Brill: Thumbs up on private ID venture
Reuters

NEW YORK--Newsweek columnist and Court TV founder Steven Brill is launching a venture to distribute identity cards that will allow people to speed through fast lanes at airport, office building and sports arena security checkpoints with a thumbprint scan.

Brill--author of After, a chronicle of the security and privacy challenges faced after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- has formed Verified Identity Card Inc., which will issue the cards, perform background checks and match databases against the government's list of known terrorists.

Once the data is linked to credit card systems, the card will offer its holders added protection against identity theft, Brill told Reuters in an interview.

Every day I worked on the book I'd confront another example of how in the September 12th era we needed a new solution to the old problem of balancing security with liberty and privacy, said Brill, who will be chairman and CEO of the company.

Brill's partners in the venture are TransCore, which operates the electronic toll booth system in the Northeast called E-ZPass, and ChoicePoint, a provider of background screening services.

Brill, a bulldog journalist and lawyer by training, has suffered his own post-September 11th frustrations with airport and office building bottlenecks--and the answer is not, he said, millions of hourly-wage, private guards going through the motions.

The venture is intended, in part, to solve the problem without the implementation of a government-issued national ID card program, which Brill calls unworkable and the worst kind of threat to our civil liberties.

First, the potential for abuse by the government in having all this information is a real disaster for the country and the values it cherishes, Brill said. Second, they would screw it up. The history of government and data and technology is a comedy act.

Furthermore, he said, the implementation of such a law creating national ID cards is unlikely, given the political minefield it would have to traverse to get passed.

Verified's card is voluntary. Applicants pay a one-time fee of $30 to $50, and then a monthly subscription of $3 to maintain the card. Brill anticipates that businesses will pick up the tab in some cases, such as large employers wanting to secure office buildings or sports arenas for season ticket holders.

In anticipation of the privacy concerns such efforts inevitably raise, Brill said a prominent civil liberties organization will serve as the company's outside ombudsman and will issue public reports on the company's compliance with privacy standards.

Evan Hendricks, editor of Privacy Times, isn't reassured. To get the card they have to collect data, he said. Someone has to store and maintain it, which makes it vulnerable.

Brill's system hasn't been implemented anywhere, but he said he's in talks with the federal government on the issue.

A provision in the law that created the Department of Homeland Security entitles private sector security firms to query government terror databases.


URL: ZDN