As of June 1, 2009, Canadians and Americans alike require an Enhanced Drivers License (EDL), a NEXUS card, a FAST card, a passport, or a Secure Certificate of Indian Status to cross a Canadian-American land border. In Canada, only Ontario, Quebec, B.C. and Manitoba have moved ahead to develop provincial EDLs; the Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island governments have all decided not to provide these high tech, low privacy, cards to the constituencies (Source). To apply for an EDL in a participating province, all you need to do is undergo an intensive and extensive 30 minute face-to-face interview at your provincial equivalent of the Department of Motor Vehicles. Your reward for being verbally probed? A license that includes a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag and a biometric photograph. The RFID tag includes a unique number, like your Social Insurance Number (SIN), that is transmitted to anyone with an RFID reader. These readers can be purchased off the shelf by regular consumers, and number your EDL emits is not encrypted and does not require an authentication code to be displayed on a reader. Effectively, RFID tag numbers are easier to capture than your webmail password.

As part of the EDL process in BC, there is a capturing of facial biometric data to better authenticate license holders. I noted that I was confused about how effective such a system might be without a mass adoption of the EDL a few months ago, and then it was revealed that the new ‘more secure’ (non-EDL) BC drivers licenses would all require capturing facial images in a way that images could be analyzed and (presumably) integrated with the analysis techniques one submits to when getting an EDL. The ‘security’ of EDLs was brought over to other licensing environments in order to actually ‘guarantee’ the security that the EDL supposedly offers. In particular, the new (non-EDL) licenses include

holographic overlays and laser-engraving or raised elements such as the cardholder’s image and signature…The B.C. government said the cards will incorporate technology that analyzes characteristics that do not change, such as the size and location of cheekbones and the distance between the eyes. This “facial recognition technology … will enable ICBC to compare a cardholder’s image with their existing image on file and with the corporation’s entire database of millions of images.” (Source)

Fast forward from February 2009 to December 2009, and we have the first confirmed case of ICBC’s facial recognition system detecting a high-profile fraud case. Richard Ernest Wainright renewed his (non-EDL) license and a ‘short time later’ the facial recognition system found a probable match between the Wainright identity and the Richard Ernest Perran identity, with Perran being associated with various illegal activities. This led to the police ultimately investigating Perran and discovering the personal information of 1,400 income assistance clients, and has provoked internal government reviews and an investigation by the Information and Privacy Commissioner of BC. As of December 4, 2009, Perran has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

While this might appear as a definite ‘good thing’ it would seem as though the technology deployed by ICBC is (a) not meeting the expectations that had been set for it; (b) the Perran case is being used to confirm facial recognition’s necessity or (at least) its utility. To begin, I had come to believe (perhaps erroneously) that the identification system was supposed to operate, effectively, on site when the new license was to be issued. As I read the article from the Times Colonist, it seems as though there is a delay period between detection and action. I would suggest that this likely has to do with problems that were found with the recognition system during the BC EDL trials (Phase One summarized here); when looking at the publicly released documents

we found that every time that the system has identified a duplicate applicant based on facial recognition that it incorrectly identified the duplicate; every ‘flag’ has actually been an error. Further, as I understand it the facial technologies compress the face to a 2D image, which substantially reduces the accuracy of detecting duplicates reliably. (Source)

I noted in February that, “[f]or privacy advocates, the integration of facial recognition at the receipt of licenses means that the state can potentially create a massive facial database that could subsequently be used for non-driver’s license purposes (e.g. running a captured image of a criminal through the standardized database). Further, it speaks to the likelihood of ‘function creep’, as the technologies used alongside the EDLs are incorporated into ’standard’ licensing procedures.” We’ve seen the extension of facial recognition technologies into non-EDL environments, though to date no transparency (that I’ve found) about false positive rates, general errors, costs of resolving errors, etc. Instead, the public is being ‘sold’ on the effectiveness of the recognition system, which belies its past, massive, failures.

We see further public relations gestures that the technology is effective from ICBC’s Adam Grossman, when he states

…the technology is already getting results.

