hbs: A High-Tech Solution to Security Versus Privacy?
Industry specialists have dismissed ID cards as ineffective security measures at a Harvard Business School panel on security technology.
[In-Q-Tel CEO Gilman] Louie dismissed the notion that national IDs would make flying safer. "The best way to beat the national ID card system is to bribe somebody who already has one," he said. "You can spend billions of dollars and all it takes is to bribe one person who's already cleared to go through the fast lane, and they're in." "Given these technologies, how do you raise the bar--because they'll never be perfect? Let's be realistic. The trick is to vary your security so it becomes unpredictable. Any of these systems are beatable if the other person knows what to look for. If you know what facial recognition software is looking for through a system of pattern recognition, there are ways to beat it," Louie said. Norman Geddes, president and CEO of data search company Applied Systems Intelligence, said he personally wouldn't be intimidated by a national ID card system and various other monitoring: The "bottleneck" is still analysis. Colatosti refused to grant any upside to the notion of a national ID system, saying it was a Pandora's box that could be easily misused to justify any number of infringements on personal privacy. Even people who have "nothing to hide" would come to regret the institution of national ID, he said. (see hbsworkingknowledge.hbs.edu)