U.S.-Canada to share refugees’ biometric info
Sheldon Alberts, Washington Correspondent, Canwest News
Service Published: Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images The
United States and Canada have announced a new deal to share fingerprint
information on refugee claimants.
WASHINGTON - Seeking to enhance its efforts to crack down on fraudulent
refugee claims, the Harper government on Tuesday announced it has struck a deal
to share fingerprint information on asylum seekers with the United States.
Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan made the announcement following a
bilateral summit here with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
Under the protocol, the U.S. will join a biometric data-sharing initiative
Canada had already launched last summer with the United Kingdom and Australia.
"Biometrics continue to be a powerful tool to prevent terrorists and
criminals from crossing our shared border and preventing identity theft and
asylum fraud," Ms. Napolitano said at a news conference with Mr. Van Loan.
Canada's privacy commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, had expressed a series of
concerns about the biometric data sharing when the plan was first announced in
August. Ms. Stoddart's office questioned Ottawa about the need to collect
fingerprints and sought assurances the personal information gathered would not
be used for secondary purposes.
"While we are still reviewing their response, on the surface of it, it
appears they have addressed most of our concerns," said Anne-Marie Hayden, a
spokesperson for the privacy commissioner.
"They have advised us that under the protocol, biometric information will
only be used for immigration and nationality issues. They have also told us that
biometric matching information will only be one of many elements considered when
assessing a file."
The privacy commissioner's office is still awaiting a response, however, on
how Citizenship and Immigration Canada "plans to address our concerns about how
refugees, a very vulnerable population, will be notified about the collection
and use of their biometric information," Ms. Hayden said.
Ms. Napolitano said the U.S. will dispatch its chief privacy officer to
Ottawa in early December for discussions with Canadian officials. "As we share
information, we are committed to protecting privacy and civil rights," she said.
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has argued biometric data sharing on
refugee claimants dramatically increases the government's ability to identify
foreign nationals who try to hide their past when seeking to enter Canada.
His office says the agreement allows countries to check each other's
fingerprint databases but doesn't give them unfettered access to the
information.
"Previous trials show that biometric information sharing works," Mr. Kenney
said in a statement Tuesday. "The data sharing helps uncover details about
refugee claimants such as identity, nationality, criminality, travel and
immigration history, all of which can prove relevant to the claim."
When Canada, the U.K. and Australia initially signed the agreement last
summer, they sought to allay privacy concerns by agreeing no central database of
fingerprints would be created.
The information-sharing pact is part of a broader government initiative to
introduce biometrics into Canada's immigration and refugee screening system -- a
plan that continues to raise red flags for privacy advocates.
"We have made them aware of our concerns with respect to what seems to be a
general trend toward an increased collection of biometric information," Ms.
Hayden said.
Time for a national ID card?
2 experts debate the merits of government-issued
biometric ID cards
In an effort to block people from using
stolen Social Security numbers to falsely prove their eligibility for
employment, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wants the government to create a
computerized identity card system that would use biometrics to match cardholders
to their Social Security numbers.
So far, the approach would limit use of smart cards to employment
applications. However, experts have floated the idea of using such cards in a
variety of other transactions, from commerce to health care services, in
physical environments and digitally for online authentication.
Neville Pattinson, vice president of government affairs and business
development at Gemalto North America, a provider of digital security
credentials, said he believes the new Social Security card should be the basis
of a national identity credential that would improve the ease and security of
many transactions. Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the
Cato Institute, said he sees major dangers associated with that
proposition.
They discussed their views recently with Federal Computer Week. Both men
serve on the Homeland Security Department's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory
Committee, though their remarks don’t reflect DHS' or the committee's views on
this subject.
What are the benefits of a single digital identity
credential?
Pattinson: We’re in the midst of a national identity crisis in
general. We have no single trusted credential in our society today. We’re using
Social Security cards in paper form, driver's licenses, birth certificates. At
best, we have a passport, which is probably the best credential of all to
date.
We really need to look at the positioning for an identity credential for the
citizen that gives control to that citizen to present their identity in both the
real world and the online virtual world.
Harper: If you look at the way people actually work in the world and
the way they do security in other realms, they disperse their assets. They have
key chains with several different keys on it, and that doesn’t represent a
crisis in security for physical possessions. That’s a good security mechanism to
have very different keys for different purposes.
So, I think it’s a mistake to design an identity system around a single
trusted credential.