“It’s still fairly early for us,” he said. “But it’s certainly enabling checks that were not previously possible and uncovering instances of fraud that would not have previously come to light.”

Grossman said the technology is being used by more than 30 jurisdictions in the United States, and called it “the new security benchmark for government-issued documents.” (Source)

Remember that the EDL, and its associated technologies, are the consequence of an American policy initiative that the Americans themselves are unable or unwilling to comply with in significant numbers. Canada’s provinces have been pressured to accept the EDL and its associated securitization processes (though many have resisted such pressures) – we are members of the ‘new security benchmark’ as a consequence of a foreign nation forcing it upon us, not because it was something that we sought out. To suggest that our membership, and detection of this one case, makes facial recognition analysis the equivalent of a gold standard is absurd; we have an unstated number of ‘successfully identified’ fraud cases and this one high profile case. There is no information on false positives. There is no information on the cost of this new program, versus the number of cases correctly identified. In effect, there is not enough substance behind the statement that including facial recognition is useful for the sentence’s validity to be confirmed. Perhaps this is just reminiscent of my memories of Ontario’s welfare crackdowns in the 90s, where huge volumes of government resources were poured into fighting ‘welfare fraud’ at a loss, but I would love to see BC journalists actually challenge some of the government’s security-related statements before just accepting them – some critical engagement on the part of the media is needed on this technology, and dreadfully lacking!

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Update: ‘More Secure’ (non-EDL) Drivers Licenses Coming to BC Soon!
2. Short Thought Concerning Enhanced Drivers Licenses
3. Interview – Enhanced Drivers Licenses on CFUV

As of June 1, 2009, Canadians and Americans alike require an Enhanced Drivers License (EDL), a NEXUS card, a FAST card, a passport, or a Secure Certificate of Indian Status to cross a Canadian-American land border. In Canada, only Ontario, Quebec, B.C. and Manitoba have moved ahead to develop provincial EDLs; the Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island governments have all decided not to provide these high tech, low privacy, cards to the constitutencies (Source). To apply for an EDL in a participating province, all you need to do is undergo an intensive and extensive 30 minute face-to-face interview at your provincial equivalent of the Department of Motor Vehicles. Your reward for being verbally probed? A license that includes a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag and a biometric photograph. The RFID tag includes a unique number, like your Social Insurance Number (SIN), that is transmitted to anyone with an RFID reader. These readers can be purchased off the shelf by regular consumers, and number your EDL emits is not encrypted and does not require an authentication code to be displayed on a reader. Effectively, RFID tag numbers are easier to capture than your webmail password.

EDLs are an incredibly expensive ‘solution’ for individual Canadians to purchase, given that in Ontario alone an EDL will cost almost $30 more than a passport. Further, Manitobans have turned a cold shoulder to these cards; only a few thousand residents have adopted them out of an expected hundred thousand or so. In Ontario, my contacts have told me that the responsible ministry has yet to provide policy documents or manuals to the front line staff who are tasked with issuing these licences. Without their scripts, how will these staff members play their parts in issuing each Canadian a little piece of the great North American security theatre?

EDL programs are big ticket items that Canadian provinces are being pressured to pay for in order to satisfy the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), a unilateral American policy directive. While fiscal conservatives might argue that in this period of reduced government incomes and ballooning debts, such big ticket items should be carefully evaluated, we might ask them why government should be any more careful of spending money on EDLs than it is in otherwise ‘securing’ the border? As recently reported by Dean Beeby, $8.7 million dollars have been spent since 2006 on gates, barriers, fences, sirens and signs to catch people who are trying to illegally cross the border. The catch? Gates have fallen on cars. Cameras can’t actually catch the license plates of illegal night-time border crossers. Automated video analysis systems don’t work. It would seem as though the various props of our Broadway security show should be returned to the manufacturer as defective or even dead on arrival!

