Telecom Trends

I have had today's posting under development for a few weeks now, so it was surprising to see an article in yesterday's Toronto Star about the same subject: micro-chips for humans.

A few events have taken place over the past few weeks that can be linked with a common solution, if you will grant me a little time to connect the chain.

• First event: over the holiday weekend, my son had three entire households turned upside down in a frantic search for his passport. He had not seen it since he went to a concert in Buffalo this past winter. As it turns out, it was found in a pocket of his winter jacket [the one he wore to the concert], but not before we went through every drawer, every pocket of every suitcase and knapsack in our house, and our cottage. Luckily, he went to visit his school buddies this weekend so he could check his college apartment;
• Next event: I discovered that in the rush to load the car for the holiday weekend trip to the north, I left my wallet behind. No driver's license. No credit cards. No debit cards.
• Final link: our dog went to the vet for a check up and annual dog license. In our area, the license fee is waived if the dog is micro-chipped. We had him 'chipped' when he was a puppy. However, his chip stopped working, so we needed to get it replaced.

How do these events get tied together?

There are a number of folks in the telecom and other industries looking at the possibilities of digital wallets - whether on our cell-phones or in smarter pieces of ID [driver's licenses, passports, etc.]. There are numerous advantages but some clear privacy challenges from such a system.

Wouldn't it be great to have a single ID system - issued by the government - but loaded with any other commercial transaction numbers? Why couldn't an enhanced driver's license also serve as my passport, my credit cards, my frequent flyer card and other other number?

Scan the card, up pops my picture and biometric information for the border. Indeed, why even have a card? Perform an eye scan and know you have standing in front of you. Think of the possibilities for homeland security. Think of the benefits for medical treatment if all of your history could be accessible where ever you happen to be.

Merchants could access the credit information and be comforted that there is positive identity confirmation, lowering the cost of fraud.

Drivers? Such a system could eliminate the need for keys. Cars wouldn't even start for drivers with suspended licenses.

But then we look at our dog's chip that failed to remind us that such systems need to have back up procedures. Five nines [99.999% reliability] just would not be enough for such critical systems that affect every aspect of our lives.

And such an all-purpose system of identification raises the personal privacy concerns. As my friend Alan Borovoy likes to say, there should be a fundamental right, in a civilized, democratic society, for an individual to get lost. To keep to themselves. To wander around without government keeping tabs on us. Who is defining the reasonable balance of privacy considerations?

In the meantime, I'll have to remember to pack my wallet and my son will have to find a better place to store his passport.

And we'll make sure the dog's micro-chip is working. Because as much as he wants to have a right to get lost, we want to get him back.

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RFID, Alan Borovoy, privacy