Slashdot Mirror
Registered Traveler ID Initiative
Broadcatch writes "At the coming CardTech/SecurTech
in Washington D.C. the Transportation Security
Administration will make their first public announcement of the Registered
Traveler ID Initiative . Seems they haven't gotten the word that ID
cards are a bad
idea."
While we as citizens of a free country may balk at the idea of having a national ID system, in europe, where social policies are much more advanced and education in general is higher, these systems are commonplace. Take Russia for example, Boris Yeltsin implemented a similar program in his regime and they haven't had any problems with it since. It seems to me that ID cards are an excellent idea in these trying times.
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But really... if you aren't doing anything extremely wrong you've got nothing to hide. I know the idea is that the more power you give the government the more it will abuse that power, but honestly, nobody cares about going 5 miles over the speed limit, your saturday night poker game, or equivilant crimes and nobody ever will.
If I can carry a piece of plastic with me that will help stop thousands of terrorism related deaths a year I'm all for that.
sig.
Personally I don't see what the big deal is if this is combined with some consumer protection:
United airlines has a right to demand that I provide proof of who I am, if it's a condition of them doing business with me. Just like I have the right to demand that United's pilots wear a pigmy white tailed monkey on their heads if it a condition of me flying with them. If either one of us doesen't like the demands that the other is making, then fine. We just won't do business with each other.
Now if United started babbing about my travel details, then I'd be rightfully pissed.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I read the links but found no concrete information on what this is about, but "Registered Traveler ID Initiative" sounds very disconcerting.
I just watched "The Hunt for Red October" again last week. There's a scene where the would-be Soviet defector sub Captain (Sean Connery) and First Officer (Sam Niel) are discussing what they'll do in America. The first officer would like to live in Montana but says something like "I might buy a recreational vehicle and travel from state to state...they let you do that? No papers?" Captain: "No papers."
Yes, and we've established that driver's licenses are a very 'leaky' piece of identification from an age verification perspective. Everyone on Slashdot who has ever owned a fake driver's license--or borrowed a license (real or otherwise) from an older sibling--raise your hand. Yes, I thought so.
Having a single magical card that identifies you to transportation agencies is not a panacea; it just creates a false sense of security. Even if it is tied to biometric data, there will be leaks in the system. Finally, if errors (innocent or not) creep into the system, a card with an aura of infallibility will make error correction difficult if not impossible. ("I'm sorry Mr. Gustaffsson--your last name is too long for the name field. From now on, you will be Mr. Gustaff. Have a nice day.")
And identifying people even with 100% accuracy is insufficient to solve the problem that we're targeting. Bear in mind that all of the 9/11 hijackers used their own legitimate identification to board the aircraft. Thorough screening of baggage and alert gate personnel are far more important if the goal is to protect airplanes. This ID system merely means that we will be able to accurately identify the remains at the crash site.
~Idarubicin
None of the 9/11 band of bad guys hid their identities.
That's because they knew they didn't have to choose between a security-related identification card or extra scrutiny at the gate.
People don't seem to understand, or they aren't willing to accept, that security and safety are games of hedging and probability. To use a tired old analogy, it's like locking your front door. Will that stop a determined criminal? No, but it will a) make your house a less attractive target, and b) force bad guys to look for other ways in. The big-picture goal behind any given measure is not to ensure absolute prevention, it's to force bad guys to work harder, and to influence the direction of their attempts to circumvent your defenses.
Evil is the money of root.
Most likely, in a secure environment the terrorist will switch to a more easy, unprotected target. Their advantage is that they can chose freely, and you can protect at top security everything.
Anyway, I'm for IDs but more for the low profile delinquence that for terrorists, who have their time to prepare and get false or even true IDs.
The Register
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
We all know that truth is stranger than fiction, and here we have an apparently real item straight from the realm of Tom Clancy. Imagine a huge, absolutely huge, central database containing both the official and commercial data of every single citizen, run by the US military ostensibly for anti-terror and Homeland Security purposes, and all of it under the direction of a convicted felon.
