Privacy Theft

It’s been almost a year ago that I got my Nexus card renewed; that would be the time at which the Nexus agents gave me a new name, one that I have never, ever used, and insisted that that was to be my real name from now on. Next time I have to renew the card, I guess we’ll go through some further unhappy conversations since my Nexus card now has a name that doesn’t match any of my other official ID cards.

But in the meantime, they’ve issued us all NEW Nexus cards. These cards are said to contain some amount of private data (which I take it means data that they have, not data that I have, although I may have it as well, I suppose), encoded in their little plastic bodies by means of microchips. And, this fabulous little microchipped card comes with its own secret covering, which looks to be the same kind of covering that the bank gives me for my ATM card, but may, indeed, be made of Kevlar, or have its own microchips for all I know.

I must always keep my Nexus card in this little coat. I must immediately destroy my old Nexus card, which has no coat and no microchips upon activating my new Nexus Card. I don’t know what happens if I don’t destroy it, but my first intuition was that the new one probably wouldn’t work, so I’d better hang on to my old one for awhile in case I need a backup.

But I used the new Nexus card yesterday, and it did work, so I guess I can bear to get rid of the old one. Actually, I’d be happy to get rid of the old one: it has a picture, alleged to be of me (with the odd name, of course), but it actually looks like a fish with glasses. The new Nexus card has the same picture, but it is covered up by some kind of holographic seal or something which almost completely obliterates the picture. Couldn’t happen to a worse picture. An act of kindness from Nexus.

But my question is about the little coat that the Nexus card is obliged to wear at all times. I am told (by whom I do not know—street talk) that I must keep the coat on the Nexus card at all times because people driving around with radio frequency scanners (And who would that be? The police? Terrorists? Identity thieves?) will pick up the secret information off my Nexus card and drive away to do something with it. Become identity thieves? Become terrorists? I really am not easily able to imagine this happening with any frequency. But it is technology and I’m not all that techno-savvy.

So I accept that you have to keep its coat on at all times (except when going through the border because if it has its coat on then the border people can’t read it anymore than the scanner thieves can read it) to protect something. But what’s actually on the card that needs protecting? My name? Well, actually, not. My Social Security number? The places that have my social security number are legion. When I lived in Massachusetts (1970-75), that’s what they used for your driver’s license number, which was then copied onto every check you ever wrote. My passport number? My awful photograph? My bank accounts, my brokerage accounts (not much left there), my insurance? My secret diary? My passwords????

Somehow, I have the feeling that this is just one of the last acts of incompetence brought to us by the Bush Administration. After all, if it’s so dangerous to have this information floating in the air, couldn’t it be encrypted? And if it’s so dangerous to have this information floating in the air, maybe the government shouldn’t have the information in the first place or shouldn’t be putting it on a card that is highly likely, sooner or later, in my hands or those of someone else, to lose its coat, its hat, its mittens, its every protection? And then will it be my/our fault if the terrorists come again? I'm checking with Dick Cheney about that.