If broadcasting an equivalent of a radio-accessible SIN and high financial costs to individual Canadians weren’t enough, there are additional privacy-related issues with EDLs. While the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario is promising that future generations of EDLs will integrate ‘privacy by design’ principles, insofar as future cards won’t broadcast their unique identification numbers without first being activated, the current licenses that are being deployed in that province are absolutely devoid of any real protections (the much touted ‘security sleeve’ is demonstrably faulty). While integrating privacy by design is a positive step forward, Ontario is the only province that has publicly discussed this at length. Moreover, even in Ontario there has been little comment about the worries of government creating massive databanks of facial images that are designed to be rapidly searched. As it stands, facial recognition technologies are sub-par at meeting the expectations that the public has developed from watching 24, Heroes, and other works of science fiction. In fact, massive amounts of research needs to be done to improve accuracy rates of facial recognition technologies, and a large database to conduct tests on to develop the technology is just what the scientist ordered. Thus, while the facial images that are taken of individuals will be of minimal use to government agencies at the moment, we cannot assume that ‘privacy by technological incompetence’ will be something Canadians can rely on over the long term.

Perhaps most importantly, privacy advocates’ underlying worries about these cards have not been addressed. As I have previously noted,

In the cases of both radio tags and biometric data, there exists a serious danger of function creep. As more and more members of the Canadian and American public carry these devices, increased pressures will extend how these documents are used, exceeding their initial purpose of securing American borders (Source).

While various RFID proponents have insisted that RFID tags cannot, in practice, be used to track user data, the web cookies that we download after visiting websites were never intended to let companies track us. Just last year however, the Wall Street Journal published an article revealing that, lo and behold, the company that will do no evil (i.e. Google) is using web cookies as an “Internet tracking technology that enables it to more precisely follow Web-surfing behavior across affiliated sites” (Source). RFID tags are meant to track cattle as they move around the world; surveillance is the reason for their very existence. Why would we ever assume that this technology would ultimately be used for some other purpose as soon as it were applied to human targets, when other evidence demonstrates that non-surveillance technologies are readily requisitioned to monitor our daily activities?

This worry about pervasive surveillance is something that Dr. Andrew Clement has discussed in various presentations through the Canadian IDentity Forum. He has noted that, despite government assurances, there is no evidence that real speed enhancements will be realized at the border.  At most, Canadians can expect to pass through borders 5-10 seconds faster than they do right now. Moreover, while there are claims that EDLs are somehow ‘more secure’ than present licenses, this is just another part of the script in the Canadian/American security theatre. You see, to qualify for an EDL, individuals must show foundational documents (e.g. birth certificates) to prove that they are who they claim to be; where a foundational document is successfully forged the ‘security’ offered by the EDL is defeated. Moreover, the RFID tag can be copied, letting another person clone the tag’s unique number. When Ms. Daghum comes to the border with her cloned tag, she can have Ms. Ouziel’s profile brought up on the border guard’s screen. If Ms. Daghum physically appears like Ms. Ouziel, then a border guard could be fooled about the authenticity of the RFID tag based on the information called from government databases. The RFID is insecure and the biometric image currently unreliable – how, again, do these cards actually make us safer (as opposed to making us feel safer) from terror threats?

If high costs, minimal border-crossing efficiencies, unreliable biometric images, and easily duplicated RFID tag numbers aren’t enough to make you wonder about the capacity of EDLs to secure the border, I’ll leave you with two concluding points. RFID tags, and the data that they emit, contribute to what  scholars such as David Lyon and Kevin Haggerty have termed ‘the surveillance society’, or a society where  “[w]e are inadvertently handing over to centralized authorities an infrastructure of visibility the likes of which no society has ever seen before” (Source). Canadians regularly moan that they can’t protect their own privacy but, by refusing to adopt an EDL and using a passport instead, they will find that protecting their privacy is actually cheaper than buying into the surveillance society. Get a passport, and congratulate yourself on being a privacy advocate by taking yourself out to dinner on your EDL-related savings!

Second, as has been noted by Canadian civil liberties groups;

…a passport is an internationally recognized travel document that gives the holder certain rights, while a driver’s licence is not . . . If the U.S. decides to deport a Canadian while she is carrying her passport, she must be deported back to Canada.

