Homeland Security Abandons Plan to Make Foreign Nationals Carry Tracking Chips

The Department of Homeland Security has http://www.epic.org/privacy/us-visit/">abandoned a plan to embed arrival and departure forms carried by foreign nationals with a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that would allow the forms to be automatically scanned at the border. The proposed plan to implant the chip in such forms was intended to speed up processing of foreign nationals at the border, while also "ensuring that visitors who enter the country are the same ones who leave." It was abandoned after a recent GAO report found that the chips often did not function properly, and that there was http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07378t.pdf">no way to ensure that the person carrying the chip at entry was the same person who carried it at departure.

The now-rejected plan to embed tracking chips in immigration forms was widely criticized by privacy groups, who warned that "the slight timesaving benefits of RFID-enabled I-94 forms are heavily outweighed by the http://www.epic.org/privacy/us-visit/100305_rfid.pdf">significant privacy and security risks." RFID chips may be read by any person with a properly configured scanner, so privacy groups feared that private individuals would be able to identify foreign nationals on the street simply by scanning them for a chip. Moreover, such a scan would reveal a unique ID number, which could allow someone with access to a government database to discover the "name, date of birth, gender, country of citizenship, passport number and country of issuance, complete U.S. destination address, arrival and departure information, a digital photograph, and digital fingerscans" of the person scanned.