I almost missed the news that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has decided that RFID being used in its U.S. VISIT program has been a bust.

RFID had been used in a trial over the past 14 months. But the results, as noted in a recent report by the Government Accountability Office, were less than satisfactory. In part it was due to poor performance: read rates were spotty, and cross-reads leading to confusing conclusions, were common.

But more to the point, RFID simply was the wrong choice of technology in the first place, it seems. RFID could not guarantee that the person carrying the visitor card was indeed the actual person who entered the country in the first place. RFID Update has a good write-up on the subject:

Aside from the performance issues, the GAO report also highlights a larger, substantive issue with respect to DHS adoption of RFID for the US-VISIT program. Apparently the technology does not meet a key goal of US-VISIT: biometric assurance that the individual identified on the I-94 is the same as the current holder. "By design, an RFID tag embedded in an I-94 arrival/departure form cannot provide the biometric identity-matching capability that is envisioned as part of a comprehensive entry/exit border security system using biometric identifiers for tracking overstays and others entering, exiting, and re-entering the country. Specifically, the RFID tag in the I-94 form cannot be physically tied to an individual. This situation means that while a document may be detected as leaving the country, the person to whom it was issued at time of entry may be somewhere else."

I wonder how many more backing-offs there will be for RFID usage in identity cards, before all is said and done? Read the entire report by the U.S. GAO (PDF).