A Canadian carrying a driver’s licence could be deported to anywhere in the world (Source)

We are all unfortunately aware of the horrors that can occur when suspected ‘terrorists’ are sent to places such as Syria. While Maher Arar’s case does demonstrate that a passport will not necessarily persuade American authorities to act in within the confines of law, an EDL will not legally persuade foreign authorities that you should be sent to Canada instead of a torture cell in Syria. Even in a world where a passport has diminished legal standing in the eyes of American authorities that diminished standing is better than the absolute lack of legal standing that EDL-holders are left with.

In summation, you’d be well advised not to take part in this most recent act of the Canadian-American security theatre. You’ll pleasantly find that there’s a reduced entry fee to the security show with a passport (with money left over to buy a drink and snack!). Far more importantly, the passport might actually prevent the ushers/border guards from deporting you to a truly horrible place to ‘enjoy’ unspeakable acts of barbarity. Be your own privacy advocate, boybott the EDL, and buy yourself a passport if you want to cross a Canadian-American land border.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. EDL ‘Oopsies’ Around Canada
2. EDL Update: Canada backpedals on sharing personal database with U.S.
3. Update: Ontario EDL Suppliers Named

In Ontario’s case, it appears as though there is some confusion about whether or not the province can actually deploy the licenses in time to meet the June 1, 2009 Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) deadline – after this date, Canadians will need to use either an EDL or passport to cross a land border into the US. While the Sun is reporting that the deadline won’t be met by the Ontario provincial government, and the Star is saying that Minister Bradley thinks that only “some” applicants will get the licenses in time, CTV is noting that Bradley insists that the licenses will be available in time to meet the WHTI deadline. No one totally agrees on what is going on in Ontario concerning the EDL roll-out. They can all agree, however, that EDLs are terribly expensive: whereas a passport will cost $87, and Ontario EDL will run you $115. An affordable ‘solution’ to border travel indeed…

In Manitoba, it was expected that around 100,000 Manitobans would want to get their hands on EDLs. Unfortunately, it seems like the government slightly overestimated the demand: since February 2, 2009 less than 1,500 people have applied. 24,000 have applied for passports in Manitoba. Oops.

In light of Ontario and Manitoba fumbling of their EDL-plans, Chantel Bernier (almost presciently) noted on April 13, 2009 that,

Nobody can really demonstrate so far that [EDLs are] worth the intrusion on privacy…Frankly, it’s probably going to crumble under its own weight. (Source)

At the same time, we’re seeing a fumble by Passport Canada. Manitoba is a case that shows that people likely aren’t all that interested in ‘enhancing’ their drivers licenses, but I’d bet that most of them would like the process of getting a passport to be quick and relatively painless. (Un)fortunately, Passport Canada realizes that Canadians are abandoning the ‘net in droves, and are cutting their online services. This is happening because of privacy issues and security issues that recently put the agency in a poor public light, but is telling that rather than receive funding to address these risks Passport Canada is having to shut down what were convenient ways of dealing with the agency. All of the funding that provinces have been pouring into their EDL programs could have been far better used to assist a (seemingly) struggling Passport Canada so that Canadians were actually better serviced and able to cross the US/Canada border.

I guess that bureaucratic politics have, once again, won out over providing efficiencies to the Canadian public. At least the Maritime provinces don’t appear to have been sucked down the EDL money-pit. I guess this shows that there is something to arguments for Maritime pragmatism after all!

