How "smart" is your ID card?

Companies are offering new smart cards with improved technology, including security and counterfeiting resistance, in hopes of hastening their broader use.

Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer

Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.

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Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.

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Stephen Shankland

April 24, 2002 5:33 a.m. PT

2 min read

Allies of "smart cards"--credit cards or ID cards with small computer processors--are improving the technology in hopes of hastening their broader use.

Smart cards offer advantages such as better security to identify their carriers and incentives to keep customers coming back to the same store, but getting consumers and companies to switch to the new technology has been an uphill struggle. Tuesday at the CardTech/SecurTech conference in New Orleans, advocates announced a host of improvements.

SchlumbergerSema, a Schlumberger business unit that makes and sells smart cards, introduced ICitizen, a new smart card with features such as security and counterfeiting resistance. It also has large storage capacity for recording data such as fingerprints or other biometric data, driver's license numbers, health data and digital signatures, the company said. The encrypted data can be protected with simple personal identification numbers or more complicated biometric data.

The SchlumbergerSema card can also run programs written in Java Card, Sun Microsystems' version of Java software for smart cards.

Sun, meanwhile, introduced version 2.2 of the Java Card technology. Java Card lets programs written to its specifications run on many different smart cards, regardless of what processor the card uses. Java allows smart cards to run programs for encryption, authentication of fingerprints, and other tasks.

The new version of Java Card allows better control over how the cards use memory. It also offers improvements for tapping into wireless communication standards such as the Wireless Application Protocol and for better debugging tools to make writing programs easier, Sun said.

Visa, another company at the conference, said it will offer centralized services to help card issuers and their merchant business partners try to keep customers returning. Four banks--First USA, FleetBoston, Providian and Retailers National Bank--have issued more than 10 million Visa smart cards so far, Visa said.

MasterCard, meanwhile, announced its published specifications for the MasterCard Open Data Storage interface, which allows its banking partners to offer customers better management of personal information stored on the card. That information can include shipping addresses, phone numbers, username-password combinations, and receipts, MasterCard said.

MasterCard's smart card strategy supports the Java Card software as well as the Multos smart card operating system.