RFID Update reports today that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has decided to pull an RFID trial from its U.S. Visitor and Immigration Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) program "after the technology's read rates proved inadequate."

The DHS has been placing RFID tags in I-94 visas, with the intention of scanning those documents at border crossings with Mexico and Canada. However, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that over the course of one week, only 14 percent of 166 tags were correctly identified.

"Read rates weren't the only problem," the article states. "So-called 'cross-reads', in which multiple RFID readers at a border crossing pick up an individual's I-94 tag, also hurt the system's performance. The cross-reads meant that an individual's exit from the US might be erroneously recorded as an entry, and vice versa."

More here from ComputerWorld ... and more here from GCN.