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Now Showing: EDL Security Theatre
2. EDL Update: Canada backpedals on sharing personal database with U.S.
3. Update: Ontario EDL Suppliers Named

Something that is interesting: To get an EDL in BC will cost you $110 ($75 for a regular 5-year license plus an addition $35 fee); at that price, a passport ($87/92) is cheaper! It seems to me that getting and EDL at that price is just foolish; you still need a passport to fly into the US, and a passport is cheaper if you will both be driving and flying. EDLs (again) come off as a half-assed idea that don’t really accommodate Canadians, but are meant as a passport substitute for Americans who are far less likely to widely travel abroad than Canadians.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Update: More on Quebec EDLs
2. Update: EDLs in New Brunswick
3. Update: EDLs in Saskatchewan

This means that both New Brunswick and Saskatchewan will not be going forward with EDLs, though Alberta. Quebec, Manitoba, Ontario, and B.C. are all going ahead with EDLs. I’ll be curious to see if the rest of the Atlantic provinces follow New Brunswick’s lead, and how this might shape the national discourse on EDLs.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Note: EDLs in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia?
2. Update: EDLs in Saskatchewan and Quebec
3. Update: More on Quebec EDLs

Of interest:

1. Apparently the New Brunswick government’s support of EDLs has ‘waned’ after receiving some report or another. While the reporter doesn’t mention the report by name, I have a suspicion that it’s the report commissioned by the Atlantic registrars of motor vehicles that was referenced in the May 9, 2008 press release of the Council of Atlantic Premiers. That report has not been disclosed to the public. (I lack anything that would substantiate or disprove the claim that New Brunswick’s interest has waned; I also don’t know what the report stated and so can’t know if it would influence the government’s position.)
2. Service Nova Scotia has stated that the province is looking into EDLs, but as of yet does not have a deployment timeline. (I lack information that would substantiate or disprove this claim.)
3. Manitoba is taking applications for EDLs right now, and will begin shipping them in 2 weeks. (This definitely seems on the money, and we can presume that it is accurate.)

Of course, we have to wonder whether or not these items are actually true given the gross misinformation surrounding these elements of the article. In particular, the author fails to identify what data is contained within, or emitted from, the EDL (i.e. the proxy identifier), fails to accurately identify the privacy risks that advocates have noted, and implies that EDLs will speed up border crossing times (to date, it looks like it only shaves about .8 seconds off each border cross).

My problem is that while the author makes it seem like EDLs are particularly risky from a privacy point of view (which they are), what he is actually talking about are ePassports (and similar smart cards). EDLs are not smart cards! They’re an entirely different beast, using EPC Gen 2 RFIDs, rather than the smart card standard.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Update: EDLs in New Brunswick
2. Update: More on Quebec EDLs
3. Update: EDLs Live in BC

“If there are five people, five kids and two parents, if they had to all pay for a passport it would be an expensive requirements for them to come here” (Source)

Not withstanding Charest’s poor math (I count seven people in his ‘equation’), the costs that he is referencing are for the people coming to Quebec, not the costs of Quebecer’s traveling to the US. Were he really concerned about costs, he could adopt the line that the OPC and IPC (Ontario) have been pushing: Canadian’s should have their passport’s subsidized, and the lifetime of these documents extended. Were he honestly concerned about the privacy concerns, he would be pushing passports, not EDLs. Fortunately, of course, Charest is a stanch ‘supporter’ of privacy:

“[Privacy is a serious issue. We believe we need to do what has to be done to protect the privacy of individuals” (Source)

In light of this, one has to ask: if the Quebec premier recognizes privacy as such a serious issue, then why isn’t the Quebec information commissioner’s privacy assessment available to the public? While the information commissioner can’t disclose what, exactly, was in the report, the fact that he is warning Quebecer’s to “be careful” is telling about what the report actually contains. One can presume that the information that the commissioner included in his report bore resemblance to the warning found in the CBSA’s Privacy Impact Assessment of BC’s EDL program.

If you’re living in Ontario or Quebec, and are interested in the issues surrounding EDLs, I’d highly recommend that you attend the National Public Forum on EDLs. The organizers have lined up a host of very knowledgeable individuals and groups who have been stridently working to reform the EDL systems that are being deployed around the country.

