Philip, I have been thinking a lot about your project. I think that you should consider switching your focus from Metro Card (primarily for riding buses or subways) to a more generalized ID card. It seems amazing to me that, with all of the attention being paid to airport security searches, that people don't talk about issuing everyone a high tech ID card that includes some form of bio-marking to ensure that it can only be used by the actual person. If everyone who wants to fly had this card, then it would be easy to distinguish between known, trustworthy people, and those who either had not flown much or who were not yet in the system. These people, then, would be searched, but everyone else could just go through without taking off their shoes, etc.
I suppose that there is some kind of psychological barrier here: we all imagine Nazi soldiers forcing people to show their "papers", and we think that USA should not require this kind of authoritarian police action. But, times have changed since 9-11, and I think people will gradually become more tolerant of government safeguards that might have seemed overly invasive in the past.
Anyway, such a card could also be used as a credit card, Metro Card, etc.
Philip,
ReplyDeleteI have been thinking a lot about your project. I think that you should consider switching your focus from Metro Card (primarily for riding buses or subways) to a more generalized ID card. It seems amazing to me that, with all of the attention being paid to airport security searches, that people don't talk about issuing everyone a high tech ID card that includes some form of bio-marking to ensure that it can only be used by the actual person. If everyone who wants to fly had this card, then it would be easy to distinguish between known, trustworthy people, and those who either had not flown much or who were not yet in the system. These people, then, would be searched, but everyone else could just go through without taking off their shoes, etc.
I suppose that there is some kind of psychological barrier here: we all imagine Nazi soldiers forcing people to show their "papers", and we think that USA should not require this kind of authoritarian police action. But, times have changed since 9-11, and I think people will gradually become more tolerant of government safeguards that might have seemed overly invasive in the past.
Anyway, such a card could also be used as a credit card, Metro Card, etc.