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American Passports to Have RFID Chips
pr1000 writes "Wired is reporting that the State Department is planned on adding RFID chips to new American passports, starting with diplomat's passports in January. Those worried about the privacy concerns of RFID should take notice, as this rollout could set a precedent."
Let me get this straight. Assume I am a bad guy. If I want to find an American overseas - particularly in a country where carrying a passport is mandatory, how am I going to go about it?
To take it one step further, if I am wifi'd into a database somehow, I can even do a few smarts and identify a "better" target (wealthier, public figure etc).
I carry an Australian passport and it will not shock me when "the Clever Country" bends over and does what the Americans do - yet again!
The difference is that with current passports, you have to show it, which has to be asked, and which you can refuse, so you have the ability to choose to accept the consequences of not showing your passport. With rfid tags it can be done without you even knowing it, and thus without you agreeing to.
When you show your passport at the airport or as means of identification at a bank, for instance, the same privacy issues arise, RFID or not.
Sure, RFID can be read from a distance, but many of us seem sooooo worried about RFID and yet happily keep carrying a mobile phone, willingly pay by card or withdraw money from an ATM, and get in view of security cameras. No tinfoil hat is going to protect against that.
If there are privacy issues, it is because someone decides to abuse the technology, RFID or not.
If you want privacy, pay cash only, stay home, don't use phones, and don't do anything that requires identifying yourself.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
But you get to choose who to show your passport to. Anyone can read RFID information, as long as they can get reasonably close to you.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
And those very same security "experts" obviously don't know that there are methods for secure encryption known throughout the world even now? You don't need to be an expert to know that!
And no, I can't see any other explanation. It cannot be the possibility of unallowed reading of the data: That's even easier if the data isn't encrypted at all. And it cannot be the possibility of making forged passports: Having data not encrypted makes this not any harder than having it encrypted with a known encryption.
Even in the worst case scenario, when the decryption key was made public by some other state, the situation couldn't get worse than without any encryption at all. Of course, the USA could just decide not to give the key (or any specification at all) to countries they don't trust. Those countries would then just have to do what they do now: Rely on the non-RFID portion of the passport (which is currently all that is in a passport).
So there is really no excuse to store unencrypted data on the RFID chip.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Does anyone else smell a business opportunity for Radio-shielded passport sleeves?
Nobody writes jokes in base 13. - DNA
Hell, it's your country, your politics, your ideals, and your decision; I don't really care - it's mainly a curiosity for me that sociological values can change so rapidly.
I've just obtained a visa for the US, and had to give my fingerprints - I was curiously antagonistic towards this, and again it's nothing more than another incremental step. After thinking about it for a while I realised it's nothing to do with privacy, it's that I mentally associate being fingerprinted with being a criminal.
I felt I'd been judged and summarily convicted of something (what, I don't know, being an alien perhaps). As a reasonably law-abiding citizen (ok, I admit I sometimes exceed the speed limit on a motorway
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
1. RSA Blocker Tag
2. Tinfoil cover
3. Faraday cage purse.
There is no money in discovering RFID blocking devices. There is a possible market in creating a cheap RFID detector.
Revelation 13 (16-17)
And it causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark on their right hand, or in their foreheads, even that not any might buy or sell except those having the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of its name.
The bible always makes a good reading - not that I am a beliver, or so.
"I'm fed up with having to produce many bits of paper just to prove who I am"
They you should be opposing the 'identity' culture, not supporting it.
These chips will do nothing to make people safer (they'll be no harder to forge than current passports), but will certainly make some people less safe by broadcasting their information to anyone with an RFID reader.
He had some great points about why the Bush Government would want this.
My first question is there a way I could make/buy a shield that mask the RFID signal? I can see a case like I have my palm in that would shield my passport until I gave it to the Custom Agent.
I wonder it my new passport will have this I just sent in my renewal paperwork...
-S
It is said that a child learns wisdom from the parent,
but the truly wise parent learns joy from the child
Sorry for the "stupid" question in the subject line, but so far I (as an European citizen) was told that the USA is a democratic system. So I guess that the US citizens should be able to express their discomfort about RFID tagging in the upcoming elections. Just a thought of a naive European...
Yes; there's a solution called the "bar code," and it doesn't require any damned RF technology. Why bother using RFID if it isn't to be able to read the thing at a distance? If you're going to have to take it out of the pouch to deliver the information, they might as well have to run a barcode scanner over it as well.
