FB
Can you describe how this V-ID concept came together? How did the research from your book, "AFTER: How America Confronted The September 12th Era" contribute to the idea of a biometrically secure identification card?

SB
I have conducted hundreds of interviews in both New York and Washington, within the Justice Department or Customs or in typical office towers. Each time, I would experience the same thing. I would wait for ten minutes while someone called upstairs. Then they would make me this stupid looking badge so I could get into the place, but there was no security there. They might ask me for a drivers license, but they had no real way of knowing that I was who I said I was, and they had no real way of knowing that who I had said I was wasn't someone who they might wanted to have checked more carefully before they let them into the building.

So I kept thinking that if I only had one card I could just give to everybody that would allow me access, that would be a lot easier. I address in my book, in a more substantial way, the issues relating to the balance we have to strike between security and privacy.

The combination of thinking about ease of access, security, privacy and sitting in on a lot of meetings with the Department of Homeland Security and the new Transportation Security Administration, where they were wrestling with the issues of how to do a Registered Travel Program, what to do about screening people who work at the ports, chemical facilities, railways, what would they do the day after someone blew themselves up at a Shopping Mall... all this led me to think that someone ought to do this V-ID concept and I just sort of filed the idea away, thinking that likely someone would do this.

When it didn't happen, I found myself last December writing a column in Newsweek about how we had done nothing to protect so-called soft targets, office building, trains, Shopping Malls etc. The column spelled out that someone should do a V-ID type program, but that the government should not do it, for many important reasons.

I think the government doing it would be a terrible danger to our privacy. The other part of it is that the government will screw it up if they try to do it.

Then I found myself thinking that this is such a good idea, I was tempted to do it myself if someone else doesn't.

I sort of advertised to the rest of the world for the idea, last December, ten months ago.

After the book came out I decided that I wanted to do V-ID myself. I know how to start businesses and I know these issues cold.

FB
You have raised two very interesting points. The first is privacy protection and ensuring that privacy is observed. Can you cover how you will deal with this?

SB
There are two very important aspects.

One is that we are designing the system so that we will not be able to track your movements. If you have our card, and the card succeeds and is recognized at the multiple bottlenecks you go through in your life, train stations, airports or Madison Square Gardens, we won't know that. Our information only goes in one direction and that's sending our membership list on a continuous out to the turnstiles. We don't need to and won't get anything back from these turnstiles.

When I first presented the idea too TransCore, which is the company that operates the E-ZPass System (at toll booths), they loved the idea. When I explained that the information flow was one way only, their response was, "that makes it ten times easier than what we currently do with E-ZPass." With E-ZPass, a record is kept of when you went over a bridge, because when you get your bill you want to know what the bill is based on. What we told them was that we wanted a system that does nothing as difficult as what they now do. This made the throughput much faster and the entire process a lot easier. So that's the first aspect, we are not going to have that information.

The second aspect is, we will have information about you, because you are a member or because your employer has signed you up or you're a season's ticket holder a Madison Square Gardens, or because you have bought it on your own. We are not going to sell those lists to anyone, give those lists to anyone or use them to market anything else to you.

We're going to have your name, address, credit card number because we are going to send you a bill, but we are not going to give that information to anyone.

The most important thing about what I am saying is that we are going to back up our promise by doing something that I did when I was running Brill's Content and The American Lawyer. We will have an Ombudsman who is totally independent, who has complete run of our place to make sure we are not doing anything improper. We are going to make an arrangement with one of the privacy groups, maybe it will be The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) or The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), to select the Independent Ombudsman and have the Ombudsman report to them, not us. That's one way we can ensure to people that we are doing what we say we do.

FB
The other area you brought up was that your solution is better that what a government ID card could establish.

Can you tell us about that?

SB
First, everything the government now does in terms of credentials does not include continuous checking. They don't have one aspect that we have, which is continuous validation, continuous updating.

TransCore does this at all the tollbooths in the country. In other words, if you haven't paid your American Express Card, you're going to get stopped at the gate of the New Jersey Turnpike and be forced to pay cash because TransCore has the ability to continuously update and validate the card.

One of the problems is that right now if your background is checked so that you can be a screener at the airport and then six months later you go bad, they really don't have any way of knowing that.

That is a feature that we have that the government hasn't been able to offer.

Secondly, all of your readers would probably agree that the whole history of the government is that, when it comes to technology and large data bases, they typically just don't do it very well or as quickly or as cost effectively as the private sector.

Look at the INS, or the inability of the FBI to communicate with other branches within the Justice department, let alone with the rest of the government.

Here, I think we have a solution that spreads the cost of this across multiple venues instead of a stovepipe type solution.

There is a certain way to credential people who work in Customs, Agriculture, and Hazardous Chemicals - all of those are different systems, with different technologies and procedures. Having one procedure, one technology, one process that you go through to get one card, the cost becomes a fraction of what has been reported about what the government says it has to spend on all these other things.

FB
What would the enrollment costs for your card be?

SB
The costs will be in the $20 to $30 range to go through the initial application process and then it will be a few dollars a month just to keep the card valid.

Right now, I have an ID Card that gets me into my building and I don't even have to show it to any one. I walk through a turnstile that reads my card and it's not a very secure system. I can guarantee you, that type of solution costs a lot more than what we are talking about.

We want to go to landlords and say, this is a system you should put in for your tennants and the value is that tennants can use it to come in and out of your building. You'll know who is in your building and you would probably want to know that someone working in your mailroom on the 19th floor just went on a terrorist watch list. It will cost the landlord less money than the system they now use and the people that have V-ID will also be able to use it to get in the fast line at an airport. Instead of them thinking of this thing as a big pain in the neck, they'll think of it as a perk.

So, it sort of reverses the whole burden of this thing, if you will. We'll be able to, when we are up and going, have people apply individually. As well, we may partner with some credit card companies and people would apply as part of their credit card process. There will likely be mass purchases of it; for example, if it takes a long time to get into a sports arena, or a casino, because now there are some pretty heavy security checks, season ticket holders or frequent casino visitors could be told that they are now eligible for the card as a perk for their patronage.

FB
What is the timing for starting up?

SB
We are starting with one system that we are going to implement at one of our partner's own corporate facilities, probably within a few weeks. Some time within the first half of the new year we will have some pilot projects up and running, maybe in an airport, an office building and a couple of other different types of venues. Then we need to build acceptance of the concept and acceptance of the way it works and the cost. We expect that we will be visible and people will see something that actually exists very shortly.

FB
Thank you very much Steven for telling us about your new initiative.

SB
Thank you Peter.

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