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Brill's Contentious ID Card
pwackerly writes "The New York Times (illegal kidney sale required) is running a story on a private venture funded by the man behind CourtTV to sell ID cards that let you bypass security, both national (airports) and private (your business's lobby). Outside of the standard national ID concerns, now we'd have to worry about a terrorist stealing our super-secret ID from our wallet. Don't these people learn anything from reading 'Mostly Harmless?'"
The total lack of anyone willing to fly under this system is what's gonna cut down the lines at the airport.
But at least Mr. Brill will be able to tell the FBI exactly who blew up the airplane.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
We aren't looking for terrorist, so how will this card further increase our risk?
Until the government gets off its PC centric ass and starts looking for terrorist instead of weapons we might just as well mark airline tickets as shoe bomb permits.
It wasn't a shoe bomb or razor blade that flew airliners into buidlings.
This card just falls under the current "safety" situation. We want to feel safe, we just aren't willing to do what is needed to be safe.
Let them have their quick checkin card, its not like their time is more important than their safety anyway.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If someone bypasses security in the lobby with this card and then goes on a shooting spree, could the company issuing the card be liable? What if they missed prior felony convictions in their background check?
-- Stanislav Shalunov
Who monitors this company who doles out these ID cards? Since this is Mr. Steven Brill's baby, does he essentially have the power to give himself and his friends (and perhaps those with a little too much cash on their hands) clean IDs?
Admittedly, I don't know how the public system works with regards to internal checks to the ID distribution system. However, if these companies were to become popular, this strikes me as an excellent opportunity to perceive each company as a weak link in an ever-weakening great chain.
The FBI does indeed have a "terrorism watch list", but it is completely useless. Apparantly there are 13 million people on it!
So, the group of have's get to bypass the security checkpoints while the have-not's must endure hours of security checks. If the have's population is very small and limited to 'influential' people, and the have-not's represent a large percentage of the total population then I would be forced to call it class warfare.
I'm not saying the proposal has a malicious agenda, instead I'm trying to imagine what an ID card type system such as this one could evolve into given time.
Shh.
I love reading these stories about how everyone wants to make a national id card, Oracke wants to run the database, IBM wants to provide the hardware etc...
As long as there is a centralized database of any kind, the potential for abuse is there. The only way that I would get a national ID card of some kind is if it were similar to the following:
The card would have to be a smart card, and store the following:
-An MD5 of my PIN number
-A "fingerprint" of my fingerprint (i.e. the datapoints that are stored instead of fingerprints themselves)
-A picture of myself (stored digitaly)
-I may or may not want info like eye color, hair color, weight, height etc.. I hesitate because I don't think they are particularly usefull in identification. I've never had anyone actually check my eye color when I present ID.. and I know women who change thier hair color more often than thier desktop background.
-Although I really dislike the idea of including it, my SSN will probably be necessaraly included. I'd prefer a MD5 of my ssn, and be required to key it in when necessary, but like income taxes the genie is out of the bottle and I don't see any act of congress to repeal SSN's coming soon.
This should cover the standard security pillars.. Something you have (the card), something you know (your pin) and something you are (fingerprint). Any one is easy enough to fake. Any two require some serious nastyness to get from you, and all three require some form of intimidation to get from you.
Now, all that info should be cryptographaly signed by some government agency. Preferably each location (or maybe each operator) that provides registration/card creation service would have its own private key to sign the information. That way, fradulent cards can be traced back to whomever signed them and they can be appropriately beaten and charged as a terrorist w/o due process.
Now, the most important thing is that.. this information must not be stored anywhere aside from on the card! If there is a uber database of everyones name, photo, ssn and fingerprint that just screams to be abused. This would still allow interoperatability with the watch list du jour via ssn's, and I believe it would even be approved by most privacy advocates.
Any improvement ideas? Post 'em!
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
If they actually manage to employ something like this, we should know if there is anyone on the plane we board that has bypassed security. I don't mind going through security and the hassel, but I do NOT want to fly on a plane that has anyone carrying one of these cards that has bypassed security. It's our right to know.
Like I need another card, between the Civilian CDL, the doctors exam certifacation, the army drivers lic, the military ID card, the Amature Radio lic., the Concealed weapons permit, the 2 gun club cards and 5 library cards... this will prove I am the person all these cards say I am...
I'm told you are what you eat, does that mean I can be you by tomorrow with some A1?
power grid...
highway bridges...
railroads...
inland fuel delivery...
Probably countless others as well. Remember that barge/I-80 collision not too long ago? Imagine if that happened on a particularly busy holiday weekend. It wouldn't have the live coverage of an urban attack, but coordinated attacks on major interstate bridges would have quite an effect, since we rely on these bridges to get around. It would certainly affect trucking, which moves a good chunk of the goods that we use daily.
The recent problems with the fuel delivery pipeline to Phoenix proved that fuel delivery is very vulnerable to problems. People were panicking over it. They were attempting to fill every container they had with extra fuel, and if people had just kept buying gas like they normally had it probably wouldn't have been a problem. The populace itself caused the problem.
Railroads also do a lot of our long haul goods delivery, and I would imagine that it wouldn't be hard for that to be a problem. Heck, one person could probably drive around with the right tools, yanking spikes out of railroad ties, and cause a large scale catastrophie. We do send sensor cars over the railroad lines from time to time, but how long would it take for this to be a problem?
Much of our society is built on the honor system, assuming that people won't engage in civil disobedience. Also, we have rather severe penalties for those who break these pieces of infrastructure. Trouble is, terrorists have shown that they aren't concerned about personal ramifications. We'll just have to wait and see.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I seem to remember someone saying that the terrorists that participated in 9/11 received their tickets using their real names and all legitimate information. What's stopping this from happening with the ID cards? How many terrorists are in this country legally and not on any watch list?
I found it interesting that the guy behind this partners with the people who made EZ-Pass. I have driven the roads in NJ. EZ-Pass was and continues to be a complete and total disaster that has cost more in new expenses than the revenue that would have been lost if tolls were simply abolished in this state. If EZ-Pass is behind this, I am sure it will be an "EZ-Pass" for terrorists...