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December 04, 2004

Personal Identity Verification (PIV) Project

Even in this day and age, much of science relies on the movement of people - visiting scientists, graduate students, conferences, and paper presentations. With the restrictions growing in America on the movement of people and concerns about safety, one of the casualties is this flow of ideas.

Some colleagues of mine, at the University of Miami, used to have large numbers of Egyptian graduate students in their Engineering program (Engineering rarely attracts American PhD's). Now they have none, as it is too hard to get a student visa.

In the linked website, which I found a pointer to on Slashdot, we read about new biometric ID cards required at national institutes of science and technology. Will this further constrain the movement of people? Will "safety" be the winner and new ideas the loser?

It seems to me that this sort of stultifying climate is the antithesis of real safety. This sort of 'safety' is merely an ossified collection of what was, not what we could become. I think I prefer the latter more than the former. What about you?

writes: Personal Identity Verification (PIV) Project

In response to HSPD-12, the NIST Computer Security Division has initiated a new project for Personal Identity Verification (PIV) of Federal employees and contractors. A set of Federal Information Processing standards, guidelines, recommendations, and/or technical specifications has been identified as being needed to: properly protect the personal privacy of all subscribers of the PIV system; authenticate identity source documents to obtain the correct legal name of the person applying for a PIV "card"; electronically obtain and store appropriate biometric data (e.g., fingerprints, facial images) from the PIV system subscriber; create a PIV "card" that is "personalized" with data needed by the PIV system to later grant access to the subscriber to Federal facilities and information systems; assure appropriate levels of security for all applicable Federal applications; and provide interoperability among Federal organizations using the standards.

Posted by Richard Smith at December 4, 2004 07:10 PM