Digital transportation identities

The information technology world buzzes with discussions of identity management. Vehicle identification numbers, vehicle title, vehicle registrations, vehicle manifests, license plates and driver licenses all uniquely identify some relationship between people and vehicles. And as soon as these records were computerized these identities became digital. Transportation and motor vehicle departments have been in the digital identity management business as long as anyone.

There’s another buzz going around in addition and related to identity management and that concerns national identification (ID) cards (or electronic passports) and the Transportation Workers Identification Credential (TWIC). In these cases there exist many reasons why this next generation of credential will be digital. The transportation industry has been using the equivalent of these in transponders for electronic tolling, smart cards for transit, proximity parking cards and other digital credentials for some time.

Are we headed toward an ID card?

So why does there seem to be a lot of angst around the idea of a national ID card? Primarily, the concerns center on privacy. Yet many of the credentials used today make the job of identity theft and privacy abuse much more likely. Many have information that is easy to copy (particularly those that use magnetic stripes), often don’t secure information (use cryptography) on the credential (you can just read a driver’s license), and while efforts have made them more difficult to counterfeit, they still fall far short of the protections offered by current state-of-the-art digital IDs.

Digital credentials and in particular smart cards using digital certificates and digital signatures in combination with strong authentication provide a much better means of safeguarding privacy and preventing identity theft. Certainly the trends in industry around electronic product codes (www.epcglobalinc.org) using radio frequency identification (RFID) mean that digital identification will be all around us.

Many countries in Europe are headed down the path of smart card-based national IDs. Frankly there are some good reasons. In particular they enable people to have a single credential that could be used across transportation and other applications, and it would be more secure.

Just look in your wallet, purse or briefcase at the number of cards used to travel and get around day to day. It’s getting silly and it’s cumbersome. I use my driver’s license more at airports or for personal identification than I ever will for my car. I use a toll transponder on the highway, another type of transponder (proximity card) for building and possibly parking, but not my license. I often take public transportation to work so I have a “T” pass.

Some organizations also require a separate employee identification card, working with government or another company requires either a visitor pass or a contractor ID, and now we add on top of this electronic passports and TWIC cards. This does not even begin to get into the other cards and PIN numbers.

Something similar is going on in my digital life. I have a number of accounts, user names and passwords, and it continues to grow. There is a limit to the number of PIN numbers and passwords any person can handle. So the combination of my need to get around and gain access in both a logical and physical sense makes a pretty good argument for a multipurpose digital credential.

Taking the lead in digital

So why take up the national and digital ID argument in this transportation journal? I believe that the opportunity exists for the transportation profession to take the lead in making digital identities mainstream in the U.S., otherwise we will have a repeat of the electronic toll collection transponder scenario.

Some states will adopt one standard and manage to make it incompatible with others. Vehicles will have a series of digital identities that will find it hard to share data. The transportation profession will not be able to share this information among themselves and with others. This does not require a single technology but it does require the use of common data definitions. The National Transportation Communications for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Protocol, or NTCIP, has made some progress in this area but both its use and scope needs to increase. It is not enough for ITS practitioners to have a means of sharing data; in order to leverage our infrastructure investment we need to be able to share information and use this infrastructure across government and with the private sector when appropriate. Well-crafted digital transportation identities provide an opportunity for expanded mobility, increased security and maximum safety.

The benefits of well-crafted digital transportation identities would include but not be limited to:

• Improve cargo safety by making it easy to tie together shippers, contents, vehicles and receivers;
• Make travel easier by creating a single credential able to be used across modes and make it easier for people to use mass transit;
• Create a basis for travel identification that does not discriminate by country of origin, or any other basis;
• Advance the state of telematics by making vehicles an extension of their owner and the individual;
• Advance telematics by easing the interaction with other information technologies;
• Medical history could be available for emergency personnel in case of an accident;
• Leverage infrastructure investments across states, regions and the country, and conceivably the world;
• Allow individuals and organizations to control the use of their personal and organization information by centralizing their identity and making it easier for them to control; and
• Make possible the use of state-of-the-art security approaches to make sure that identity theft does not occur and that privacy is assured.

Digital licenses

This leads me to believe that a digital driver’s license makes sense. The advances in smart card technology, credential management, RFID, low-cost memory and the security to ensure privacy and prevent identity theft make digital licenses an option. The federal government is going to give credentials to a significant portion of the population. This means that a multipurpose credential meets multiple needs right at the start and could leverage federal investment. TME