Though calls for a smart national identification card have gotten louder since Sept. 11, executives at companies that make or issue smart cards say they are not getting their hopes up that such a system will be adopted.
Despite evidence of growing momentum for national ID cards public opinion polls showing support, an exhortation from Oracle Corp. chairman and chief executive officer Larry Ellison it is easier still to cite past and present opposition, these executives say. And President Bush is not even considering the idea, according to a White House spokesman.
The type of system Mr. Ellison proposed sounds like a dream scenario for a smart card company. We need a national ID card with our photograph and thumbprint embedded, he said in an interview with KPIX-TV in San Francisco. We need a database behind that, so when youre walking into an airport and you say that you are Larry Ellison, you take that card and put it in a reader and you put your thumb down and that system confirms that this is Larry Ellison. Mr. Ellison even offered to donate the software necessary to support such a system.
But the fact that President Bush and members of Congress are speaking dismissively of the proposal the likes of which have failed repeatedly in the past have indicated to smart card makers that the concerns of civil libertarians are likely to hold sway.
Mark Radcliffe, field marketing manager for the smart card manufacturer SchlumbergerSema of New York, said that any impetus for a smart ID card would come from individual states, and that he does not expect to see any real support for a national card. It is not something the government will mandate, he said. The way it will evolve is local. I think you will see a number of states expressing interest.
SchlumbergerSema is supplying the Defense Department with chip cards for a program to give all four million active-duty military and civilian employees smart ID cards over the next three years. The company is also working with Visa issuers that have come out with smart cards, and Mr. Radcliffe said the experience has given him insight into how a national ID card might be introduced. We learned to start small, he said. Start with basic applications, get infrastructure up, and grow it from there.
Over time, Mr. Radcliffe said, as we see the success of the financial services industry and Department of Defense program, they will be a great influence on ID card plans.
But William M. Randle, the chairman of the Smart Card Alliance, says a national ID card is urgently needed.
We have no verification of people who are getting on planes, said Mr. Randle, who is also the executive vice president of e-Huntington, a division of Huntington National Bank. If smart identification cards were issued, he said, I think it would go a long way to prevent hijackings of commercial airplanes.
Mr. Ellison and other national ID proponents say that cards could be issued that use the same type of microprocessor chips as the American Express Blue and Visa Smart credit cards. Cards that store an image of a thumbprint or some other unique physical characteristic would be harder to copy than the documents typically used for identification.
In the recent past the public has vociferously resisted any type of chip-based identification card, and various plans have been rejected at the state and federal levels. In 1998, when EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman was the governor of New Jersey, she proposed a chip-based drivers license only to meet such furious opposition that the state Legislature eventually passed a resolution condemning the idea. New Jersey ended up with a magnetic stripe card that held no information beyond driver identification.
But with security fears outweighing privacy concerns for now, public opinion seems to have swayed in favor of national IDs. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, most Americans think it will be necessary to give up some civil liberties to combat terrorism. Seven out of 10 of the 1,200 people contacted between Sept. 13 and 17 said they were in favor of a national identity card. A poll conducted by CBS News reported similar results.
But the legislators most likely to find a national identity card proposal on their desks say the entire debate is manufactured by the media, and the notion that U.S. citizens will carry national ID cards is ridiculous no matter what the public says today.
Kent Wissinger, the spokesman for Pennsylvania Republican George Gekas, who is the chairman of the House immigration subcommittee, says there is no push on the Hill for a national ID plan. Rep. Gekas committee would probably be the forum for considering one.
The private sector is excited about the possibilities of an ID card for every American, Mr. Wissinger said. That would be quite a big bit of business, but the only time members of Congress have talked about this in recent weeks is when they are quizzed by the press.
Indeed some have suggested that Mr. Ellisons offer was more self-serving than civic-minded.
I am not convinced that the motives of those proposing the measures are entirely pure and selfless, said Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International in London, which has fought such proposals in other countries. He recalled the unsuccessful 1980s effort to introduce a national ID card in Australia.
Eventually all federal agencies wanted to use the card for their needs, Mr. Davies said. All required an interface that linked to government systems, if you wanted to buy or sell a house, travel, or gain employment.
Consumers and business alike began to feel the cards would infringe on freedom and cost too much, Mr. Davies said. Banks, commercial institutions, and employers all have to comply with the card, he said. The cost of compliance is a multiple of the baseline cost, as systems have to be modified and an enormous amount of time has to be spent to reconfigure computer systems.
In the United Kingdom, he said, Parliament is preparing a proposal to launch a national identity card, with the support of Prime Minister Tony Blair. Mr. Davies said his organization will oppose the plan.
The American Civil Liberties Union in New York has long opposed national ID cards. Since Mr. Ellisons public call for national ID cards, other U.S. groups have also come forward to resist them. The American Homeowners Grassroots Alliance, for one, issued a statement criticizing Mr. Ellison, calling his idea misguided.
In Canada, the citizenship and immigration minister last week announced a new enhanced-security card for immigrants, who currently carry only an easily forged letter-size paper to show at border crossings. Plans for the card had been in the works for 2003, but now the government will rush it to production sooner, in order to help secure the countrys notoriously porous borders.
According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, national ID cards have long been advocated as a means to enhance national security, unmask potential terrorists, and guard against illegal immigrants. The Washington privacy advocacy group says that national IDs are in use in most European countries, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, but that they have been consistently rejected in the United States for at least 30 years. 
