The world鈥檚 first national smart card scheme to store biometric data on an in-built computer chip has been introduced in Malaysia. The cards are compulsory for Malaysia鈥檚 citizens and are encoded with a copy of the owner鈥檚 fingerprints.
Pressure is growing in other countries for improved identification schemes, especially since the recent terrorist atrocities in the US.
鈥淎 lot of governments including the US will be looking at better identification systems to monitor the movement of people within their countries after the terror attacks,鈥� said Wan Mohamad Ariffin, smart card project director at Malaysia鈥檚 National Registration Department. 鈥淲e are willing to share our technology. It could be part of the solution to the security issue.鈥�
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Although the strongest opposition to such schemes will probably come from civil liberties groups, technical experts also say that such measures will not thwart criminals or determined terror groups.
Identity theft
Ross Anderson, an expert in computer security at Cambridge University, says that smart cards may make forging ID cards harder but they are unlikely to provide a complete solution.
鈥淵ou can maybe exert some downward pressure on identity theft by incorporating machine readable fingerprints of some kind or another,鈥� Anderson told New Scientist. 鈥淏ut, in this situation, making identity cards harder to forge is solving the wrong problem.鈥�
Anderson says that terrorist groups will simply subvert the system another way, by using a stolen birth certificate, for example. He also points out that, unless an individual has been identified by the authorities as a threat, smart cards will not help.
Nevertheless, smart cards should make fraud more difficult. Although most cards will give up their digital secrets to a determined expert, combined with digital signatures they make forgery more complicated.
This is important because the Malaysian government has said that the new cards are likely to be used to authorise financial payments and withdraw cash, as well as identify individuals to the authorities.
Digital signature
Markus Kuhn, also at Cambridge University鈥檚 computer science department, says that the biometrics stored on a modern smart card will be authenticated by a central authority when the card is created, in the form of a digital signature.
This means that even if a card is stolen and a new fingerprint data inserted, anyone with a government scanner could recognise it as fake. 鈥淵ou can put a new fingerprint on the card but not forge its overall signature,鈥� Kuhn says.
But opposition to this type of smart-card system remains from civil libertarians. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think that these will stop terrorist acts,鈥� says Yaman Akdeniz, director of Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties. 鈥淭hey are more controlling measures. They let a government track you and know more about you.鈥�
The US government is currently increasing its capacity to track citizens. The Combating Terrorism Act of 2001, proposed shortly after the devastation of New York and Washington DC, would increase the powers of federal agents to wiretap individuals.