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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."
How soon until you can buy a pocket ID sniffer/cloner? Or the plans become available on the latest 'warez' site? Great. Just by walking down the street 20 people can steal my identity...
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?).
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Will now be a New and Improved Canadian.
*sigh*
Anybody got some tin foil?
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
I doubt an RFID in a drivers licence is any kind of deterrent when you're prepared to hijack a plane and kill yourself and everyone else in it by crashing it into a building.
Virginia government officials need to keep reading this until they get it:
THE 9/11 HIJACKERS HAD VALID DRIVERS LICENSES.
THE 9/11 HIJACKERS HAD VALID DRIVERS LICENSES.
THE 9/11 HIJACKERS HAD VALID DRIVERS LICENSES.
THE 9/11 HIJACKERS HAD VALID DRIVERS LICENSES.
Stop using the hijackings to justify your pet police state!
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.
fair enough, you wouldn't mind.
but I'm not getting Viriginia's apparent reasoning for introducing the RFIDs - "Virginia is considering just such a measure, largely because several of the 9/11 hijackers were licensed there". How would have RFID helped? It's a non sequitur.
As I understand it, the issue wasn't that identification failed at the airport. So how would RFID have helped?
-- james
How, EXACTLY, would the 9-11 attackers been stopped if they had been issued RFID drivers licenses? There is no sane connection. I can't think of any easier examples to prove that government and businesses are taking advantage of the 9-11 fear to lock us down. PATRIOT acts, car transponders, GPSed cell phones, RFID armbands, implants, RFIDed ID cards, biometrics... NONE OF THESE THINGS would have stopped those men from crashing those planes into the towers. But that attack is used to justify every possible wet dream of a police state.
Now, onto Project TinFoilHat. If issued such a card, I will build a Faraday cage into a belt pouch, and there their assine tracking device can sit until a POLICEMAN asks to see it. I know damned well they can build RFID detectors that can work at great distances; I will not cooperate and being tracked on a giant Ms. Pac Man screen by whomever can afford the equipment.
As for those of you who don't care about this, you are good Germans. What else can I say.
You carry your licence so that people know who you are, and this would just provide a better way to verify that information.
I carry my drivers license so I can drive. I have no interest in other people knowing "who I am".
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Another thing to do would be to make a reader-detector, to see who is trying to scan your cards surreptitiously. That would be a great way to embarass people and businesses trying to play Big Brother, and you might even be able to get such snooping prohibited by law.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
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.
what makes you think that the people passing this law won't also make it illegal to purposely block or interfere with the signal?
It seems to me that the proper course of action would be to prevent this from becoming law in the first place.
I'm genuinely curious, what is it you're afraid of? Life is sometimes hard and good people sometimes die. Is it worth living in a police state to somehow keep that one set of crazed morons from blowing something up? Honestly, is it worth it?
How about this: Let's stop pissing people off so that they don't feel like it's worthwhile to blow our stuff up. Then, let's stop blowing up their stuff so that they won't have any reason to retaliate.
There, we're right back where we should have been pre-9/11. Stop being frightened by the boogey-man-terrorist. Oh, he's out there alright, and he's real, but I'm much more worried about the crazies here in our own country, with valid IDs, that think they need to kill their girlfriends when they break up with them, or hold babies out of car windows while driving, or go on a sniper rampage in Washington DC.
You can get struck by lightning, or a car can come careening out of control and smush you into the sidewalk in a New York Minute. Drunk drivers are way more dangerous than any terrorist to you. Police-state Gestapo tacticts are way more dangerous to you than any terrorist.
If you want an example of this, cut out a small piece of aluminum foil, one inch by four or so. Tune a hand-held AM radio to a strong station. Now put the foil over the housing near the loopstick antenna; the reception will die. Doesn't take much, does it?
Sustainability and energy independence essay
"Virginia is considering just such a measure, largely because several of the 9/11 hijackers were licensed there."
because wouldn't everyone agree that it would have been just so much better if the 9/11 hijackers had Virginia drivers licenses with RFID chips embedded in them when they flew into the WTC. Sigh. Putting RFID chips in drivers licenses doesn't make it any harder for someone (terrorist or not) to get a drivers license. It wouild make just about as much sense to say "Virginia is considering just such a measure because tasty smoked ham is made in Virginia. There's no correlation between the two, but every effect must have a cause, so we'll use ham." I'm thinking that the "logic" here is that if they know someone is a terrorist, they can use RFID chip scanners to find them more easily. But if you know someone's a terrorist, then maybe you should arrest them when they come to pick up their driver's license in the first place, or when they get their airline ticket, or when they get pulled over by a cop for speeding, or at any other time when they actually present their driver's license and/or name. This is a solution to a problem we'd love to have. If someone could solve the problem of figuring out who's a terrorist, and the only obstacle was in finding them, then maybe this would be usefull. As it is, this is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
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