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RFID Drivers' Licenses Debated
meganthom writes "How would you feel about having an RFID chip in your driver's license? Virginia is considering just such a measure, largely because several of the 9/11 hijackers were licensed there. Civil rights advocates are obviously unhappy with this turn of events, and it seems the ACLU has already taken the case. Proponents claim it would help law enforcement determine that you are who you claim to be and would make forgeries less common. The Federal government is also considering uniform 'smart card' standards."
Can you imagine how quickly wallet manufacturers would come out with new wallets that either sandwich your drivers license between two pieces of metal (aluminum foil I guess) or shield the entire wallet? I don't usually get too excited about privacy issues because I don't believe we have any these days. But, it is way too easy to imagine thieves walking around with readers and harvesting drivers licenses numbers and info in crowds. A drivers license often has all you need to get a credit card, especially if your state uses your social security number as your drivers license number (do any states do that anymore?).
http://www.busyweather.com/
Sure it's different - as long as I leave my driver's license in my pocket, no one can read that mag stripe off the back. And, frankly, I don't give my driver's license to anyone who doesn't have the legal authority to compel me to give it to them. Cashiers get to look at it. They don't get to touch. With RFID, anyone and everyone can read my driver's license number (or a number that corresponds to my driver's license number). There have been times in my life when anonymity was important to me; there will be times in the future when it will be also. /frank
And the worms ate into his brain.
200,000 volt stun gun will tune that puppy up.
I took my current DL and bulk erased the mag stripe, then threw it on the concrete and stood on it and twisted my foot, grinding the barcode up so that it is no longer machine readable.
Visually, my DL still functions, it shows my ID correctly, it just can't be read by a machine.
If they want to check it against some DB, they have to call it in the old fashioned way.
"Sir, your DL is damaged, you need to have it replaced" "Gee, imagine that, I guess I better do something about that huh?" and that's that.
Resistance is NOT futile.
Of course it's a non sequitur. It's all a part of the "If you don't support my harebrained scheme, you're with the terrorists" line of thinking, which has become way too common lately. You'd think people would wise up and see right through this, but I guess there are a lot of slow learners out there.
Not only that, but with licenses as they are, the police/gestapo/etc. have to ASK for your license to see who you are - that's the big difference. You know who is requesting your license information, and if you so desire, you can deny them this access. Not so with RFID. If a cop pulls you over, he gets all your driver information and anyone else in the vehicle carrying this RFID as he walks to your car (maybe even before he gets out of HIS car, without even talking to you.
Might not trouble some, but being a minority I've had my "fair" share of profiling. This brings it to a whole new level.
Just my opinion, but I have serious problems about ANY form of identification that doesn't need to be PHYSICALLY viewed/handled...To what end? If it's another layer, and you STILL need to pull out your ID, how does this help? Perhaps as a replacement for the mag strip? I doubt this would be more efficent or accurate... At least with the mag-strip, you can hawk-eye your cards as someone handles them and you can SEE if they swipe it with some type of hand-held reader... It would be kind of hard to do that with RF if they had a scanner in their pocket they never had to remove...
Dont get me wrong, you brought up some interesting points -- but nowhere near close enough to convince that this is or can be a 'good' thing...