The federal government is repatriating a database of personal information about Canadian citizens after warnings that the U.S. government might misuse it.

The database with details about several hundred British Columbians was turned over to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency last year as part of a controversial project to issue "enhanced driver's licences" instead of passports for land border crossings.

The pilot project is the first step in a Canada-wide program that could have seen the personal information of hundreds of thousands of Canadians handed over wholesale to U.S. officials.

But the Canada Border Services Agency has bowed to pressure from privacy advocates and is recalling the database, with the U.S. border agency promising to erase its records.

Instead, as the project expands, the growing personal databanks will stay in Canada, accessible electronically — with strict limits — by American border officials.

"The data will remain in Canada, and it will be accessed remotely," said David Loukidelis, British Columbia's privacy commissioner and a critic of the original plan.

Washington has been toughening rules for people entering the United States from Canada, requiring passports for air passengers in 2007 and, as of June 1 this year, passports for travellers by land and water.

'Enhanced' licences accepted

However, U.S. officials will also accept "enhanced" driver's licences at land and marine border points in lieu of a passport, through a joint program developed with Ottawa.

The B.C. pilot project signed up 521 citizens in that province as volunteers, and issued each of them a special driver's licence with an embedded chip, known as a radio-frequency identification device, or RFID.

The chips, which can be read by electronic scanners up to 4.5 metres away, contain a unique identifying number for each card holder. During the pilot project, American border officials scanned the RFID and used the unique number to locate the personal information of the bearer in the database supplied by Canada.

The personal data included full name, birth date, gender, citizenship and other information ordinarily also contained in a passport. In addition, U.S. officials could access a digital image of the bearer.

The Canada Border Services Agency signed an agreement with its American counterpart to ensure that the information would be used only by U.S. officers at the time of crossing for border purposes only.

However, the USA Patriot Act could trump that clause, forcing the U.S. border service to turn over information to American security agencies.

"It is clear that there is potential for secondary use," says a federal-provincial review of the project, dated Aug. 14 and obtained under the Access to Information Act.

"Further, it is possible that if there was disclosure pursuant to the USA Patriot Act that CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) may not be legally able to advise CBSA."

Volunteers warned

The review also expressed concern that the digital image, not currently contained in Canadian passports, "does have the potential to be used for secondary purposes as a biometric identifier."

Volunteer participants in the B.C. project were warned that their personal information could be disclosed beyond the border service "to other organizations for any other purpose as authorized by U.S. law."

A survey last year showed that 14 per cent of informed participants remained concerned about where that information might end up.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed the agency plans to return the pilot database to Canada.

"Phase 1 data currently resides in a secure CBP database and will be transitioned to a CBSA database," said Joanne Ferreira from Washington, D.C.

"CBP will delete Phase 1 records from the CBP database — co-ordinated with CBSA — so there will be no overlap."

Each time personal data is accessed at the border, however, it is recorded permanently in the U.S. Treasury Enforcement Communications System, or TECS, just as similar information is recorded in TECS whenever a passport holder is checked at the Canada-U.S. border.

The second phase of the B.C. project, open to all Canadian citizens living in the province, is set to be launched this spring for those who don't want to use a passport.

Fee to be set

About 48,000 of the enhanced driver's licences are expected to be issued, said Alex Dabrowski, a spokesman for the British Columbia government in Victoria. The fee has not yet been established.

Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia have also asked to sign on, some as early as this spring.

In the meantime, privacy advocates remain concerned about the RFID technology, for fear the chips could be used to secretly track Canadian citizens. Ferreira says RFID scanners have been installed only at the Peace Arch and Pacific Highway points of entry in Washington State.

"It's an insecure technology," said Loukidelis. "It could be used theoretically to track people, and I think that's something we want to try and avoid."

There are also fears the information could be "skimmed" by hackers to help steal identities, although the card itself does not contain personal data.

As an interim step, users are provided so-called Faraday sleeves that slip over the card and block scanners from reading the RFID chip.