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."

Comments

Tracking...

[spagetti_code]

I'm a frequent US visitor who has been fingerprinted and photographed. It didn't feel good, but its not like we have a choice.

This new step is another step towards control - remember, that is what this is all about. Bad guys get around the system - the 9/11 guys were all bona-fide visitors. Good guys, which is everyone else, gets tracked and watched.

I'm glad I'm outside the country 8+ months of the year.

Re:Tracking...

[c0p0n]

Just because the US went from pretty much nothing to something doesn't mean the europeans have anything to goad over us.

Are you saying that the parent post of yours is doing some xenophobe afirmations?

The point is that if you go to US and you're not from the US (I do not say american... cubans are americans too) you have a serious risk of being humiliated by US frontier guards, being the risk proportional to:

1. Size of your moustach
2. Darkness of your skin

My brother went to US last year. He has no moustach, but a aggressively black hair and he has a dark skin. He was locked by the airport guards for 3 hours. They even assured that he was on a black list (!!!) only to scare him to see his reaction.

Well, if that is what you call freedom ... FIGHT AGAINST THAT, BY GOD'S SAKE!!!. There will not be another opportunity.

Re:Tracking...

[arivanov]

Russians tried it. They have it as a law. Any visa or entrance measure is strictly bi-lateral. If a country enforces additional checks on Russian citizens, the Russian government has no other choice, but to implement the same checks reciprocally within 1 year. So watch for Russians taking american fingerprints till the end of the year. That will be fun. Almost as fun as around the end of the Clinton administration when the americans introduced an additional 100$ processing fee for Russians. Russians immediately replied. Americans retalliated by raising it to 300$. Russians replied. IIRC Americans raised it to 500$ for a few weeks before waiving it completely. I had to travel to the US (visa payed by my american employer) at the time. The dept director was close to "having kittens" after getting the demand for 300$. I think it reached as far as the company writing a letter to some congresscritters and the State Department to get a grip on reality and stop the pissing match.

The Terrorist Bomber's Dream!

[newt]

RFID chips can be read from up to 50 feet away. Sure, most readers only work from a few inches, but there is off-the-shelf equipment available for a moderate number of dollars with a much, much greater range.

So, lets assume that the RFID chips in US Passports will be readable from "a long way away". Doesn't matter if it's 10 feet, 20 feet or 50 feet. Lets just say it's more than a few inches.

What does this mean? It means that a bomber with a moderate budget could build a detonator for an explosive device which goes off when it can detect the presence of an RFID chip.

It doesn't need to actually read the chip (lets assume the passport data is encrypted), it just needs to know it's there.

Furthermore, it could count the number of unique RFIDs which are currently in range, and only detonate the explosive when enough of them are seen at the same time.

It could be planted days, weeks or months in advance, and it'd sit there until its batteries ran down waiting for the right moment to go off.

The result is a bomb which only goes off when a sufficiently large density of American citizens is present.

- mark