WSIS Physical Security Cracked

An anonymous reader writes "A group of activists has apparently bypassed physical security checks at the WSIS Meetings. Not only did they bypass the physical security with a fake card, they found the system uses RFID tags to monitor participants -- possibly even who they interact with and their movements through the conference."

Comments

Tracking locations?

[fred911]

In order to track locations to see who's close to who, you need many, many rfid transceivers. Probably so many, so close there'd be other issues (rf issues).

Re:'Activist' is such a misnomer

[anagama]

What's this WSIS about? It seems you sneer at activists when in fact, they might just be protecting your freedom.

• It doesn't help that there are several topics of great import but huge controversy. The chief among these is Internet governance. In short: who gets to run the Internet?
  ***
  The United States, Europe and English-speaking partners such as Australia favour the existing private-company organisation, ICANN. Whereas developing nations, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and others all want a recognised international body to run the show, ITU.

Follow the links back a bit.

And for posters below who seem unimpressed that a quasi governmental agency can monitor who it is you mingle with, or go to private areas for private discussion - you deserve what you'll get. The internet so far has been a model of a borderless world. But many countries are terrified by this concept - you really want them collecting data, manipulating who the attendees will be to prevent certain individuals from blocking their plans? That's nuts.

Re:"Bypassed security"

[ShaunC]

If you RTFA you'll find that what they did was use a fake ID with the name of a real participant to obtain a badge. Nothing very clever about that.

You'll also find that they should have been required to produce their letter of invitation and a registration number. They had neither, but got in anyway. Perhaps not so much clever as scary, this place is hopping with "important people" and anybody can walk right in with no invite and a fake ID.

The security at freaking MacWorld was better (or worse, depending on your perspective) than this the last time I went! Unless you got your badge via mail, you had to produce not only your ID but also the credit card that you used to register. Not infallible, but at least a challenge - and Javits wasn't full of diplomats, either.

Re:Feels good

[cduffy]

It's a security conference. There's a reasonable expectation is that security experts:

1. Are innately concerned about avoiding unnecessary exposure of personal data (say, by displaying it in such a way that 3rd parties could observe or record personal information about other attendants).
2. Will be able to use access control which is not circumvented by such a blatantly trivial mechanism as a fake ID.
3. Will not permit other physical security measures (such as the use of metal sensors) to be trivially circumvented (as by smuggling in items which would not be permitted to be taken in during the conference itself beforehand).

And so forth. The issue is not necessarily so much that the organizers are hostile as that they're incompetant in the very matter they're holding a conference about.

Re:'Activist' is such a misnomer

[Orne]

No, Reactionary is one tick stronger on the scale

Political Leaning - "Left" to "Right"
Revolutionary - Liberal - Status Quo - Conservative - Reactionary

Government Intervention - "Weak" to "Strong"
Anarchist - Libertarian - Status Quo - Authoritarian