DHS abandons RFID for US-VISIT exit tracking
Tests at land border crossings found the technology unreliable; RFID tags were embedded in government forms; Smart Card Alliance applauds
Bad news for the RFID industry. DHS has decided to abandon a facet of the US-VISIT program under which foreigners leaving the country would be tracked during their exit with an RFID tag embedded in an I-94 document. In recent congressional testimony, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff explained that — as a recent Government Accounting Office study had confirmed — the technology had not proven successful during tests at various land border crossings. “The RFID test proved, as GAO indicated, unsuccessful,” Chertoff told the committee. “That’s not going to be a solution. So in the real world, when something fails, we drop it and we move to the next thing.”
The test is a blow to the RFID industry, but not to the lesser known but influentuial RF market. Randy Vanderhoof of the Smart Card Alliance, whose job comprises in large part educating the public about the differences in the two technologies, applauded DHS’s decision. “Inherent problems with vicinity read technology make it unsuitable for identifying people, something the industry has said all along,” he said. “The industry has long recommended using short read-range technology, like that in e-passports, for border crossing ID cards.”
-read more in this Government Security report
