By Joseph Naujokas, Naujokas & Associates

It's been two years since I wrote about the High Co High Density (HCHD) mag stripe standard, ISO/IEC 7811-7. The FCD has been approved as of last month with one negative vote. By the time you read this, I expect that the ISO/IEC SC17 WG1 will have forwarded it on for FDIS (Final Draft International Standard) approval.

Quoting directly from the scope of the new standard
"This standard provides for a card capacity of approximately 10 times that of a card conforming to ISO/IEC 7811-6. The number of tracks has been increased to 6, each track being approximately half the width of tracks conforming to ISO/IEC 7811-6, located so that readers designed to read these high density tracks will also be able to read cards conforming to ISO/IEC 7811-2 and ISO/IEC 7811-6. Data is encoded in 8 bit bytes using the MFM encoding technique. Data framing is used to limit error propagation and error correction techniques further improve reliability of reading."

PTB (Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt), the German standards agency that supplies reference cards for Low and Hi Co mag stripes is ready to begin supplying reference cards for the HCHD mag stripes. Japan and USA testing has shown that the error correction scheme specified in the standard is reasonably effective. There are limits to how much mag stripe damage can be corrected, but the test results indicate that a reasonable level of damage will be sustained by the error correction scheme.

Progress has been slow primarily due to priorities of MagTek R&D, who were the main source of development activities and provided read/write test kits for testing the technology. The WG1 committee was reluctant to proceed with the standard until feasibility could be generated. While this has slowed progress, once the standard has received final approval, it will be easier for companies to decide whether to develop products based on the standard.

The biometrics data requirements of the Passport ID cards were the primary target market of the standard. The standard was started in 2000 before the September 11 attacks, when the urgency for biometrics on passports was less than it is presently. It is now doubtful, but not certain if ICAO, the official world governing body for passports, will ever offer the HDHC Mag Stripe as an automatic ID technology for storing biometric data. Currently, they are promoting the use of Contactless IC (ISO/IEC 14443) technology for laminating the chip and antenna either inside the passport book or in the front/back covers.

Privacy a key concern
The key issue is the protection of private data. Only basic data - name, birthday, birthplace, current address and nationality - will be required by ICAO to be accessible at the entry point of any nation. Any additional data will be accessible only by the issuing country. The recommended biometrics will be facial, but other biometric technologies such as fingerprint or iris scan can used at the issuer's discretion.

Privacy concerns are paramount, so ICAO has set up a two-level security scheme so that any country can access the basic data, which is also printed on the passport. A separate secure storage area accessible (meaning read and write access) only by the country of issue will be possible. However, there are many sensitive issues. For example, lawmakers are very suspicious about Auto ID technology hiding more data that the law allows. One example was the intense questioning by a U.S. legislative committee on data being hidden via the "<" and ">" characters used in the passport OCR lines.

Further, while the U.S. will require fingerprints on visitor visas, some countries such as Canada strongly object to their citizens being fingerprinted by another country.

Back to the HCHD mag stripe
France was the only negative vote on the FCD which is consistent with their previous votes, as they also voted against the New Work Proposal citing the lack of a business case. They may be right, but this is not the first time this will happen, as the first contactless IC card technology standard, ISO/IEC 10536, has failed in the marketplace. That technology had a high card cost and proprietary issues working against it. The HCHD mag stripe advantage is in its low cost and public domain technology. These are powerful advantages that will be carefully considered by the marketplace.