IndustryDayTranscript.DOC

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

PASSPORT CARD INDUSTRY DAY )PRIVATE

CONFERENCE )

Pages:

1 through 73

Place:

McLean, Virginia

Date:

November 17, 2006

SCIENCE APPLICATIONS INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION

PASSPORT CARD INDUSTRY DAY )

CONFERENCE )

Combo Conference Room

SAIC

1710 SAIC Drive

McLean, Virginia

Friday, November 17, 2006

The parties met, pursuant to notice, at

1:10 p.m.

BEFORE: JOHN CRABBE, Moderator

ATTENDEES:

FRANK MOSS, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Passport Services

ROBERT RAWLS, Department of Homeland Security

KATHY MEJIA, Department of State Contracts

TRACY MINTER, Department of State

ACKIE GRAY, Department of Homeland Security

KEITH BRUCE, Department of State

GARY CHRISTELIS, GET

JOHN HOCHSTEIN, Biometric Association

THIERRY BURGESS, ASK

MARC MAYER, CGI Federal

RON ROTHSTEIN, General Dynamics

RIDES HILLMAN, Raytheon Company

TRICIA IVESON, SI International

JEFFREY LONG, Digimarc Corporation

KEVIN KAIL, EPC Solutions

FRANK SANGIORGI, Motorola

HOWARD BLISS, Digital Card Systems

MIKE KIMURA, Orient American

WALT AUGUSTINOWICZ, Identity Stronghold LLN

ATTENDEES: (Cont'd.)

TRES WILEY, Texas Instruments

LOUIS PARKS, SecureRF

KEN SCHEFLEN, Gemalto

ERIC HEINEMAN, Symbols Technologies

JOHN MERCER, Kelly, Anderson & Associates

WILLIAM ALSBROOKS, General Dynamics

ISAAC YOUNG, Fargo Electronics

PEYTON OLD, Fasver Technology

LARS GABEL, Graphic Security Systems

ROBERT BALDERSTON, Canadian Bank Note

P R O C E E D I N G S

(1:10 p.m.)

MR. CRABBE: First, welcome to SAIC. We're pleased to have you here and hope this will be an informative dialogue on both sides of the podium.

A few opening announcements, and let me post the agenda. We're going to have my next set of announcements coming up shortly. After that we'll have a program background presented by Frank Moss, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, and Robert Rawls, the program manager for DHS and the WHTI program.

After that we will take a really short break and then come back, and we will introduce the panel and begin with questions and answers. And that works both ways. There will be questions for you all as well because we're here to get your views.

Now, you probably can't read that. SAIC required that we give you all of this good information. Mainly, it is a no smoking facility. You cannot use cell phones, and I'll ask you right now to please turn off your cell phones, your Blackberries, your PDAs and give us your undivided attention. There are phone booths outside that you can use. There's a message board. This conference is being recorded. A transcript is being made. A list of attendees and the transcript will be posted on FedBizOpps.

You should not leave the facilities beyond the lobby of the conference center, and hopefully there are no firearms, surveillance equipment or any of those sorts of things. When you leave after the conference, please turn in your badges. When you're asking questions, please use either this microphone or there is a handheld microphone that we can pass around. We need that to be sure that the stenographer can capture all of the questions and answers.

And lastly, before we get started and Frank joins us, this is to remind you that this is an RFI, not an RFP, so anything you hear here is guidance. It's not official, and it may not appear in the final RFP, and that will be I'm sure reiterated by the panel members as we go on.

Without further ado, Frank Moss, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Passport Services, will give you a background on the program.

MR. MOSS: Thank you very much, John, and first of all on behalf of the State Department I want to welcome all of you here. This is a phenomenal turnout. Looking at the document, the list of attendees, it's an absolute who's who of the industry of card technology, vicinity read, smart card, what have you, so we're very happy to have you here, and we really do look upon this as an educational session for us as we move from the concept of an RFI into an RFP.

What I'd like to do today is really cover three or four main issues, and one of them is really background. How did we get to this point? I'm going to talk a little bit about the notice of proposed rulemaking we have out right now for public comment, some about the RFI, I would say at the beginning if anyone has a question during my comments they don't have to wait until the end. Put your hand up. I'll try and address that at that time, okay? Thank you. Also I want to thank SAIC by the way for hosting this -- it's a fabulous facility -- and for all other infrastructure help that has helped make today happen.

So on to the question of the background of what we call at the State Department the passport card. I hope you're all aware of Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. It will affect your own capabilities to travel to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda in the coming months.

We're about 60 to 70 days from actually having the first phase of it going into effect which is the air portion. What we're talking about today, however, is a document that will be used in two environments, if you will. That is the land border crossing environment with Canada and Mexico and also in the cruise environment.

Let me tell you just a little about how we got to this point of coming up with the passport card and what we visualize it to be from an operational sense at the State Department. To find out how we got here really you have to go back to what we call in the government an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking that was published September 1, 2005, virtually the same day that Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.

In response to that, and in comments made about that advanced notice, one of the cogent criticisms made of WHTI was it was too expensive. You had to have something different than a passport. You couldn't ask people to get a passport which for an adult costs approximately $97. You couldn't ask people to get that to take their kids from their hockey game in Buffalo across to play in Liverpool, Ontario.

So we then heard this not just in the public comment period, but we also heard it throughout our public outreach effort around the United States. So we at the State Department and DHS, and this is very much a partnership, spent about 10 months trying to come up with a document or set of documents that we thought would meet the needs of what we originally envisioned for the land border crossing population. We came up with the concept of what we call a passport card.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind. We are talking about a document that will be used and have the same, if you will, adjudication standards that the passport book that many of you probably already have meets, be adjudicated to the same standards. It will be a 10-year document for adults, five years for children, and then of course there is the issue of trying to make this work in the DHS border inspection process where they have invested heavily in the concept of vicinity read technology.

So that's where we're going in terms of just overall, if you will, strategy. We visualize this card as meeting a price point of at least a 50-percent discount from the $97 I talked about before, and we think we will be able to meet that. I'm sorry. I was picking up noise from the telephone.

What we're also looking for here is a document that will of course be portable proof of identity and nationality, getting back to the underlying requirements of WHTI and therefore offering not just U.S. border security enhancements, but also real opportunities to facilitate the movement of people through the borders.

Congress about 60 days ago was debating the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, and they made a couple of changes to WHTI which I think are important. One is they've given us more time to do the land border crossing, and now the maritime environment whereas before the deadline for implementing WHTI was January 1, 2008, it has now been pushed back to no later than June 1, 2009.

I want to assure you one of the reasons we're having this conference today is State Department and DHS are committed to meeting that deadline well before that June 1, 2009, deadline. We would like nothing better quite honestly than to have this card fully operational and fielded so that we could actually turn this program on sometime in the first half of 2008.

The second change the Congress made was to expand the scope of this program so that someone could use it in the maritime environment. This means that there are approximately six million people who cruise each year out of the United States to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean or Bermuda, whereas before in our advanced notice of proposed rulemaking and notice of proposed rulemaking processes we had talked about that being an environment in which you must use a traditional book-style passport.

(Electronic interference.)

We will now let people of course consisting of all (phonetic) use their passport card in that environment. An obvious question to all of you I would suspect is well, how many of these things does the State Department see itself issuing, and I think that that's an issue where I wish I could give you clarity, when actually what I'm going to give you is I can't even call it a swag. I think I'd have to call it at wag at this point.

We're looking when we put together our 2008 budget package at issuing perhaps as many as 22 million travel documents that year to American citizens. That would include approximately 16 million passports and perhaps as many as six million of these cards.

That being said, that was an estimate that was developed before Congress expanded the scope of this card to include the maritime environment which potentially drives demand up. But it was also before Congress said wait a minute, if school groups are going across the border, we want you to come up with a solution that does not require them to have formal documentation.

Another point is, that is not necessarily six million individuals over and above our existing caseload. The State Department is committed to allowing its citizen customers to apply for a passport book, a passport card or Option C, which will be getting both, and we can see that as attractive to someone for example who is a businessman in Detroit or Buffalo who goes over to Canada, but will also occasionally fly to Europe or Asia. So that is sort of the grand theory that we have behind the passport card.

We're very aggressive about getting this into production. That's why we need your comments. We need your responses, not just for the RFI but to the RFP, and that's why we're really here today, so does anyone have any questions they want to pose right now, or do you want to wait until the panel? Let's wait until the panel. Okay.

Let me just touch on two other issues then. That is the status of where are we in the notice of proposed rulemaking, what is in there and then in fact the RFI itself. In the case of the notice of proposed rulemaking, we published that I believe the date was October 18. It is open for public comment until December 17. This lays out the architecture we're talking about using here. It deals with the technology issue. It raises the cost issue.

At this point in time we've received actually fewer comments than I expected, about 100, most of which had actually been protesting the fact that we propose to reduce what is called the passport execution fee from $30 to $25. However, I am guided by the principle that generally you get 90 percent of one's comments in the last five to 10 days of the rulemaking process.

An important point I want to bring up with you, and something that we're going to be talking about more later in this meeting. In that notice of proposed rulemaking, we specifically solicit public comment and comment from stakeholders like yourselves on the technology choice that we propose to use, that is the vicinity read technology.

If you have views on that, concerns, what have you, the best way to deal with that is not through this meeting today, but is to put your comments in writing and send them to the State Department. I also was hoping to be able to say today it had been fixed. I'm still working this issue when I found out about it.

We also certainly expect to post those comments electronically, so that the comments of stakeholders can be influenced by what others have said or can actually become almost an electronic debate about he said, she said, this firm said, that firm said, so there is a process out there absolutely we're taking written comments. It's all laid out in the notice of proposed rulemaking and literally in that rule itself, we do solicit comments from all concerned about the technology choice.

Just briefly on the request for information. I really want to thank people like Tracy, Rich, also SAIC and others who help make that happen. It has been published now about three weeks it's been released. Again, this is a step in a process.

What we're looking for here is to come up with quite honestly the best RFP we can that deals with the objectives I talked about before of improving U.S. border security, doing it some other way that also facilitates the movement of people across our borders and comes up with a document that will have the 10-year validity or 10-year life expectancy that we see right now in a U.S. passport.

We're setting up I know a high set of thresholds there, but we think this is very important for the reasons I just described. What we're trying to do in overall sense with this process, be it the passport card, WHTI, is we're trying to make life simpler for the border inspector so that he or she is not trying to grapple with 8,000 different types of documentation that could be presented to them right now, and that's only counting U.S. birth certificates.

There's 157 types of driver's licenses in the United States and things like that. The permutations and combinations are phenomenal. What we're trying to do? Simplify the set of documents that will establish identity and nationality, the two current principles behind WHTI, do so in a fashion especially in the case of the passport card which is cost effective, which should not be a barrier in having people come into compliance.

We do recognize that some of the people affected by this sitting along the borders of the United States, with Canada and Mexico, come out of some of the poorest counties in the United States, so we're trying to deal with all these issues. We really look forward to this dialogue with the industry. We look forward to your written comments back on the RFI so that we can come out, and my staff is going to throw rocks at me when I say this, we're looking to have that turned around quickly into an RFP.

We have additional steps. It's not just the State Department that has to bust this. If you're familiar with the DHS appropriations language, there is also a role for NIST in the RFP process, but we would love to get the RFP out, and we're aiming to get it out late January.

That may be optimistic, but as my staff knows, I'm one of these people who sets deadlines, and then we try and meet them. So that's what we're going to try and do because we really do need to get this thing in place so we can secure, no pun intended, the border security enhancements that were so central to the objective of WHTI. That really sort of wraps up my general comments. I want to thank you all for being here. Robert Rawls is not here, so what do you want to talk about?

MS. GRAY: Not in that venue.

MR. MOSS: Okay. Well, then I think I will turn this back over to our moderator, John.

MR. CRABBE: Okay.

MR. MOSS: Okay. Thanks, John.

MR. CRABBE: I think we can skip that part.

MR. MOSS: We just got started.

MR. CRABBE: Yes, so no break. If the questions go on for a while, we'll reconsider and take a break somewhere during that. When Robert arrives, we'll go ahead and let him make his presentation whenever he can. Let me see if I can get the agenda back up. Since Robert is not here, Kathy may make -- not Kathy. I'm sorry. Ackie might make some comments, but we're going to go ahead and introduce the panel and open up with the questions and answers.

Frank Moss you've already met, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Passport Services; Robert Rawls, when he arrives, he is the CBP, WHTI program manager; Kathy Mejia, represents the Department of State, Acquisitions Management; Tracy Minter is passport systems IT specialist for this program; Ackie Gray is DHS CBP IT specialist for this program; and Keith Bruce is with passport services, and he is the document design officer for the passport card.

So without further ado, does anyone have a question, or we can eat the cookies and go home. Really? Anybody want to make a statement? Thank you very much. Yes, sir? If you would use the microphone please.

MR. CHRISTELIS: Hi. I'm Gary Christelis from GET.

MR. CRABBE: Wait a minute. Would you do that again?

MR. CHRISTELIS: I'm Gary Christelis from GET. I was just curious to know, the introduction of this card is intended to replace in its entirety the use of birth certificates and driver's licenses, and that would be with immediate effect of the introduction of the card or gradually over time?

MR. CRABBE: Would the panel turn their microphones on at this time?

MR. MOSS: One of the objectives of WHTI is to standardize documentation. The birth certificate will still be a very important document. It will in fact be the document that enables one to establish proof of citizenship in order to get the passport card, but the idea is that at ports of entry you will no longer be presenting drivers licenses and birth certificates as a means of reentry in the United States.

It will be a passport in a book style, a passport card, a nexus card, merchant marine cards, military personnel traveling on orders and a variety of other things. But the idea is to let the inspector, and not only the United States inspector, but his or her Canadian counterpart and Mexican counterpart, deal with a handful of documents, not the literally thousands of documents that are out there right now. I hope that answers your question.

MR. CHRISTELIS: Thank you.

MR. CRABBE: John?

MR. HOCHSTEIN: John Hochstein, Biometric Associates. Question. Our production facilities --

MR. CRABBE: We're doing this with a stenographer and court reporter, and we can use the microphone.

MR. HOCHSTEIN: John Hochstein, Biometric Associates. Our production facilities for a secure vicinity card are currently in Europe, Germany to be specific. Is it the preference of the government in the DHS and DOS that cardline production be made here because that has certain investment requirements for us to set up a plant?

MR. CRABBE: Kathy?

MR. MOSS: I think it's important to note that the State Department has been committed throughout its passport development process to use the best elements to go into that book that we can obtain be they paper from United States, inks from Switzerland. Of course, in our E-passport right now we're using chips that come out of Europe. Would we prefer perhaps U.S. production?

I think that's fair to say, yes, but do we also recognize that this is a global industry, and our sources of supply at least in the early stages may have to be off shore? The answer to that is we recognize that as well. We are committed however to making the best document we can, and that does recognize the realities of listing a global market and one that we have to obtain inputs around the world.

MR. CRABBE: Another question?

MR. BURGESS: Yes. Hi, this is Thierry Burgess from ASK. Could you elaborate a little bit on the personalization procedures that you want to establish to create those cards? The only thing that wasn't clear, particularly in terms of what stage the ID has to be loaded, would it be at the manufacturing stage, would it be at the personalization stage, et cetera?

MS. MINTER: The ID going on the chip right now we would expect to be in the manufacturing stage. We would actually receive the chip with the ID on it and then attach that to whoever would personalize the card in our software process, so it's actually preprinted ahead of time. We don't anticipate having to write at all on that chip when we get it. It should be locked.

MR. CRABBE: Follow on?

MR. BURGESS: I'm afraid I don't really get it, the ID number, so the listing, the database, would be supplied by DOS to the manufacturer? ID numbers would then be loaded on the manufacturing stage, and then the cards would be shipped to the personalization centers?

MS. MINTER: You would actually receive the numbers, say, give you a range of numbers, and we're still looking at the range itself. But we would actually give you that range of numbers ahead of time, the manufacturer, who will then create these cards, create the chips, put these numbers on the chips, and then send the blank, preprinted cards to us.

And then when we personalize them, we will probably read the card, read the number, attach it to the database, and remember we're personalizing that specific card to and move forward from there.

MR. MOSS: Maybe this is just my own naiveté, but I think what we're trying to use the number -- all we're doing on the card is having a pointer back to the database, and that's why we can see the idea of having it originate at the manufacturing state.

But remember, unlike the E-passport where the data has to travel with the individual and be globally interoperable, this is intended to simply be a pointer system enabled to be read by our colleagues here at Customs and Border Protection, and I see that Robert Rawls has just arrived.

MR. CRABBE: Let me ask the panel to leave your microphones on because you keep forgetting to turn them on, and you're upsetting --

MS. MINTER: It's actually turning off on its own.

MR. CRABBE: It's voice activated?

MS. MINTER: Yes.

MR. CRABBE: Okay. All right. Fine.

MS. MINTER: Did we finish that question?

MR. BURGESS: Okay. So third time. Sorry. Would you open to the idea of loading the number at the manufacturing stage, writing, that is printing, some sort of a pointer on the card so that you can then read it at a personalization stage as opposed to having to alternatively create that data? That would simplify I think, you know, the personalization process actually and would prevent you from having --

MS. MINTER: We're certainly open to suggestions at this point. If you in your comments based to the RFI, please elaborate on that, and I'm sure we'll take that into consideration.

MR. CRABBE: Yes, sir?

MR. MAYER: Marc Mayer, CGI Federal. The RFI or the draft RFI speaks to more than just to card itself. Can you, Kathy, or someone else talk about the other components that are pieces of the RFI? I mean, are you looking for a single vender to provide everything that's on the RFI, or are you looking for people to bid on pieces of this?

MS. MINTER: We're looking to do a multiple award, but we still would anticipate, and again nothing is set in stone here. But we're still anticipating that a vendor would be able to provide printing technology and the blank card technology, preprinted blank card technology, in an offer, in a proposal.

MR. MAYER: Okay.

MS. MINTER: And again we're open to suggestions. Just please respond to the RFI, let us know what you think and how it's done. We're taking this input seriously, and that will definitely affect how we will write that RFP.

MR. CRABBE: Go ahead.

MR. ROTHSTEIN: Ron Rothstein from General Dynamics. It looks like the RFI talks about components cards and equipment personalization but not the integration, not the whole application. Is that going to come out as a separate RFP, or is there a group that's already identified to do the integration of these components?

MR. MOSS: I hope my microphone is on. What we're looking for, and this is a very simplistic approach, but I'm looking upon this in the passport. We will integrate this product as an output into our existing passport - what we call our travel document issuance system. We will be responsible for that side of it.

What we're looking for - I mean if you can imagine - I want a system where our passport examiners, the people who make a decision this individual is an American citizen will be confronted with the choice looking back at the person's application, do they want a card, and it goes in a certain direction. Do they want a passport book? It goes in a certain direction. Do they want both?

But we'll be responsible, if I'm understanding your question, for integrating this product into our existing software the supports that passport adjudication production process.

MR. CRABBE: I'm sorry. Two things. There was a lady over here that had a question? Yes, ma'am.

MS. HILLMAN: Hi. This is Rides Hillman from Raytheon Company. This question is for Robert Rawls. I just wanted to know what CBP's role is with WHTI?

MR. RAWLS: Could you repeat the question real quick?

MS. HILLMAN: Yes. What is CBP's role in WHTI?

(Away from microphone.)

MR. RAWLS: Let me try something different. I'm really loud most of the time. Can everybody in the back hear me?

MR. CRABBE: She's got to record.

MR. RAWLS: Okay. Never mind. Okay. CBP's role is basically one of determining the admissibility of the cardholder. I may have to hold this. (Holds microphone.) Our job is to determine admissibility of the cardholder at the border. The key components of this is we've got about 60 seconds to do it in, so reading the card and getting the information off the card and connecting to the -- my microphone doesn't like me.

Getting the information off the card rapidly, getting into the database, pulling the information out of the database and getting it back to the officer when he's running a number of queries to determine if he's a good guy or a bad guy, all that done within seconds is our goal, and then that officer using that information determines whether this person should be referred to secondary or allowed to enter the country based on the information he received.

One key point is that one of the biggest issues that we're dealing with is the fact that there may be multiple people within the vehicle, so the card-reader has to read not only just one, but three, four, five - ten cards fairly rapidly. One of the things we're trying to do is to the greatest extent possible take out human factors like having to get closer to the readers, the guy dropping the cards and that type of thing. Did I answer your question?

MR. CRABBE: Yes, ma'am? Yes?

MS. IVESON: Hi, I'm Tricia Iveson with SI International. Tracy, you mentioned that this will be multiple awards. Kathy, could you maybe elaborate on that as to how many awards? Will you be competing task orders against an IDIQ after award, and do you anticipate having large and small business awards? Thank you.

MS. MINTER: We really haven't gotten that far down in the RFP at this point to tell you the truth. Multiple awards in the sense that we anticipate ordering from at least two vendors, but not necessarily awarding all of the CLINS to each vendor, so in a sense that we might buy the printers and cards from one vendor, but only cards from another vendor at this point, but again we're still working on the RFP. The RFP is not there yet.

MR. LONG: Good afternoon. Jeff Long with Digimarc Corporation. The RFI indicates a polycarbonate in an unusual way in my viewpoint. It talks about it in terms of durability in a ID-1 format, but polycarbonate is mentioned, and then later in context talked about polycarbonate not necessarily being your ultimate material. Can you discuss that a little more?

MR. BRUCE: Yes. The polycarbonate requirement is coming out of our 10-year lifetime for the card. We feel that what we've seen in the industry in general seems to support polycarbonate as a better substrate for a card-type format. You probably saw later on in the SOW a statement that said we would accept a substitute for polycarbonate if it can show that it has equivalent durability. That's why you may have seen two different expressions.

MR. LONG: Just one clarifying point. In noting those two paths, it never explicitly says polycarbonate, but your comments have implied polycarb as your preferred choice, is that correct?

MR. BRUCE: Could you give your name again, please?

MR. LONG: Yes. Jeffrey Long with Digimarc Corporation.

(Sound fading out.)

MR. BRUCE: Yes. We intend to get the best durability we can. If someone can show us that there's an equivalent to polycarbonate, which our experience tells us is the best material for this application, we'll look at it. We don't want to rule it out. This is fading out. We don't want to rule it out, but that just seems to be the best thing that we know of.

MR. MOSS: If I can elaborate? What we're doing here is we're looking for ideas from industry are there alternatives to polycarbonate?

MR. BRUCE: Right.

MR. LONG: Thank you.

MR. KAIL: Kevin Kail, president of EPC Solutions, and it will be a multipart question. The industry standard for EPC numbering out of EPCglobal and the Department of Defense is to encode the number at the manufacturer and then reencode at implementation, so DOD, Walmart, the manufacturer of the chip will encode, and then as you're implementing either a card or an RFID tag, EPC Gen 2 or (TAG) ISO data structure that you've proposed.

The industry standard is to encode that at time of implementation, so when you print the card, to also encode the card so they match, that's the state of the industry, and so when the Department of Defense suppliers issue RFID Gen 2 product to the DOD or suppliers to Walmart, and so I think maybe that's where the number in question was coming in.

And so from a security standpoint it is determined industry-wide to encode at point of creation versus distributing from multiple locations, so the chip manufacturers or card manufacturers can encode for a standard number, but then when you implement it, you actually reencode and validate for your CBP database, so that is the state of the industry.

Second part for that is the ability then for your range of card reads, so when we implement Gen 2 cards with biometric facial recognition today, either walking or going through by a car, there are certainly several things that affect that today, so your biometrics, your cameras and your architectures on your Gen 2 chips in the cards.

MR. MOSS: I think we need to --

MR. KAIL: Address that point specifically, so we just don't create some confusion.

MS. GRAY: Yes. The intent of the card is not to have biometrics embedded. Just to have the 96-bit number, the Gen 2 number, so as far as the intelligence in the chip, it's just a number.

MR. KAIL: No, that's correct. It's the EPC number or the ISO number encoded, and when you point back to the CBP database, it then matches back to the biometric.

MS. GRAY: Right. Right. It ties to a record where we would have on that record biometrics and bio --

(Multiple voices.)

MR. KAIL: In the CBP database. Yes. So what it's doing is depending on the algorithm for the biometric whether it's the eigenvalue or 3-D, it's just pointing to that in the database per the EPC number in the chip in the card.

MS. GRAY: Yes. Correct.

MR. KAIL: That's the state of the industry for doing that, correct. And so the idea being that when you encode that number it encodes and matches based upon the point of encoding when you set it up, and then when you read it at the border crossing. And the state that we've seen on it is the Gen 2 chips read it at about 1,500 times a second, so you'd have to have X amount of driveby time to pick them up.

But going back to the first question on the numbering, so what you stated was you want industry input as to what's going on there, and that's a key point that industry today would not preencode in the field. The printer encoders, where you're creating the badge, would be where you want to code the final number.

MR. MOSS: We appreciate that comment from people who know the industry far more closely than we do. Thank you.

MR. SANGIORGI: Frank Sangiorgi with Motorola. The question is will there be biometric vetting such as fingerprints that's used prior to issuance of the card to ensure that card isn't issued to a criminal or a wanted terrorist for example?

MR. MOSS: We will use the exact same vetting process for the passport card that we use for the passport book. In our current state of operations, we do not collect finger scans on American citizens as part of the passport application process. We will not do the same in this case.

We have other means, obviously, biographic, that we use to attempt to identify persons of concern to the United States, be it for criminal reasons, literally, deadbeat moms and dads, issues of terrorism, things of this nature. But we do not anticipate collecting finger scans for this since we do not collect finger scans as part of the passport book application process.

MR. RAWLS: Can I address the second part of that? Customs will be running queries when a cardholder crosses the border each time against terrorist and criminal watch lists.

MR. BLISS: My name is Howard Bliss, Digital Card Systems. I have actually two questions. The first one relates to what was just being discussed about the numbering system for the RFID, and my question is if it is only a pointer, however the number gets put in there, if it is only a pointer back into a database what is the privacy concern with what's in the RFID?

(Laughter.)

MR. MOSS: Well, I've been hammered on this thing pretty hard, and we will first of all, and I should have said this in my opening remark, certainly it's laid out in the RFI. Our expectation is and our plan is that we will deliver this document to customers in a Faraday pouch if you will.

The concern that continues to be there however is out of that pouch, does the document, does the token lend itself to the possibility of tracking of the user and associating that user's, if you will, passport card number with other biographic information.

That is something that we are expecting comments on as we go through the notice of proposed rulemaking process, but in a nutshell I think that is the real concern is does the vicinity read technology lend itself to the accusation that it opens American citizens to tracking?

MS. GRAY: And I think you've pretty much addressed that point that because it's just a number that is a pointer, that it doesn't provide any biographic data on the traveler, it doesn't provide any biometric data on the traveler, so unless you have access to the government databases, then that number is meaningless to you.

MR. BLISS: Another question. It was mentioned of the photographing of the individuals. Is it your intent to take photographs when you apply for a card, or can you submit photographs as you do today with a passport?

MR. MOSS: As I've tried to make it clear, we see this process as one that will be seamless with our current passport application process. We will not be doing live capture. We intend to do this based on submitted, high-resolution color photographs that we will then obviously digitally scan and put into the printing process that way.

One of the reasons for doing that quite honestly is we see that there will be a demand for people who already have a passport in a book fashion, that they would want to leverage that into a passport card because of the travel facilitation benefits. We want to make that process as easy as possible, another reason that we certainly do not want to have people go through a live capture mode.

MR. BLISS: Okay. I understand.

MR. KIMURA: Mike Kimura from Orient American in California, and we are manufacturer of that Faraday pouch in California, and my question is for Mr. Frank Moss, have you decided on that requirement already who you plan to purchase? Is that still wide open, and do you also plan to have some kind of laboratory, you know, quality assurance process just like HSPD-12?

MR. MOSS: Obviously, nothing is finalized until we do the RFP, but I think it's fair to say that certainly the State Department's commitment with DHS is that we will deliver this to our citizen customers in a means that eliminates the risk of tracking, and obviously this metallic sleeve, metallic pouch, is a way that we would do that.

Certainly, we will test those documents to ensure just as we test other components that go into the process to make certain they work as planned. I'm a little puzzled, and I'm sorry. I know a fair amount about HSPD-12. I don't quite know what the linkage is there. Maybe someone else on the panel does, so I'm kind of at a loss right now. I think you may have to submit that question in writing.

MR. CRABBE: All right. Sir, did you have a comment on that?

MR. AUGUSTINOWICZ: Yes.

MR. MOSS: Thank you. The audience can help answer the question.

MR. AUGUSTINOWICZ: What he's referring to is DPS-201 approved products list has a testing requirement for an electromagnetically opaque sleeve, and he's just wondering if you're going to require the same testing as the test.

MR. MOSS: Would you give us your name and your affiliation?

MR. AUGUSTINOWICZ: Sure. I'm Walt Augustinowicz with Identity Stronghold, and then I have a follow-up question after that.

MR. MOSS: Thank you for the clarification. We'll have to address that in the RFP. I know what you're now talking about, and I'm certain we will test the test. And if it's already NIST standards, it strikes me that that's probably the testing we will use, but we will resolve that once and for all in the RFP.

MR. AUGUSTINOWICZ: My followup question on that same thing is that in your 2.4.2 it says the card cannot -- with the protective sleeve it must block it from a 360 degree line of sight, and I was hoping to get clarification on what exactly you meant by that. Is it looking at the card, or are you talking about the signal can't read it from 360 degrees?

MS. MINTER: Right now it's the signal is the intent behind that. I guess it's not clear.

MR. AUGUSTINOWICZ: Okay. And you also said it has to require manual effort to remove the card from the sleeve. Is there just reaching in and taking out? I mean, is it something where it can't fall out if you were to shake it?

MS. MINTER: That's the idea that you have it sitting your glove compartment, and the car driving around a bumpy road, it's not going to come out.

MR. AUGUSTINOWICZ: Okay. Thank you very much.

MR. SCHEFLEN: Ken Scheflen from Gemalto. This is a DHS question I think. The timelines that Mr. Moss outlined for floating a card really deals with the card side, not the infrastructure side to actually to use it, and without the infrastructure, what we really have is very nice flash pass.

So what's DHS timeline to essentially build the database that has to be probably up 100 percent of the time very quickly to recognize the transmissions its getting from the chips and build a physical infrastructure with the readers and antennae and things like that. Would that all be done and completely installed at all of the land border crossings at the same time? What's the acquisition plan for all that?

MS. GRAY: Well, I can answer part of it, and I'll let Robert answer part of it as well. But from an IT standpoint, our plan is 13 months from funding to have a pilot site set up to test the functionality of the RFID technology, and by June 2009 to be operational at 39 top land borders. There may be land borders' whose volume would not require them to have RFID technology.

As far as the database, actually the Department of State built the database, and they share that with us, and we already have a process in place for that, so that portion of the work has been done.

MR. RAWLS: I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to answer. The acquisition of the equipment and installation will be dependent upon our receiving funding. The implementation schedule is about 30 months from start to finish at the 39 ports. Now, the 39 ports are the largest ports in terms of processing passengers crossing the land border, and if this microphone keeps going off, I'm going to kill it. Is there anything that helps?

MR. MOSS: Actually, there may be something that helps from the State Department perspective having been in these discussions for going on two and a half years. Remember we achieve significant security enhancements just by standardizing the documents.

It does not mean that you must read every card at every port of entry to secure those documents because they allow the inspector to have greater confidence in the underlying document and to focus his interview process because remember, at the end of the day, we're not taking the inspector out of this process on other areas that may be a source of concern to him.

So it doesn't mean that you have to have the complete infrastructure at all ports of entry to begin to receive the facilitation and the travel border security enhancements that we're all seeking through WHTI. Thank you.

MS. GRAY: I think something to add to that is the card also has the MRZ field, and so we also would use that in being able to use a pointer to go back to that database, so it's not just the RFI data. It's the MRZ as well.

MR. RAWLS: And kind of expanding on that, we're currently looking at over 8,000 different formats of birth certificates being used today, over 180 different formats on driver's licenses. I'm trying to figure out how that math works. This does not include voter registration, library cards, the guys checkbook, whatever he hands in his wallet to prove his identity today.

Now, the passport card or passport book, there's a certain efficiency that the officers gain by knowing where to look for the information that he needs because it's the same format from document to document to document.

MR. CRABBE: If you have a question you want to ask, just queue up at the microphone, that would be great. You don't have to wait to be called upon.

MR. SCHEFLEN: Ken Scheflen again. If I could just follow up on that. I think what I just heard you say is we're going to have a process where we're actually going to physically handle a card and scan it as opposed to one where it simply emits? If you're going to do that, you kind of wonder why you want one that emits in the first place, or maybe I didn't understand.

Now the second question is the funding timeline. You're saying very carefully 30 months implementation from receipt of funding. Are you looking to have this funded in the '08 budget? Is that were the budget request is, or is it '09, or is it '07? When do you actually expect to receive funding?

MS. GRAY: Actually, it's kind of a staged approach with the funding so it's a portion of the funding in '07, a portion in '08 and a portion in '09. But as far as your question about why even have the emitting, for vehicle entry at some of our larger land borders like San Ysidro or Laredo or Detroit, Buffalo, those areas, to be able to have that capability, to have the RFI read before the vehicle is even at the booth it's actually going to facilitate the power with those guys.

But some of the smaller land borders that can handle the MRZ reads, they wouldn't need the RFID technology. Also, in our pedestrian process, the pedestrian process would use the MRZ technology as well, so we need both.

MR. LONG: Jeffrey Long again with Digimarc Corporation. In looking at your production specifications for your production line, there's a very specific height, width, depth specification that seem to point very specifically to a couple of known vendors today that might not meet some of your other requirements. My question is are you willing to entertain a variety of production line capabilities, or do you have a specific reason that you need that footprint?

MR. BRUCE: Are you talking about the printer?

(Away from microphone.)

MR. LONG: Yes. High-volume and low-volume printers is --

MR. BRUCE: No, that's not cast in stone. I mean, that's the kind of thing we want to see. That's the idea that we're thinking about there, but there's nothing saying that excludes other things right now.

MS. MINTER: Yes. The original footprint was based on what we have today with our passport book printers, but of course if we have to make changes because of what's available to handle the passport card, then we'll make those changes in the RFP.

