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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?'"
Don't Terrorize the Homeland without It!
Don't these people learn anything from reading 'Mostly Harmless?'
Of course they did, they learned how to bilk gullible people out of money...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
- 'cos these are the ID cards I'd vote for!
This way we don't have to worry about poor terrorist... just rich one's with the capital to buy bombs.
Boy does that take a load off my mind. Thanks card inventor guy!
is that Terrorist groups will start recruiting people who are not on a watch list and who have not convicted of a felony. If airlines use it for easy check-in, then you may as well call it the Shoe Bomb permit.
They can bypass the national security systems with a card but they can't get past the New York Times registration page.
Trolling is a art,
It seems those who are influential enough in government to fund quicker security at airports are the same ones who'd receive these ID cards.
So, you let all the influential people slide by quickly, and they'll never realize there's a real problem. I say let the influential people deal with the wait the same way we do, and then hopefully they'll do something about it.
How, though, do they intend to verify that those applying for these cards really have the "credentials" being given to them? Background searches on that kind of a scale would be an extremely intensive undertaking for any organization. Furthermore, there is no way this could be done for the $30 or $50 mentioned in the article. They could, I suppose, require the applicant to submit proof that they meet the requirements for obtaining one of these cards, but then that raises a new problem: falsified records/information. "He said that the system was probably unworkable." I'd say so.
"Aye, and if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon!" -- Montgomery Scott, ST:III
How naive. If it quacks like a national ID card, it's probably a duck trying to bypass security. Quick, increase to threat level fowl!
Heres an artcle on the same subject at Reuters but without the need to register to view it. http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=te chnologyNews&storyID=3678908§ion=news
This would open the door to other companies selling ID cards. Eventually there would be enough producers of these cards to allow disreputable produces to slip through. A few of these would be discovered thereby reducing the credability of them all. Causing the government to take over.
In short, this is just a step in the road to government issued ID cards.
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.
A single identity card that would allow you to bypass invasive security screening. Because obviously, if you've never done anything wrong in the past, you clearly won't in the future.
I have to agree with all the people who are pointing out that this introduces a single point of failure into any system that honors it, but what's worse is that it seems to ignore the point of security checkpoints, which is not so much to merely identify people as it is to prevent the entry of weapons into a vulnerable area REGARDLESS of their identity.
Screw the ID cards, let's just skip right to microchip implants in the back of your neck. Think of all the time you could save!! You don't have to remember your ATM pin, just walk up to machine and you have access to your money. No waiting to pay at the store. It'd be great.. because no one who fits the security profile would ever turn out to be a terrorist. And of course, like all new technologies, it's sure to be infallible.
I hope we don't have to wait until 2060 for the next big counterculture movement.
And not for the tinfoil hat security reasons, but because it undermines the ideals of equal justice under the law for all. Rich people should NOT be able to buy preferential security treatment. If the law is "everyone gets their anus searched for bombs", then we all get in the same line and have the same kind of search. Simply having the money to buy an ID card that "proves" you've got a clean anus isn't equal protection under the law, it's preferential treatment for sale.
And the same goes for people who claim that they should have it because they're frequent fliers -- that's just a way of abstracting the fact that you have a lot of money.
Any law should be applied as equally as possible, ESPECIALLY if the law is some national security measure that happens to be a major invasion of your privacy and a general pain in the ass like airport security.
NO special rights for the rich, ESPECIALLY no special security rights for the rich.
It's just like a national ID card, except we have to pay for them!
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 fly a couple of times a month and I am always "randomly selected". Every single time. And the reason is that I fly:
This is the profile. Everyone knows this is the profile. Which is why the 9/11 highjackers flew:
...and this is the really nasty bit...First Class. Even fllowing the airlines current policy, there is no way the 9/11 highjackers would be subject to extra searches currently. Because they don't fit the "highjacker profile".
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
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;
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'll do the jokes,' snarled Ford.
`No,' said [Vann Harl, editor-in-chief]. `You will do the restaurant column.'
He tossed a piece of plastic onto the desk in front of him. Ford did not move to pick it up.
`You what?' said Ford.
[...]
.
[Harl] `Every possible position of every possible electron balloons out into billions of probabilities! Billions and billions of shining, gleaming futures! You know what that means?'
[Ford Prefect] `You're dribbling down your chin.'
[...]
[Harl]`Excuse me,' he said, `but this gets me so excited.' Ford handed him his towel. `This is the most radical, dynamic and thrusting business venture in the entire multidimensional infinity of space/time/probability ever.'
`And you want me to be its restaurant critic,' said Ford.
`We would value your input.'
