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Passport Chip Could Attract High-Tech Muggers
Orangez writes "Wired.com reports that 'business travel groups, security experts and privacy advocates are looking to derail a government plan to insert remotely readable chips in American passports, calling the chips homing devices for high-tech muggers, identity thieves and even terrorists.' and that 'The 64-KB chips will include the information from the photo page of the passport, including name, date of birth and a digitized form of the passport picture.'"
...means just that?
If they government can read it for legitimate purposes, other people can read it for illegitimate purposes.
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They can just sit at the door of the airport and scan everybody comming in and out ! Without you even knowing so you won't report it !
I don't get it. I mean, they State Dept. could easily have a reader connected to a network which passes along some hash which is stored on the card, to a server which would verify what passport they should be looking at. Slow? Wtf kind of technology are they using where 64K of stuff would take any time?
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When will these people learn that independent sober second opinions are valuable.
Years from know they will probably say "We made the best decision with the information we had at the time".
Burglar goes down to airport and watches family get on a plane to Europe. He grabs your name, and from that gets your home address. Then he can go rob your house while you and family are out of town. Certainly makes scoping out houses much easier; your house could be cleaned out before you even reach your destination.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Because the government, private corporations, etc. have proven that they can't be trusted with your data. Look at universities who have lost data to theft. If a major university can have data stolen, it can be stolen from anywhere. Besides, most people who would try and get this information wouldn't need the passport itself, just the data on it. A name, date of birth, and photo can often be enough to gain more information, sometimes enough to commit fraud with.
Do you wear a name tag with all of your personal information on your chest all day long? I'm not as threatened by governments knowing the information in my passport as much as I am worried about deviants using that information maliciously.
P.S. I don't think this was ment to be lojack for your passport
How comes that everyone trying to make a point has to include terrorist threat? Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit cheap?
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You've missed the point. The concern isn't that "big brother" is going to be watching our every move (after all, that's inevitable, and why worry about the inevitable?) the concern is that a terrorist could get your passport information simply by walking close to you with an RFID reader. It's a security nightmare to have your information freely available to anyone with the hardware to read it.
If they're not terrorists, and have nothing to hide, why are they so worried about being tracked? If anything, if your passport is stolen, wouldn't you rather have the chip in there to track it?
Because terrorists/kidnappers can set up a remote reader to look specifically for people carrying this type or passport. Kidnapers can use it to find people from specific other contries that they think are richer than they are and ransom them off for big bucks. Terrorists can use it to find people from specific nationalities. Bin Laden said to kill all americans everywhere, not just americans in the US. This gives them a leg up in finding people carrying around their passports when overseas.
That said, if they go through with this, they definitely need to build in a faraday cage into the passport case.
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...and look at this for a while. They understand that who you are and where you come from can make you a target. After all, the armed forces (whose upper ranks never lose a chance to make their soldiers dress up) tell their personnel not to wear their uniforms when traveling on civilian airlines, for the very reason that people don't want RDIF tags in their passport. And it's not just nationality. Airports all have wireless connections these days so you can get a name, do a quick Google search and stand a good chance of knowing enough about the person walking by to not only pick good targets but be able to imply uncanny knowledge about them. a corp. There must be a better solution that address both the governments concerns and the privacy concerns of our citizens. It seems that somebody has just made a decision and isn't willing to back off. We should isn't they try harder.
It should be combined with a biometric measurement. I understand the privacy people don't like it but identity is becoming increasingly important and a "peice of paper" just isn't going to cut it for much longer.
I think the straw hat, the clip on sun glasses, the bermuda shorts, and the black socks worn with sandals are enough of a give away.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
However, all of the legitimate uses of the passport involve a human being handling the passport anyway - and using a non-RFID smart chip will suffice.