Well the database is in development and coming soon, according to the New York Times; and the felon who will run it is disgraced Reagan administration liar, dirty-trickster and cover-uper Admiral John M. Poindexter, who Dubya has taken out of mothballs to keep us all safe from dreadful evildoers.
Poindexter got caught up in a little Federal crime spree called Iran-Contra a decade ago, stood trial and was convicted, but managed to escape responsibility on an odd technicality.
As told succinctly by FAS.org, Poindexter was "Indicted March 16, 1988, on seven felony charges. After standing trial on five charges, Poindexter was found guilty April 7, 1990, on all counts: conspiracy (obstruction of inquiries and proceedings, false statements, falsification, destruction and removal of documents); two counts of obstruction of Congress and two counts of false statements.
District Judge Harold H. Greene sentenced Poindexter June 11, 1990, to six months in prison on each count, to be served concurrently. A three-judge appeals panel on November 15, 1991, reversed the convictions on the ground that Poindexter's immunized testimony may have influenced the trial testimony of witnesses. The Supreme Court on December 7, 1992, declined to review the case. In 1993, the indictment was dismissed on the motion of Independent Counsel."
Now he's in charge of the newly-invented Information Awareness Office, a part of that mixed bag of good and bad, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and he's got his eye on basically every scrap of data about every single citizen. The system Poindy is preparing to unleash on us "will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant," the NYT article says.
And he's in no way embarrassed by his role ensuring that the US military and federal law enforcement and intelligence spooks can quite conveniently spy on the populace. He's said openly that the US government "needs to 'break down the stovepipes' that separate commercial and government databases," the article says.
Poindexter joins a slew of Reagan-era retreads and Iran-Contra alumni now operating brazenly in Dubya's bureaucracy. No doubt he feels quite comfortable among such familiar company, though I doubt I could say the same for the rest of us. ®
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
No, really, why don't some of you all come up with some solutions to these national security and intelligence problems.
:)
Here's the process...
1. Work 10+ years in the intelligence/national secutiry/CT/etc. field at an operational level.
2. Based on your work-related experience, come up with some solutions. Beware that no matter what solution you suggest, you will be compared to 'the gestapo' because of the thousands of 'experts' on 'abuses of power by U.S. intelligence agencies' who 'know' that everything directed by Oliver Stone is 100% factual/accurate/etc.
There's alot more to these problems than is ever reported by wired.com.
Yes, some of the terrorists of 9/11 were travelling under 'flagged' IDs. One of the main things that kept them from being caught was a lack of a database link between overseas and domestic intelligence/seciruty agencies.
Some agencies knew they were in the country, and issued alerts for them to be detained. The ability to get that alert to every domestic law enforcement person in time was not available.
Everyone who reads slashdot.org be brutally honest with yourselves - what would the comments have read like if 1 year before 9/11 slashdot.org reported on a government plan to link databases between the State Dept., INS, CIA, and FBI. Most of you would have been against it, assigned some dark and false ulterior motive to such a plan, etc.
Here are some cold, hard, facts - totally free democracies are very easy targets for terrorism and hostile intelligence agencies.
The reason the KGB has such a great track record in terms of intelligence work is because they worked against the most open societies the world has ever known and they worked for the most oppressive/closed society the world has ever known (US and UK intelligence personnel who operated against the Gestapo during WW2 quickly found out that it was impossible - IMPOSSIBLE - to run penetration agents inside the Soviet bloc during the cold war - by 1960 all agents run vs. the Soviet bloc were citizens of the Soviet bloc -communist CI/internal security was an order of magnitude better than what the Gestapo could do, and the Gestapo agents were more intelligent and better trained than most communist agents). KGB intelligence officers and terrorist operatives were/are not genetically superior to your average FBI CI Officer (that's counter intelligence for the unknowing). The simple fact is that the deck is stacked massively in favor of the bad guys due to 'form of government'. If you want to give the good guys (and they ARE the good guys - I am one of them and I don't care what porn you look at...send me the links...and I don't care what conspiracies you buy into, and I don't care about anything you do until you start wiring money to the bank account of one of the 18 best operators that Al-Q has 'on the books' at the moment - and the same goes for my superiors and co-workers) a better chance you are going to have to TRUST them to use the powerful tools (hopefully placed) at their disposal in a responsible manner.
