ID program trips over hardware

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The Department of Homeland Security quietly announced last week that port facilities and merchant vessels will not be required to install readers for the biometric ID cards the department plans to issue to the nation's transportation workers.

The change, which critics says guts the security benefit of the proposal, is the latest stumble for the ID card project, called the Transportation Worker Identification Credential, or TWIC, program.

Officials "have concluded that facility and vessel owners and operators will not be required to purchase or install card readers during the first phase of the TWIC implementation," reads a notice in the Federal Register, published last Monday.

The notice also promises that "a requirement to purchase and install card readers will not be implemented until the public is afforded further opportunity to comment on that aspect of the ... program." It adds: "The details of this approach will be explained in the next rulemaking."

The TWIC program, mandated by Congress in the 2002 Maritime Transportation Security Act, is designed eventually to cover 725,000 airport workers, truck drivers, merchant seafarers and others needing unescorted access to transportation facilities such as ships, ports and runways. Workers requiring the card will have to submit their fingerprints and undergo checks against databases for criminals, terrorism and immigration status.

Now critics complain that the Department of Homeland Security has effectively gutted the program by removing a requirement that card readers be installed at ports and on vessels.

"At least for the initial phase, there is not going to be any way to automatically authenticate the identity of the cardholder at these maritime facilities," said Walter Hamilton, chairman of the International Biometric Industry Association.

"Is there going to be a way to make sure it's Tom and not Tom's cousin" holding the card? asked a senior congressional staffer familiar with the program. "No. There isn't."

Homeland Security officials did not respond to phone calls and e-mails requesting comment, but the congressional staffer said the rule was the result of concerns from industry about how the required technology would operate in a maritime environment.

"These are not insurmountable problems," said the staffer, predicting a delay of six months or a year before a mandate for card readers could be imposed.

The staffer said the pilot project run by Homeland Security to test the program had employed contactless card readers "which worked well in a maritime environment," but had then selected a different kind of reader, requiring the card to be swiped, in the rule. In a maritime environment, said the staffer, where the swipe readers would be exposed to saltwater and sea air, corrosion and other types of damage could quickly render them useless.

Moreover, said the staffer, there was no testing aboard ships as part of the pilot. "Vessels at sea present unique environmental challenges," said the staffer, adding there were additional concerns about sealing off important areas on long voyages.

"There are legitimate safety issues associated with trying to isolate certain areas [on board a ship] for security purposes," said the staffer, asking what would happen during a fire or a hull breach if the reader malfunctioned or a crew member dropped his card and couldn't gain access.

The staffer also said that even without the readers initially installed, the TWIC program would have a security benefit, because of the background checks run on workers who apply for it.

But labor unions protested that using the credential as a "flash card" -- one that is simply shown to a guard, rather than confirming the holder's identity through biometrics or a personal identification number -- would give a false sense of security and increase the ease with which criminal or terrorist gangs could infiltrate transportation facilities by posing as credentialed workers.

"It makes no sense to impose onerous requirements on workers now and force them to pay almost $150 for a glorified flash pass that may never be used as intended," said Edward Wytkind, president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO.