Silicon Valley’s best-kept secret and underutilized technology by DHS was the technology deployed by a company that used to be called “lasercard,” which appears to have renamed itself or been acquired (see lasercard.com). LaserCard was (and I believe still is) the primary provider for green cards in the US and national identity cards in Europe, such as Italy and others.
The most exciting part about the cards is that they are made of Kodak film, a flexible material upon which as much as 26Mb of data can be stored, almost like a CD-R, using patterns that ensure data is protected with redundancy included. They were staple-proof! It also has additional security features that won it some best identity card awards produced in the world.
It always baffled me how DHS and our government never deployed these cards (even after 911) for our national identity and replaced the dumb paper passports, as it would quickly weed out imposters due to its outstanding security features, that combine visual, biometric, and digital cross-verification of a person’s identity.
That is when you have a sound immigration policy.