Tinfoil hats aside, the primary response of the RFID proponents to the question of why RFID tags are needed is "Why not?". This is a preposterous approach to implementing a system that handles sensitive personal data that could cause severe distress to the owners of that data, if compromised. Sensitive data belonging to thousands or even millions of people! Assuming the government still considers an individual as the rightful owner of their own personal data.
Some of the conspiracy theories regarding RFID in passports are a little over the top. But there is no denying the fact that the potential for abuse is definitely enhanced by using this technology in this way. Today the scope is for Americans to be targeted using this - either by their own government, or by criminals, or by other governments, or by terrorists. Tomorrow, when more countries follow suit, that scope expands, giving birth to a rich and varied mix of uses - all of which with the legitimate exception of border control are extra-legal or downright criminal. I hate to sound like a troll but the RFID chip in your little blue book could well become the new star of david sewn into your shirt.
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
Can you imagine debating with foreign officials whether your CD is fake or it's just scratched?
-insert a witty something-
Seriously, you're pushing your cred here. What kind of burglar is going to be hanging out in airports looking for departing victims? An intelligent burglar would spend more time casing a target and keeping track of comings and goings of people. The newspaper, with funerals and such, has been a wealth of information for those vile enough to rob a house when someone's at a funeral or such.
Most burglaries are probably committed without much prior planning anyway, by someone looking for an easy target. Ambitious burglars or pros would probably be slower to adopt something like finding a prospective victim at an airport, as the still have no idea who's at home or what's worth taking, as they usually already have somthing in mind, like expsensive car or piece of artwork.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Terrorists are the new Communists. And black is the new black. Get over it already!
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Keeping people from stealing your identity is important. The governments of the world being able to track you and being able to verify your identity is not as important as your right to not be tracked or identified.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to not want people to be able to identify you. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to circumvent the system as well.
At what point did the unwilling martyrs at the twin towers win the balance against the millions of lives willing sacrificed so that we could taste freedom? It wouldn't matter if planes were crashed into building every day, it is no reason to take away freedom.
If the government can read it for legitimate purposes, then the government and other people can read it for illegitimate purposes.
I make a reasonable middle-class wage by going to work and not spamming blogs with scams.
> The range of the RFID transmission will be around 10 cm. IIRC it weakens with the power of 6 to the distance.
We can see the remains of the big bang and could detect the light of a firefly beyond pluto.
Range means nothing to directional high-gain antennas. Sure no one is going to retarget Jordell Bank or the deep space network to snoop for pasport id's but that does not mean someone could not get 10m or more gain from an antenna hidden on the back of truck driven through the airport arrivals zone.
RFID is and will be considerably cheaper than an equivalent optical solution or any other present technology.
The passport sniffer needn't hide the gear under a bulky coat. Any shoulder strap carry on type bag will do. They will blend in perfectly in the air port. They can then stand next to you in line, or perhaps brush past you walking in the hallways.
In 60 minutes of sniffing they could easily collect a dozen or more candidate "known gone" families, then use that as a short list of houses to check.
Maybe the regular readers will have a range in inches, and 802.11 has a range of 100ft. With the right antenna 802.11 can be extended by a factor of 50. I would not count on tags being unreadable from 24", a nice polite personal space distance.
I'm not saying this will ever happen, but it certainly is a lot easier than your deliberately ridiculous example.
What it really comes down to is...
If the passport issuing officials want a system that keeps a secondary reference copy of your information in a difficult to forge format, that is only readable with a special reader and is encrypted to prevent unauthorized use, then there is no reason to use a remotely readable device. A high resolution two dimensional barcode of encrypted data will do a nice job of it without exposing people's data to risk additional risk.
They are also, supposedly "designed only to be readable from 8 centimeters (about 3 inches) away when the passport is open."
My question at that point is: why not use another technology?
Because they want to be able to read them from more then 8cm. They know perfectly well that, with the right equipment, these 8cm devices can be read up to 10m away and they intend to use that feature themselves - they even talk about the ease of tracking people in airports and such as part of the justification for this implementation.