How do you convince people that there are enough benefits to overcome
the risks of a single credential?
Time for a national ID card?
Pattinson: We have, fundamentally, one identity that we use in our
real-world, day-to-day [lives]. Perhaps we have pseudonyms or personas we use in
our virtual world. We need a trusted credential to spawn various manifestations
of the credential in different situations.
Harper: The root of your identity is actually your body, and trying to
impose a governmental or private organization outside that to provide the root
of our identity is a mistake. I don’t want identity systems for humans to
operate the way the Internet does, with a root server that some organization
controls and not me. Identity should spring from the person.
I don’t think you can make a good sales pitch to people and have them agree
to hand over the keys to their identity to any organization, much less to a
government body, which has so much coercive authority.
Is there a psychological barrier to people adopting this single
identity, given that people like the idea of having different credentials for
access to each of their assets?
Pattinson: I think, inevitably, that is the case. In the United
States, that is clearly evident in the discussions we have. Some see [a single
credential] as abhorrent, though others see it as something that could be
useful. It’s very much a personal reaction.
Harper: The selling point that this empowers the individual is
important, especially in the context of a government-provided digital
credential. In my view, having a government-provided credential — and this
assumes everyone should have one — undercuts the bargaining position of the
individual.
It’s like “You have the national credential, don’t you?” and if you don’t and
you haven’t proven who you are to me, then it’s “I can’t do business with you.
You’re some kind of illegal alien.” And so we are all going to naturally migrate
toward proving our identity for far more transactions than we do today and thus
creating the opportunity for far more recordkeeping and undercutting our
privacy.
So even though it will be presented as a choice that people can use
when they want to, over time, this credential will de facto become the national
identity card?
Harper: Yes, it’s the same choice that people have when they use Web
sites. I’m all for publishing [Web site] privacy policies, but in the end, it’s
take-it-or-leave-it. So with the majority of the public focused on living their
lives and not [being] privacy activists, they will say “OK, I’m just going to
present my individual credential for every transaction, including buying a pack
of gum. That’s what they tell me to do.”
Time for a national ID card?
Pattinson: What we’re considering is the need for providing an
elective digital credential, biometric identifier or whatever it may be to the
citizen. On that basis, having to present it for more and more transactions is
all about [evaluating] the risk of performing a transaction with or without
it.
Wouldn’t the demand for efficiency push industry and government toward
the use of just one or two credentials?
Pattinson: To me, this is just a transactional ability to prove who I
am at the point of enrollment. After that, you’ve potentially got other
identification mechanisms like those we carry today. We have a whole host of
cards that we carry in our wallets and purses that have ID-based information for
[use with] individual systems.
Harper: This idea of a voluntary system is rather at odds with the
circumstances in which we are talking about having a biometric Social Security
card.
You’ve got 7 million employers around the country already equipped to use it
for employment verification, and you’ve got lots of politicians who want to
solve things that are problems from their perspective. We’ve already seen
legislation with regard to Real ID [federal standards for driver's licenses],
for access to financial services and credit at the state and local level. You’ve
seen proposals to require proof of immigration status for housing. There have
even been things floated in the past because of the methamphetamine problem that
a national ID should be required of people to buy cold medicine.
So the uses of this national credential, once it’s in place, are limited only
by the imagination of regulators. And [the notion of it being voluntary], that
just disappears over quite a short period of time.
What’s the political will for going forward with this, given everything
else that’s going on today?
Harper: I think, frankly, that the stabs at national ID such as Real
ID and PASS ID [a proposed replacement of Real ID] have delayed progress because
everyone thinks that’s where it’s going to happen. And trying to do this at the
federal level through the Social Security system I guarantee would take 10 years
even if everyone agreed on it. It’s really just keeping us from letting
innovation and invention and private capital go to work on this problem and
start building identity systems and credentialing systems that are really
creative and user-friendly.
If you haven’t met the challenge of consumer uptake, trying to force it on
people through the government is not going to work either.
Pattinson: I think certainly we owe it to our citizens to provide
something. There is a need. We are unable to present identity and be able to
prove it in the virtual world and in our digital lives today.
What I’m suggesting is just a simplified view of being able to have one
credential that could facilitate the enrollment into [other systems] and give
you a trusted persona under any commercial organization. But trusted back to
something that we need in our society to know who we are dealing with and
[allow] an individual to be able to prove it.
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