Look Who The Coast Guard Caught with RFID and Biometrics

From GCN comes this Department of Homeland Security (DHS) special report. It's about the promise biometrics and radio frequency identification technology hold for the Homeland Security Department... and two Coast Guard facilities—one in the District of Columbia and one in Washington state.

At Coast Guard headquarters in D.C., a voluntary program—which both campuses use—called RapidGate lets vendors gain easier access to the facility by voluntarily registering for a biometric identification card.

Now here's the good part:

Since November, RapidGate has helped the D.C. campus identify three potential vendor employees who had served time for murder, one registered sex offender, two working under false names and others with multiple identities or who had lied about their criminal history, said Wayne Truax, Coast Guard’s chief of security and safety for the headquarters support command in Washington.

Two brief comments if I may. One, do people think this stuff doesn't actually work? And two, will this news mobilize the privacy people to demand we retain the right to operate under aliases and multiple identities? Are they going to defend people's rights to misrepresent a criminal history?