Of course, when asked by a policeman or customs official, IF there is cause to ask you. I have absolutely no right to ask you to show your id just to respond to this message for instance.
The day that you will be detained when you refuse to show your passport while buying a certain newspaper for instance will be a very grim day...
If you refuse to show it, you're detained. Then, they open up your wallet/purse and look. All you did was delay everyone somewhat and create trouble for yourself with no real difference between they're waving you over or pointing a device.
Oh really? If you refuse to show it at the hotel? In the cab? In a restaurant? At the movie theater? There is no technical reason anyone can't set up a reader anywhere they want to snoop.
When I travel, my passport never leaves me. It's such a comfort to know it will be singing out my name, age, photo and home address to anyone who's curious. I feel safer already.
Kill, Tux, kill!
Ok you wait in line to have your passport checked. I will happily go threw the reader with my passport safely on my person. With a little green light that says it is OK for me to enter the US or even other countries.
Of course nothing stopping me from walking up to the reader and opening my shielded case and walking through.
But while you walk around with a non shield RFID the CIA will know exactly who you are and able to add notes to your passport with out your knowledge.
-S
It is said that a child learns wisdom from the parent,
but the truly wise parent learns joy from the child
It is not easier to show, but it is a *lot* harder to hide. That's the point why everyone is making such a fuss around this issue, I think.
Today, you carry some form of ID, be it driver's license in the US, a national ID in Europe or whatever. You are most of the time obliged to show this piece of ID to law enforcement officers if they ask for.
Either the officer authenticates him/herself with his badge, a similar ID item or just the entire appearance along with police equipment and police car. So in 99% of all cases, I know when my ID is checked and by whom and I'm sure it was read by real officers on duty or someone is going to jail for posing as one.
With RFID, none of us can ever know if we were checked, let alone by whom. If that person was really authorized by law and duty to check us, we can only pray for. We want to hide our ID from anyone's eyes who has not identified himself as a lawful officer on duty. With RFID it is hardly possible.
If the regular police cannot or does not perform simple duties in plain sight, with proper uniform, without hiding the officers identity behind something, having the officers armed only with the law and a baton, our society as a whole is in trouble. Riot shields, handcuffs and a low power hand gun may be necessary at times, but cable ties, fully automatic rifles, masks are certainly unacceptable for me. Special units can have them, but regular policemen and -women should not. Hidden and unnoticed checks for unsuspecting passer-bys performed by guess-who are totally out of question.
Law enforcement should not use mobster tactics. Should not be armed like mobsters, should not act like them. This may give criminals and terrorists an advantage, but it is the only way to make sure we can distinguish between officers and mobsters. If we allow the police to act like the mob, guess how long it takes for these two to merge...
You can build an RFID tag that will DOS the system, but you first need to know how RFID works.
The RFID tag is simply a sequence of bits. You can ask about portions of its tag -- "do you start with sequence X". There is no way to communicate with only one tag; if you send a request, all tags in range hear it and send an affirmative signal if they do start with that sequence (and nothing otherwise).
When a reader needs to scan many RFID tags at once, it sends a signal saying 'Whose next bit is a 1?' and 'Whose next bit is a 0?' and counts the chirps for each response. When it gets zero chirps, it knows to stop (there are no tags with that ID). If it gets only one chirp, it has found a unique tag and records it. Otherwise, it recurs down both trees.
If you build a device that always says 'yes' to both questions, the reader will have to recur down both trees 'forever' or give up until you leave range.
This seems to have the desired effect of preventing RFID scans without your knowledge, and it would certainly be handy to be able to turn it off at will.
LincolnQ
It seems to me that it will eventually make it easier to forge Passports.
People are lazy and cheap.
The government doesn't want to have to pay a bunch of agents to look at passports and agents don't want to have to look at passports all day long. I predict that with RFID chips embedded in passports, there will just be devices that you wave your passport near and they will check to see its validity. There will be a security guard nearby to jump on anyone that fails the scan, but nobody will be actually looking at the passports.
Along come Mr. Forger. He no longer needs to concentrate on making special paper, holigrams, and the like: all he needs to do is make it look decent and put a good RFID chip inside.
The only problem: where to get some valid RFID numbers. That's easy! Just hang out at the airport for a few hours with an RFID scanning device, brushing against people and scanning their passports. Then take home the numbers and create some RFID tags with them.
This wouldn't work as well if a picture popped up on a security guard's screen so that they can verify the holder of the passport looked like what they had on file, but...people are lazy.