"Enhanced driver's licences" are billed as a cheaper, more convenient
alternative to passports for crossing the border into the United States from
Canada - but the new ID makes privacy watchdogs more than a little nervous.
They raise the spectre of multiple databases carrying surprising amounts of
information on citizens.
Starting in June 2009, all Canadians entering the U.S. will need a valid
passport or the new alternative - an EDL - as the U.S. extends its "war on
terrorism" to what was long known as the world's longest undefended border.
The high-tech driver's licence, which will be available in Quebec by the end of
this year, is embedded with a radio-frequency identification chip and meets
American documentation requirements. But privacy and human-rights advocates
warn that the card could become a Trojan Horse, making it easy for authorities
in both countries to amass data files on law-abiding citizens, and track their
movements to and from the U.S.
The watchdogs say the EDL is the latest weapon in the growing arsenal of ways
to gather information on citizens, which has been quietly stockpiled since the
Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks by Saudi Arabian citizens who entered the U.S.
on valid student visas.
The critics worry that, beyond tagging potential terrorists and criminals,
authorities could use the technology to help build profiles of political
dissidents and people not convicted of any crimes, particularly in Muslim,
Tamil and other communities. The enhanced driver's licence will be known in
Quebec as the Permis de conduire plus and will probably add $25 to $30 to the
cost of a regular licence - less than the cost of a Canadian passport, now $87
for five years.
The radio-frequency chip has a unique number that a customs officers can use to
unlock a database with basic identity information on the carrier: name, date of
birth, sex, citizenship and expiry date of the permit.
The digitized photograph in the database will allow customs officers to compare
it with the picture on the front of the driver's licence.
The U.S. Homeland Security Department says it will keep the information
gathered from the cards, as well as from any interviews or background checks
done at the border, for up to 20 years "or for investigative purposes, a longer
period of time.
Roch Tassé, co-ordinator of the Ottawa-based International Civil Liberties
Monitoring Group, calls the EDL a "backdoor" identity card, introduced "without
parliamentary debate in the United States or in Canada," and containing a
digital photograph.
The next step Tassé says, will be digitizing biometric indicators;
fingerprints, retinal patterns, hand geometry, DNA, blood types, odours and
even your signature gait.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty included $26 million in his budget to incorporate
biometric data in the visas of foreign visitors and announced Canadians will
get 10-year passports with an RFID chip starting in 2011.
On May 1, Manitoba announced it would also issue enhanced identity cards to
non-drivers, with the same chip used in the EDL.
Quebec has no plans yet to issue enhanced IDs for non-drivers.
In the past, Canada's security apparatus has collected data on former premiers
and prime ministers. Canadian volunteers in the Spanish Civil War were
considered potential subversives.
Justice Dennis O'Connor, in his inquiry on the transfer of Canadian citizen
Maher Arar to his native Syria, where he was tortured, concluded that it was
very likely U.S. authorities used inaccurate information about Arar provided by
the RCMP.
Tassé is concerned that "data-mining techniques" will allow Homeland Security
to use driver's licence information along with police files and other
information to build profiles.
There is also evidence customs officers on both sides of the border are sharing
police files and accumulating personal data, on the assumption more information
about who is crossing the border means fewer risks.
"Citizens have little or no awareness of the amount of data compiled on them,"
says Benoît Gagnon, a security and terrorism expert, who lectures at Université
de Montréal.
"Services like Air Miles, iTunes, Workopolis, Monster, Facebook and so on, are
mines of information for data-miners," Gagnon said in an email.
"But this information is freely given by the users of these services," Gagnon
said. "The problem is that they are perhaps not aware of the value of what they
are giving in the first place."
Over time, Gagnon said, there a risk of corruption, loss and theft of data.
"That is the problem with the over-multiplication of databases.
"With more data to manage, the probability of errors, problems or theft
increases," he added. "It will take more employees to manage this data."
Gagnon chaired a committee of Quebec's Commission de l'éthique de la science et
de la technologie which wrote In search of balance, a study on the ethics of
surveillance technologies used for security purposes.
The study notes that since Sept. 11, 2001, surveillance is no longer limited to
people considered "risk" elements.
"The danger lies in the fact that in attempting to provide too much security,
surveillance methods can threaten the fundamental values that help define these
democratic societies."
Canada has federal and provincial privacy laws. The U.S. Privacy Act only
applies to U.S. citizens, explained Anne-Marie Heyden, with the office of
Canada's Privacy Commissioner. This means information on Canadians in U.S.
databases is not protected.
Canada's Rights Charter applies to everyone, but as U.S. authorities explained
to Maher Arar when they refused him a lawyer: In the U.S., only American
citizens have such rights.
In February, Canada's federal and the provincial privacy commissioners adopted
a resolution expressing their "significant concerns" about the privacy and
security aspects of the EDL.
Specifically, the commissioners, including Quebec's Jacques Laurent, called on
their governments to ensure information on drivers remains in Canada.
But in a subsequent address in Washington, Christiane Constant, a member of
Quebec's Commission d'accès à l'information, clarified that the province does
not object to the storage in the United States of personal information on
Quebecers, provided there is data protection equivalent to that in Quebec.
The U.S. Homeland Security Department has informed U.S. states and Canadian
provinces that their EDLs must use a vicinity chip, which can be read at a
distance of 10 metres.
In a presentation last August to Homeland Security and the U.S. State
Department, the Washington lobby group for the information-technology industry,
IT Policy Solutions, pointed out that the RFID chip proposed for use in U.S.
passports and EDLs has a successful read rate of 14 per cent, calling it "an
undisputed failure."
The chip could also be cloned, IT Policy Solutions told the two U.S. government
departments, evoking a scenario where "hundreds of evil doers" would confuse
the system, creating an opportunity for a terrorist organization to break
through the border.
IT Policy Solutions proposes that a more secure proximity chip, which cannot be
read from a distance, should be used. In a telephone interview Kelli Emerick,
president of IT Policy Solutions, said Homeland Security is sticking to its
plan to use RFID chips that can be read from a distance.
Tassé sees the vicinity chip as a way for police to scan a crowd of
demonstrators from a distance and get their names without their knowledge -
and, down the line, maybe use that information as a reason to bar them from
crossing the border.
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/saturdayextra/story.html?id=7bfa2fdd-0e44-4049-823b-7153180cabdb
Let the people do what they want, you get Woodstock. Let the government do what
it wants, you get WACO!....Mary.
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