By Joseph Naujokas, Naujokas & Associates
ANSI X9 and its international counterpart, ISO TC68 Financial Services
Standards Committees, have made an interesting appeal to ANSI INCITS
(International National Committee for Information Technology Standards)
with regards to the drivers license application use of magnetic stripe
track 3. ANSI X9 - ISO TC68 claimed ownership of track 3 through their
application as detailed in ISO 4909 standard.
ANSI X9 claimed that neither the USA nor the International drivers
license standards can use track 3 because of their ownership via ISO
4909 and also, in their opinion, that it was unwise to do so. First,
an explanation of the background of the claim.
The USA ANSI drivers licenses standard was abandoned in 2002 due to
lack of consensus. The main issue revolved around mag stripe track 3.
The state motor vehicle registration agencies placed ID number, and
date of birth in track 2. Because of legacy systems, space was not available
for other physical characteristics identification information such as
eye/hair color, height, weight and gender. So, the physical characteristics
information was placed on track 3.
The retail community objected strongly because none of their mag stripe
POS readers are capable of reading track 3. They further contended that
once the standard was approved, they would be forced to upgrade all
their systems to have track 3 readers. The reasoning being that existing
laws in states already require that they confirm these identification
characteristics along with age when selling age-restricted items such
as tobacco, alcohol and firearms products. Further, existing law would
require recording such data once it was available, to defend against
any charges of selling to underage customers.
The state motor vehicle registration agencies countered that:
1) The retailers were overly concerned of being required to capture
the human physical characteristics.
2) The state registration agencies would require costly system changes
to place all the data on track 2.
3) It is only a drivers license, not an identity card.
Since a technical standards committee does not have the authority to
decide on legal requirements and who must bear the cost of systems changes,
the issue could not be resolved within the committee. Eventually, because
of this and other new issues raised by September 11, it was finally
decided to cancel the ANSI drivers license project for the duration.
However, the International Drivers License Standard continues to move
forward. So, in January 2003, ANSI -X9 along with ISO TC68 has submitted
an appeal against the drivers license standard usage of track 3. They
claim ownership of track 3 by virtue of their mag stripe track 3 standard,
ISO 4909. That standard provides for reading and writing transaction
data on track 3 at the point of use. X9 states that because they use
track 3 in ISO 4909 as a read write track, then anyone else who uses
track 3 must also use it as a read / write track, which is an inappropriate
use for drivers licenses.
I believe that any card application has the responsibility to use the
selected technology so that it does not compromise the security and
function of its card and that of any other card when used in a unrelated
reader/writer. This is a system function responsibility.
The notion that an application can own a piece of an international
card technology because it created an application using the technology
is indeed a concept that flies in the face of international card standards.
Hopefully the final ruling on the appeal will be against such a claim.