DHS Nixes RFID Use for Border Program

The Department of Homeland Security is dropping its plans to use radio frequency identification (RFID) technology as part of its border security system, not because of any opposition to the plan, but because the planned RFID tags just aren’t working.

According to an article by Computerworld’s Marc L. Songini, the RFID tags failed to work as expected in a 15-month test. A spokesperson for the border security program told Songini the DHS is now exploring other alternatives such as biometric technologies to track foreign visitors.

Songini says the DHS tested the RFID technology in an effort to improve its US Visitor and Immigration Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) program, and the department had hoped to use the RFID technology to automate and speed up the process of getting an accurate record of foreign visitors as they leave the country.

The DHS tested the technology at five entry points on the Canadian and Mexican borders, with RFID tags embedded on select 1-94 immigration documents. A recent GAO report found during a one-week period at a test site, only 14 percent of 166 RFID tags that crossed the border were read by scanners. The DHS had set a goal for the test of reading 70 percent of tagged documents crossing the border.