`Kill!' shouted Ford. He shouted it at his towel.
The towel leapt up out of Harl's hands.
This was not because it had any motive force of its own, but because Harl was so startled at the idea that it might. The next thing that startled him was the sight of Ford Prefect hurtling across the desk at him fists first. In fact Ford was just lunging for the credit card, but you don't get to occupy the sort of position that Harl occupied in the sort of organisation in which Harl occupied it without developing a healthily paranoid view of life. He took the sensible precaution of hurling himself backwards, and striking his head a sharp blow on the rocket-proof glass, then subsided into a series of worrying and highly personal dreams.
Ford lay on the desk, surprised at how swimmingly everything had gone. He glanced quickly at the piece of plastic he now held in his hand -- it was a Dine-O-Charge credit card with his name already embossed on it, and an expiry date two years from now, and was possibly the single most exciting thing Ford had ever seen in his life -- then he clambered over the desk to see to Harl.
He was breathing fairly easily. It occurred to Ford that he might breathe more easily yet without the weight of his wallet bearing down on his chest, so he slipped it out of Harl's breast pocket and flipped through it. Fair amount of cash. Credit tokens. Ultragolf club membership. Other club memberships. Photos of someone's wife and family -- presumably Harl's, but it was hard to be sure these days. Busy executives often didn't have time for a full-time wife and family and would just rent them for weekends.
Ha!
He couldn't believe what he'd just found.
He slowly drew out from the wallet a single and insanely exciting piece of plastic that was nestling amongst a bunch of receipts.
It wasn't insanely exciting to look at. It was rather dull in fact. It was smaller and a little thicker than a credit card and semi-transparent. If you held it up to the light you could see a lot of holographically encoded information and images buried pseudo-inches deep beneath its surface
It was an Ident-i-Eeze, and was a very naughty and silly thing for Harl to have lying around in his wallet, though it was perfectly understandable. There were so many different ways in which you were required to provide absolute proof of your identity these days that life could easily become extremely tiresome just from that factor alone, never mind the deeper existential problems of trying to function as a coherent consciousness in an epistemologically ambiguous physical universe. Just look at cash point machines, for instance. Queues of people standing around waiting to have their fingerprints read, their retinas scanned, bits of skin scraped from the nape of the neck and undergoing instant (or nearly instant -- a good six or seven seconds in tedious reality) genetic analysis, then having to answer trick questions about members of their family they didn't even remember they had, and about their recorded preferences for tablecloth colours. And that was just to get a bit of spare cash for the w
Agreed. The best security I've ever seen is at the Tel Aviv airport. Before passengers can check in, they are subject to an intensive interrogation by two security guards (think military intelligence officers rather than rent-a-cops) who are trained in asking rapid-fire, pointed questions. I was in Jerusalem attending a scientific conference, and had a letter of introduction with me from the organizers (remember this is *leaving* Israel). The set of questions went something like this (my answers are left as an exercise to the reader) --
... and so forth. It was the third degree.
Why were you in Israel?
Where was the conference?
Did you present at the conference?
Do you have the conference program?
Please give it to me.
What did you present?
Is your name in the program?
Please give us your presentation.
Yes, now.
(I spoke for perhaps 2 minutes and was then interrupted.)
Were you invited to the conference?
Why would they invite you?
Are you some kind of expert in this field?
Where did you stay?
How did you know where to stay?
Who arranged your hotel for you?
Where did you get your taxi this morning?
How did you know you could find one there?
They are smart enough to have about as many interrogation stands as there are check-in counters, so there's plenty of bandwidth. Once you pass through security, you walk 10 meters to the counter and talk to an airline employee to check in, rather than the other way around, and the path from interrogation to check-in is controlled. The idea behind the interrogation is to make sure you are legitimate, and have a solid, believable story (I do not for a moment think they cared about my research into an arcane corner of neurobiology). They are checking the person rather than his belongings (although they do this as well). That's security.
American airports don't have security, they have inconveniences to placate the general population into thinking they are secure. I'd much rather the Americans implemented a system like the Israelis have.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
This is Isreal, and you are free to not answer their questions. It's very simple: You DON'T fly. Isreal has a large problem with suicide bombings, and they'll be darned if one happens on their airplanes. If you tell off the security guards, you're in for lots of questions.
People in Isreal are normal people. They just don't like being blown up. Wben you're flying a US airline, you get security-searched, even though they don't have 'evidence'.
I'm sure their security system has been challenged in court, and it's stood up. Isreali airline security is second to none, and the US needs to learn some lessons from them.
The sooner America becomes a police state the better.
Then the US will be safe, just like Israel.