Reccomended reading for slashdot.org on the history of the CIA during the 'big conspiracy' times:
'The Very Best Men'
Written by a 'suspicious' reporter who was given access to OSS and CIA files released under the FOIA.
Slashdot rules. Keep up the good work. Don't try and build a nuclear weapon and you probably won't attract any attention to the porn on your computers.
Anonymous Cowardly Good Guy
discussion, contains text of SF chronicle article on airline no-fly lists used to harass and delay peace activists
article explaining how if you look nonwhite or have the wrong sort of beard you get fingerprinted at the Canadian border
Stay safe! Stay home! Be good and don't say anything!
Next they'll be fingerprinting us at toll booths and you'll have to have a visa to travel from state to state. Hey, it worked for the USSR- for a while.
As a matter of fact I was searched too, the last time I flew anywhere (rare, for me). I suppose next time I'll be strip-searched, or beat up a bit. However, I do have one big advantage- I'm white. And I don't wear a beard, or particularly long hair.
Interesting times we live in. So this is what it's like to live in cold war USSR. Remember, there won't be a problem if you stay home and don't ask any questions!
You guys have no idea how innocent ID cards are. We in Europe have them for years and we sure don't feel like being watched.
The next time the terrorists strike you'll blame the government again. Maybe you should blame yourself for not listening to your security experts.
Face it, you guys know IT, but you know nothing about security. You have no idea how all these terrorists in the last year were caught before they made any damage.
(I'm sure this will get moded down to -2 in 1 minute)
Such as finances, credit, family problems, etc? I have not committed crimes, and I don't ever want to have an ID system that can provide a ton of information about me. I do have something to hide - my personal life, because my life is my business, not Uncle Sam's.
I think you already, if you are an american, have a nice little ID number that can give people all sorts of private information about you. It's called you Social Security Number. If you want to do anything in america, work, pay taxes (if you work), get a bank account, get credit, etc., you HAVE to have one of them.
You can be replaced by a very small shell script.
> The second is the Registered Traveler ID.
> This system is a voluntary system for frequent
> flyers to bypass the tedious and sometimes
> invasive security procedures at airports and
> train stations.
Well, I'll again paraphrase Lessig's "Code and the Laws of Cyberspace."
There are basically four ways to regulate something:
1) Make a law
2) Change the infrastructure
3) Establish social norms
4) Apply market forces
A "voluntary" system for frequent flyers, to allow someone to bypass the search stations, creates a two-tier infrastructure:
A: People who get to go right to their plane,
B: People who have to stand in line to get searched.
Now, once having established the two-tier system, what do you think will happen with tier "B"? To "save money," there will be fewer search stations and personnel. You'll have to plan to wait hours in line, and get particularly invasive searches.
What will happen with tier "A"? You get to go right to your plane, without delay, without intrusion.
Let's imagine the Gov't really wants you to get the card. (Not a big stretch of imagination, IMHO.) They make choice "B" so burdensome that you'll be compelled to choose "A" instead. The Gov't will point out that your rights are not being violated, since you aren't being denied travel if you choose not to go the "A" route. You can always exercise your privacy rights in the 2 to 4-hour "B" lines.
That's how to use infrastructure instead of law to compel the population to get their passenger ID's. Make the rights-preserving alternative so onerous that no one really wants to use it.
Read Lessig's book, it's an eye-opener (as he intended it to be).