As part of the U.S. Department of State’s initiative to simplify and streamline customer service interactions and processes, the Office of Passport Services has started a 90-day pilot program for online passport card applications.

Adult U.S. citizens living in the United States and Canada who currently hold a valid 10-year U.S. passport book may participate in the program. Applications must include an acceptable digital photograph and a payment of $30 via Pay.gov. Applicants will not be required to mail in their current passport book and forms. 

Codebench Inc. and Hirsch Identive announced the integration of Codebench’s PIVCheck Plus software with Hirsch Identive’s Velocity Management Software, which aims to provide federal government and commercial customers with a solution for identity validation, authentication and PACS registration using mobile handheld devices.

Pairing PIVCheck with Velocity helps users comply with HSPD-12 and PIV-I requirements by enabling them to validate and register FIPS-201 credentials, continue that validation on an ongoing, user-defined schedule, and provide instant certificate status when the credentials are presented at a reader. 

Beginning in fiscal year 2012, U.S. government agencies must upgrade their physical and logical access control systems to provide federal employees and contractors with more secure and reliable forms of identification using Personal Identity Verification (PIV) credentials.

These credentials must leverage smart card and biometric technology in accordance with National Institute of Standards and Technology guidelines embodied in FIPS 201. These upgrades must be completed before federal agencies may use development and technology refresh funds to complete other activities. 

In an effort to increase the security of the current EMV chip and PIN, SmartMetric has created an EMV card enhanced with biometrics.

The SmartMetric Chip & Biometric EMV Card incorporates fingerprints to activate the card. It’s designed to increase the security of standard EMV chip and PIN cards, which SmartMetric claims are still vulnerable to fraud attacks, even though they are safer than a magnetic stripe card. 

With more and more transaction and interaction becoming electronic, privacy concerns are on the increase. This is especially true in the context of government-to-citizen and government-to-employee transactions.

The emergence of contactless technology as the preferred interface for smart card transactions is increasing the risk of data leakage. The result is that more personal data than ever before is being shared to create a web of information about who we are and what we do.

Some people believe that the information they are required to provide during a government transaction is excessive and irrelevant, especially as recent devices in the marketplace now make it easier than ever to capture sensitive details transmitted over-the-air and over-the-Internet. With so much personal information already available, questions are being asked as to how this information is stored, exchanged and used by the authorities. 

EMV in the U.S. won’t be chip and PIN but instead a new technology that takes advantage of the online infrastructure available in the U.S., according to Stephanie Ericksen, head of Authentication Product Integration at Visa USA.

In the U.S. payment transactions are authorized in real time. In other countries this connectivity doesn’t exist which brings up the need for a PIN for further authorization.

“At the time EMV was created, the cost and complexity of connecting a merchant POS device to some telecommunication networks was prohibitive. The way around that was to introduce ‘floor limits’ and create a magnetic stripe alternative – EMV chip-and-PIN – as a counter to potential fraud,” Ericksen states in a blog post. 

Operational Research Consultants Inc. (ORC), a subsidiary of WidePoint Corp., has been authorized to issue PIV-I as a certified non-federal issuer.

As a non-federal issuer, ORCs identity credentials, issued to government contractors, state and local governments, first responders and health care providers, have additional interoperability for customers who wish to conduct e-government and e-commerce transactions with other entities across the Federal Bridge.