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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.'"
Someone is going to need a faraday cage.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
...means just that?
If they government can read it for legitimate purposes, other people can read it for illegitimate purposes.
DBA? Software Engineer? My company is hiring! Click
the article states having a barcode or some other form of security that must actually be read, how about encrypting the data on the rfid and putting the key on the barcode?
just a thought
The Answer
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
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
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.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
like someone would benefit from stealing my Identity. They would just inherit my debt.
I guess that's one more reason to get a passport
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.
Well folks, it's a dupe.
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.. can anyone find Sex for me?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/28/1
Or is it a trip?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/23/2
A quad? (Quap?)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/27/0
Quint? Penta?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/22/0
So
Posted today at the BBC
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Human beings are funny like that. We're members of the animal kingdom and animals, for whatever natural reason, just don't like being followed or tracked unless it's by their children and/or mate or they're traveling in a coordinated herd. Attempting to rationalize a violation of basic natural psychology by invoking security isn't going to invalidate primal instincts. If mother nature has instilled us with an instinct that dislikes being tracked or followed there's probably a very good reason for it. It's probably because, whatever the rationalization is, the truth is that animals track and follow prey. Very rarely is the stranger following you interested solely in your welfare for no selfish reason of their own.
Stalking is illegal for a reason. Even if no physical contact is ever made it constitutes harassment. Harassment leads to a degradation of the quality of life, poor performance at work, and after extended periods of time can lead to a psychological breakdown. Creating a population of paranoid schizophrenics isn't all bad. Once they come apart at the seams we can lock them in a cell with a bicycle and use them to produce energy, thus breaking our dependence on oil and negating the need for nuclear fuel. It'll also solve the overpopulation problem if we keep the sexes separated. In the end it'll allow some members of the population, who aren't being harassed or seem to be immune to natural instincts (are they even human then?), to live a life of leisure using the energy of those we have harassed and then locked up.
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-
Because it would be illegal to export encryption of that strength. It does not matter if the other nation already has the technology.
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.
I had thought this was alarmist, that the information would be a set of MD5s or in the case of client-side data, public-key encrypted, but that turns out to not be the case. It's all naked data.
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.
My question at that point is: why not use another technology? The whole point of RFID is that it is readable from a distance without jumping through any hoops. If TFA is correct they are negating the whole point of RFID and fighting it's inherent nature to do so. It seems that some kind of optical technology would be perfectly suited to do exactly what they want to do with RFID.
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.
Here's the schema they're using:
255 bytes: First name
1 byte: Middle initial
255 bytes: Surname
1 bit: Boolean true if user checked the 'Member of Terrorist Group' checkbox
7 bits: CIA National Boxcutter Purchase Monitoring flags
16KB: ASCII-art depiction of tubgirl courtesy of frustrated intern
16KB: Excerpts from Book of Revelation
1 byte: Flags for previous visits to Iran / Cuba / North Korea / Syria / Lebanon / Pakistan / Libya / Yavin
30KB: XML representation of above flags