So, you have what basically amounts to spin control. Enough of the general public has latched onto the meme that RFID is a danger to their privacy. So instead of working to eliminate the entirely valid risks that RFID brings to this particular application, they are just trying to cover them up - literally and figuratively.
Your tax dollar at work...
I know, a mag stripe can have its data changed. But wait! So can an RFID tag! So you're going to end up doing public key crypto signing of the data anyway. Why not use technology that is proven to be cheap, safe, and reliable instead of something that is potentially expensive, dangerous, and has no real history of reliability that requires additional expensive hacks to prevent abuse?
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Why would a terrorist want your passport information? They have perfectly reliable ways to get entirely legitimate papers of their own. If they want to kill you, they will, and pick up your passport from your body later as a souvenir, whether it has RFID or not. On the other hand, thieves, swindlers, identity thieves could very well take an interest in your vital statistics. Why do TERRORISTS!!!! have to be part of every security discussion?
Either you've missed out something vital, or the system is wide open to a replay attack.
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That sounds like an excellent idea. The Bali bombers thought they were blowing up a bunch of Yankee infidel in Kuta, actally most were Asustralians. Us non-American white people would really prefer not to be collateral damage in your War on Terror (though sadly our dickweed prime minister has dragged us into it and made us targets).
Authorized custom agents could then pass a reader over that chip, which would take the number, connect to a US government's computer, input the number which would return photo, fingerprints, etc. etc.
There seems NO need to put all the sensitive information on a chip, when all you need is a number. Keep the sensitive information on more secure computers, accesible only by valid custom agents.
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If they want to kill you, they will, and pick up your passport from your body later as a souvenir, whether it has RFID or not.
They only want to kill you if you are american.
Your RFID passport is a dead giveaway (at a distance).
With a remote readable passport, someone could design a smart motar shell which specifically homes in on american passports. The motar shell only needs to broadcast that it is a passport scanner and detect the replies from american passports.
Sensing the existence of an RFID can be done at a greater range than the range necessary to actually make sense of the data.
Or a roadside bomb can wait for an American to pass by.
Terrorists are not all morons. They don't actually try to target random victims. They try to target their "enemy". If you give them tools to increase the accuracy of their attacks they will take advantage of them.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
In WWII, Nazi's required jews to wear armbands distinctly identifying themselves as jewish at a distance.
This system worked very well. It insured that second class citizens could properly receive the proper treatment as such. i.e.: forced to walk in the gutter, rather than a side walk etc. Attend at labour and death camps etc.
Now the american government wants americans to only travel abroad on the condition that they effectively wear electronic armbands identifying them as "AMERICAN" to anyone with a simple detector.
America is at war, and the American government wants its citizens to be required to advertize their status to all possible enemies.
At least the NAZI's were fairly transparent about their desire to oppress and harm jews.
How is electronically broadcasting american citizenship for all to see, going to help americans be safer.
Why not just make a law requiring all american citizens to wear armbands with the Star of David.
Would that be obvious enough for the morons in the whitehouse to wake the fuck up!
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
The US government is NOT putting a simple RFID tag into passports. They are embedding a fully functional smart card chip with an RF interface into the cover of the passport. The smart card can do on card matching of biometrics (which means that you don't have to store your fingerprint in a giant government database, it stays in your smart card).
But it is. The advantage of RFID is that you don't have to swipe anything, be in line-of-sight or even get (too) close. Those are the "hoops" that the RFID is all about avoiding. The measures they are taking are just crippling RFID to make it equivalent to all sorts of technologies we already have that don't have the risk of being intended read at a distance.
The genesis of RFID had to do with automation. Instead of making a *really* smart robot that can identify & figure out the physical objects it has to interact with - make the objects just a little smart so they can TELL the robot about themselves. Having to get really close and open a book is back to making having to make the system smart again (in this case you need a human to do this for the system - just the thing RFID is supposed to eliminate).