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11 - Passports into Credit Cards: On the Borders and Spaces of Neoliberal Citizenship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2009

Matthew Sparke
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Geography in the Jackson School of International Studies University of Washington
Joel S. Migdal
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Summary

We have included in our design the necessary technological platforms to ensure that the card will have a useful life of approximately five years. Most importantly for commercial users today, it will sport the ubiquitous magnetic strip which the government will not use, making it completely available to the commercial sector. We have also included a microchip in the design as we will require some of the available storage space for automated inspections. We will make the remainder of the chip's storage available to our commercial partners. We think this is especially significant because of the recent announcement by Visa, MasterCard and Europay of their joint specification for chip-based credit cards. To further the appeal of this idea to the commercial sector, we will also allow cards prepared by our partners to display the logo of the partner. This would create in the mind of the card holder an instant link between our high technology application and the sponsoring corporation. Just think of the possibilities for a frequent traveler pulling out a card bearing the IBM or United Airlines logo, for example. Now potentiate that image by seeing the card as a charge card, an airline ticket, a medium by which you access telecommunications systems, an electronic bank, and/or any other card-based application you can conceive.

Ronald Hays

These plans for a new kind of passport using credit card and biometric technology are not the plans of a banker, a commercial web systems designer, or some other corporate planner.

Type
Chapter
Information
Boundaries and Belonging
States and Societies in the Struggle to Shape Identities and Local Practices
, pp. 251 - 283
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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