Nov 1 2005, announcing .... "The Public Awareness of Technology"

I've written before about how we need to find new ways of communicating technology issues to a wider audience. Technology surrounds us everywhere and helps to simplify and improve the quality of our lives - but very few people understand what makes it tick. Very few people understand what technology is good for - and equally, what problems it can cause. There needs to be much more informed discussion by society in general - across the media, politicians, policy-makers, the industry itself and the general public. And as technologists we need to raise our game to make that happen - in the same way that the science community has worked hard at improving the quality of understanding about scientific issues and the way they may impact upon our lives.

It is not for technologists alone of course to decide what is "good" and "bad" for us: we need to be part of a wider, more inclusive discussion. And to do that, we need to set aside our jargon, to find a language that can better communicate with others and to stand up and be honest as much about the negative aspects of technology as we are about its positive and beneficial aspects.

So today I want to formally launch this programme with the aim of sparking debate and progress on these issues. My intention is to help ensure we achieve much greater comprehension and discussion of technology issues. Whilst the National ID Cards debate in the UK has become the main point of discussion recently about the need for far better understanding of technology (and how it can be badly or well designed), this is only one part of a much wider debate that now needs to take place.

I'll start today with a simple example aimed to illustrate the types of issues that I would like to move into the mainstream of public debate - in order that better-informed decisions can be taken by society about how we want to use technology. Let's start with RFID tags (RFID stands for Radio Frequency IDentification - see we're back into jargon straight away...). So to quote from Wikipedia:

An RFID tag is a small object that can be attached to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person. RFID tags contain antennas to enable them to receive and respond to radio-frequency queries from an RFID transceiver. Passive tags require no internal power source, whereas active tags require a power source.

So an RFID tag is basically a small radio transmitter with emits a unique identifier. The idea is that these tags will soon be found fixed inside or onto all sorts of things - clothing in shops, food packaging, cargo containers and even items such as our next generation passports. RFID tags can help to remotely detect and track any item onto which they are placed - which is obviously useful for things like stock control, inventory checks, and, with e-passports, validating that the paper contents have not been fraudulently tampered with (and even to help establish that the passport is genuine). So far so good. All potentially positive and beneficial aspects of a new form of technology that could make aspects of our lives easier and help reduce crime, fraud, bureaucracy etc.

But talking at the Global Border Control Technology Summit in London earlier this year, Frank Moss (Deputy Assistant Secretary for Passport Services, U.S. Department Of State) commented:

"Be prepared for surprises. I certainly was when I found out that e-passport chips [RFID tags] could be read at distances well beyond the 10 cm range found in the ICAO specifications. That was only one of the more recent unexpected events I have encountered as we have moved from the concept of biometrics in passports to the reality."

This raised alarming scenarios for the U.S. team. It is not too great a stretch of the imagination to foresee the long-distance broadcasting of passport information being a major security hazard. It would make it possible for example to identify who in a group of tourists possessed a passport of a particular nationality. Given the times in which we live, it is not hard to also imagine terrorist bombs that would detonate when someone of a particular nationality walks past with such a passport in their pocket beaming out their nationality as they go. Of course, with the benefits of this experience during trials, this is hopefully not now likely to happen (in fact, I understand e-passports are likely to contain some kind of "shield" to prevent them being intercepted at a distance in this way). But this example does highlight how technology can have unforeseen side effects. Other issues still remain a concern with RFID technology - for example, in an  ideal word e-passports would only respond in the first place to authorised passport readers - not just anyone who happens to have an RFID transceiver. It is this type of topic and information that we need to communicate clearly and honestly so that we can have an open debate and ensure the best possible technology policy and implementation decisions are taken as a result.

I'll be developing a wide range of themes about the good, bad and ugly of technology over coming entries. But for now, let's look at the way Frank Moss chose to finish his presentation:

“I would like to make a plea to those of you in this room who represent biometric vendors. As I asked at the beginning of my remarks, please do not oversell your technology. We are still dealing today, 4 years after 9/11, with the unrealistic promises made by the biometrics industry concerning reliability and scalability. As I said to a senior technologist from one of these vendors, it is much better to “under promise and over deliver.”

Quite. These are not games we are playing here with these systems. To earn respect, the IT industry needs to be shown to be giving good, honest advice - even if sometimes this is advice that the recipient does not want to hear, or which admits to failings in technology as readily as we admit to its good points.

In developing this Public Awareness of Technology initiative, it is not just our communications and language and outreach that needs to be more inclusive, but we should aim to be more open and honest too about the good and the bad of what technology can really achieve. But this is a two-way street of course: in order for technologists to feel capable of talking freely and honestly in this fashion it requires others, particular on the purchaser side, to understand the concept of 'critical friends' - and to react positively to such honesty and to embrace it.

It sounds as if the Passport Services in the U.S. Department of State have learnt this lesson. Hopefully it will be learnt elsewhere too.