[Am-info] FAA Creates Smart-Card 'Go Teams'

[Fred A. Miller]

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In case someone didn't pick up on this from an earlier post I made here 
today, in a couple of years, the FAA should be ENTIRELY Linux!

Fred
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FAA Creates Smart-Card 'Go Teams'

WASHINGTON--The Federal Aviation Administration has created 
two teams--Go Team 31 and Go Team 51--to develop standards and 
mandates for airport security using smart-card, public key 
infrastructure, and biometric technologies. First on the FAA's 
list is the creation of a smart card that will be issued to 
all airline, airport, and FAA employees for access control. 
Cargo shippers and food-service personnel will also receive 
smart cards. Next month, the FAA will define a layout for and 
technologies on a baseline smart card. The agency already has
settled on Java as the language used to create the card.

The cards will contain a chip, says Phillip Loranger, an FAA 
official. To make the blank card into an identification card, 
an individual's photo and personal demographic data would be 
added to the cards, as well as to some biometric data, such as 
hand geometry, or fingerprints. Loranger says he doubts the 
FAA will recommend retinal scanning: "That technology can be 
good for some things, but I'm not sure it's necessary for ID 
verification," he said at the Aviation Security Summit here. 
Retinal scanning requires huge amounts of bandwidth- and 
storage-hogging data.

The FAA has yet to determine the types and locations of 
databases that would contain access information. Those cards 
would have to be integrated with government databases that 
store information on known terrorists and other dangerous 
criminals, as well as with Interpol. One of the FAA's goals is 
to create an architecture that can scale to accommodate all 
travelers. But that won't be for quite some time: The FAA 
doesn't expect to fully deploy its biometric architecture 
until fiscal 2004. - Jennifer Maselli

- -- 
Fred A. Miller
Systems Administrator
Cornell Univ. Press Services
fm@cupserv.org

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