March 24, 2009 from 9:00 to 12:00
Ottawa Library Auditorium, 120 Metcalfe Street

The aim of this public forum is to increase the awareness of policy makers, Parliamentarians, the media, and the public regarding the concerns associated with the introduction of a new Enhanced Driver’s Licence in most Canadian provinces. This new citizenship identity document which has been primarily driven by the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), will include radio-frequency identification (RFID) and biometric capabilities, raising a host of potential privacy and civil liberties issues. The Assistant Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Director of policy at the Information and Privacy Commission of Ontario will participate, as well as Canadian and U.S. civil society experts. University of Toronto researchers will also demonstrate the capabilities of RFID and biometric technology used in BC’s and other provinces EDLs.

This forum is organized by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Consumers Council of Canada, the Council of Canadians, the Information Policy Research Program of the Faculty of Information – University of Toronto and the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group.

* It should be noted that the CBC article is somewhat off regarding provinces that are interested/testing EDLs. To date, Alberta has staunchly maintained that they will not be adopting EDLs.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Update: EDLs in Saskatchewan and Quebec
2. Update: EDLs in New Brunswick
3. Update: EDLs in Saskatchewan

. . . is applauding the province’s decision to back away from the enhanced licences until legislation addresses concerns about how personal information is used and how vulnerable it is to hackers.

“It’s highly significant,” Bernier said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “The province seems to come to the conclusion … that the cost-benefit analysis is not convincing.” (Source)

It will be interesting to see whether or not Saskatchewan reintroduces EDL legislation after Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner manages to implement an ‘on/off’ switch that she has been talking about with Jesse Brown for the past few weeks. My suspicion is that they will, but that they will let Ontario do the heavy lifting in this area (I expect that Ontario’s influence with DHS will be more substantial than Saskatchewan, but maybe that isn’t/won’t be the case).

In Quebec, Jean Charest will be announcing (today) that Quebecers will soon be able to get EDLs to cross Canadian/American borders. Privacy advocates there have noted that this issue is entirely passing ‘under the radar’ – somewhat depressingly, Ligue des droits et libertes is suggesting that what occurred in Ontario and other provinces constituted a ‘debate’. If Quebec didn’t even have that minor of a conversation, I would say that it’s not that EDLs are ‘passing under the radar’ so much as ‘the public is being kept entirely oblivious to all this’. Of course, this is an advocacy group talking, and I haven’t been involved in the French discourse surrounding (or not, as the case may be) EDLs, limiting my ability to substantiate Lique’s comments.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Update: EDLs in Saskatchewan
2. Update: More on Quebec EDLs
3. Update: EDLs in New Brunswick

The criteria from homeland security has been changing. The costs have been increasing and if they go to a point where it just doesn’t make sense anymore then we’re not going to move forward. (Source)

It seems as though costs have risen from $50 – $80 dollars, without a clear sign of that stopping. Cost (financial and political) really seems to be the force keeping these licenses out of the hands of the public.

This being said, I should be fair and point out that the Privacy Commissioner of Saskatchewan hasn’t received the Privacy Impact Assessment from Sask. Government Insurance (Source). The Commissioner wasn’t outright opposed to the EDLs, and is instead suggesting that the province look to its neighbors for ways of tweaking the Bill 72 legislation.To me, this suggests looking to BC and Ontario. I don’t know exactly what the consequences of this kind of ‘tweaking’ would be, especially given how limited those governments incorporated suggested privacy protections, but it would be nice to see documents that really put the Commissioner’s cards (and desired changes) on the table. Seems like a FOI moment….

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Update: EDLs in Saskatchewan and Quebec
2. Update: More on Quebec EDLs
3. Update: EDLs Live in BC

Enhanced driver’s licenses give confidence that the person holding the card is the person who is supposed to be holding the card, and it’s less elaborate than Real ID. (Source)

As long as states are running the databases, rather than there being a central federal database, she’s willing to get behind EDLs. While it’s good that the DHS is retreating from a full-scale deployment of Real ID, I’m not so sure that shifting to EDLs is a ‘solution’ to the privacy issues that are discussed surrounding the RFIDs in EDLs.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Update: Manitoba and EDLs
2. Update: EDLs in New Brunswick
3. Update: EDLs in Saskatchewan and Quebec