek history."
Countries with national identity cards insist that citizens possess them at all times. In Greece and Argentina, failure to carry your card is a punishable offense. This past August, a Malaysian judge made a man arrested for not carrying his ID card sing the national anthem to prove he was Malaysian. Fauzi Hamid let rip a stirring rendition but was still convicted for heroin possession.
The card's chip could hold all sorts of personal info, from bank records to rap sheets. The SLE66CX160S chip, made by Infineon, a Siemens subsidiary, can hold up to 16 Kbytes of data and is built to network with computers. The chip on the Malaysian card contains two thumbprints, medical history, a driver's license, and an ecash component.
At the time of manufacture, the CIE is encoded with a serial number along with the date of issue and its batch number. A second unique serial number is embedded in the stripe when the card is activated by the Italian government in Rome. The cardholder's personal info is then encoded at the regional government level along with the date it was added.
Biometrics - fingerprints, facial features, and the shape and pattern of the cornea - can be programmed into the card.
The CIE's core security features are made by LaserCard Systems, a subsidiary of Drexler Technology, based in Mountain View, California. In the week after the attacks, Drexler's share price shot up 30 percent.
The CIE card's 16-mm-wide optical memory stripe holds 1.1 Mbytes of data. Digital information is embedded using lasers and WORM (write once, read many) recording technology. Information can be added and updated using an optical reader/writer connected to a PC, but it cannot be deleted.
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