Please let us know if those standards don't meet products that you can supply. Let us know, and that's how we'll update the RFP accordingly.

MR. ROTHSTEIN: Ron Rothstein from General Dynamics. I think that it was our concern that by specifying particular dimensions and weights that you had a preconceived idea of what that equipment was. You might want to remove that from the RFP so that it's a little more general.

MS. MINTER: Well, we still need to be able to fit it in our existing processes, so we still have limits.

MR. ROTHSTEIN: There are constraints.

MS. MINTER: And you need to let us know if those constraints are too limited. Perhaps they should be out to the -- and that will just help us expand the RFP a little bit more, but we need limits.

MR. CRABBE: Anybody out there got a printer bigger than the podium?

MR. BLISS: Howard Bliss, Digital Card Systems. I have another question related to the pointer. The RFI indicates that when the number is retrieved from the RFID that it is used as a pointer into the TECS database.

My question is since it's all being processed in the passport card record belonging to the Department of State, how does it get into the text database, and a related issue on that is if I suddenly discover I need one of these cards, and I go to one of the agencies that allows me to get a card within a few hours, and I get the card and get to the border with the card, it's clearly not going to be in the database.

(Multiple voices.)

MS. GRAY: It actually might be in the database. Department of State and DHS, we share the data, so once a card has produced that data it should be shared.

MR. BLISS: I'm not saying you're not going to share it, but I don't know or I don't think that you're going to update the TECS database in real time.

MS. GRAY: We do update it in real time.

MR. BLISS: You do?

MS. GRAY: Yes, currently today actually.

MR. BLISS: Okay. Thank you.

MR. CRABBE: Again can I repeat the request? If you have questions, let two people up so we can at least keep the process moving, so anybody have any questions? I'm sorry. Go on.

MR. BURGESS: Yes, this is Thierry Burgess. I just came in. On the card side of the RFI, there is a mention somewhere about an on/off switch to be implemented in the card. That's kind of a rocket science project as far as we're concerned, and it would drive the cost of the card significantly, so it that a showstopper?

MS. MINTER: No. That was asking for alternate solutions to just the Faraday cage-type solution. That's all.

MR. BURGESS: So essentially what you're saying is any idea is kind of welcome for such a purpose?

MS. MINTER: For the RFI, yes. For comments to the RFI, please. That's why we're looking for alternate solutions that anyone might be able to offer.

MR. BURGESS: All right.

MR. MOSS: One of our objectives here is to give something ideally that is in the control of the user, so that for example I know that as sure as we're all sitting here, some of those sleeves will wind up on the back seat of the minivan along with the french fries that have been there since the Crimean War. And so we'd like something that people might have confidence that they themselves as the bearer of that card, to control it's readability, and the on/off switch was one idea. We're certainly open to other solutions.

There are some very, very smart people in here with some very creative minds and ideas and companies. If you can come up with another way that we can do this, that would either augment or replace the Faraday cage, we're certainly open to those solutions because that gets back to dealing with the concern about tracking. If we can turn this card off and have it controlled by the user that would be an ideal solution.

MR. WILLIAMS: Chuck Williams, EPC Solutions. A couple of comments. First, this is a sample of a Gen 2 RFID card. State of the industry allows us to read this card at about 20 to 25 feet with standard Gen 2 reader technology. As far as the privacy issue, the data on this card is the pointer into the database can be encrypted.

The Gen 2 standard also allows you to password protect this card so that it can only be read by readers at the border crossing, not by any ancillary readers. So if anyone had a reader here with a password protected card, they wouldn't even be able to get the License plate off of it to do any looks into your database, so state of the art allows us to make this a very private and secure card.

MR. MOSS: Thank you.

MR. WILEY: My name is Tres Wiley. I'm with Texas Instruments. You mentioned that you were planning to target a pilot at one site in 13 months, and so that's one milestone in the program. Your evaluation discussion talks about three phases. Can you describe a little bit of the timing expectation you have for each of those phases?

MS. GRAY: Again, the pilot site is 13 months from funding, and then top 10 land borders at the 15- to 18-month mark, and then the top 39 by June '09. Did I answer your question?

MR. WILEY: No. The question was in the evaluation you talked about three stages of doing an evaluation prior to making the award.

MS. GRAY: Okay. So that's probably more --

MR. WILEY: Yes.

MS. MINTER: Well, the idea is when we get to the RFP, we're not sure how practical this is at this point. But the idea when we put out the RFI was the paper evaluation, make sure the basic standards are met, try to narrow it down, possibly do an actual test and send them off to labs to do actual tests of that, and then narrow it down, and then do DHS, maybe a little site evaluation at one of their test sites, not necessarily at a border, but this is at their test site first.

MR. WILEY: Okay. So final selection could take as long as how long?

MS. MINTER: I don't know. We have not determined the phases or the timing of the test at this point.

MR. WILEY: Okay.

MR. PARKS: Hi. Louis Parks, SecureRF. I guess since the EPCglobal acknowledges themselves that the…