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US Passports To Recieve RFID Chips
connah0047 writes "The Washington Post reports that US passports will be getting RFID chips by October of 2006. Despite security concerns, the U.S. has now committed to putting RFID chips in the passports of all U.S. citizens. The new regulations will mean that all new and renewing U.S. passports will contain RFID chips by October 2006. While some believe this is a step forward, there are major privacy and security issues with the wireless technology."
From TFA:
Abraham Lincoln once said "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
I don't know about you all, but I think that Abe was a pretty wise man with a great idea. I sure wish that our government was like that...
I can't help but wonder what would happen if everyone started "accidentally" microwaving their passports.
Earlier this year, I was sitting at a travel agent's office in Japan. There was a message prominately displayed on the desk in both English and Japanese informing travelers that they needed to have special machine-readable passports to enter the U.S. The rest of the world already thinks of us as loonies. This new nonsense won't help. Especially since we're requiring *other countries* to do this as well if their citizens want to enter the U.S.
What's the point of RFID in a passport? Is it somehow magically impossible to forge or duplicate? Can't we agree that the people who are willing to go through the effort to make counterfeit documents like this will also have the resources to handle RFID? Aren't there ways we can spend this money that might do something a little more rational towards increasing security? Like what? I dunno. But there are probably better ways to spend the millions (billions?) this will cost to implement.
How big is this RFID chip? Small enough to be undetectable in the cover of the passport? How well will it function after being hit with a hammer?
IMO this country is going down the tubes in a big way.
Remember history or civics class in school? The inevitable lessons about how free the US was compared to Hitler's germany or the soviet union. Back then they used to point out how free we were because we did not need papers (internal passports) to travel.
How fricking free are we when we need a driver's license to board a plane? Or when our KIDS need ID to board a plane? Or to visit a national park, or federal building? Not to mention the citizens are going to EAT the costs.
More and more it seems the only alternative is to go gulching until the country regains its "mind your own business" mentality.
Today's USA, The Anti-federalists worst nightmare coming true.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
I somehow suspect that damaging a RFID chip (or passport) will soon be illegal.
-Valiss
This is not RFID. The term does not occur in the article. These are 14443 contactless smart cards. I can state with certainty that the chips being used are not RFID. I will admit that there is some arguement over what the term RFID should cover, but these really fall outside of the scope. These are much more complex chip that do not simply broadcast a unique id number. I've posted on this on previous articles and /. has retracted the erroneous language. I hope that they will do so again. It really muddies the debate when "technical" sites such as this can't be bothered to use proper terminology.
Lasers Controlled Games!
I think all of you need to brush up on RFID. It doesn't transmit your personal info, it transmits a serial number linked to your personal info. So if you sat at the airport you would gather a bunch of serials but getting the personal info to go along with it will require more hacking of the government data bases. Ok so you're scared of that? Well guess what? If that were the case, it can already happen today. So you should have been protesting all these years!!! The only change with RFID will be that the hacker knows you were at that airport at that time. But then again he could have already known so by looking at your face, if he was so inclined. Burn the faces!!
That was my thought, exactly. It is bad enough to encode personal data on chips. But I can just see it now when the chip FAILS.
It will be IMPOSSIBLE for you to PROVE the damn passport is valid. So then what? Get denied access back into the USA? Wait for hours? Days?
And it won't stop with passports- drivers licenses are next. Followed by mass collection and abuse of biometric data.
And, of course, none of this is going to increase security or enhance safety.
Seriously, here in europe they still teach history in school. The USA are on a very dark path, and pretty soon the rest of the world are going to be forced to protect ourselves from them.
Perhaps there are some history lessons you have missed. In the US we have in times of war temporarily restricted liberty. During the US Civil War President Abraham Lincoln muzzled the press, declared martial law in areas of political opposition far from areas of military campaigns, suspended constitutional rights, and ordered the military to ignore Supreme Court orders to unhold these constitutional rights. What is great about the United States is that we can engage in such excesses in times of crisis but then restore liberty when the crisis is over or when we come to realize our overreactions and mistakes as with slavery, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the anti-communist witchhunts of the Cold War. We can fix things with rebellion, ok, slavery was an exception.
As far as a threat to others, well that is a strange comment from a European. In times of emergency we have had major military forces in Europe and been pretty darn quick to largely pack up and go home, no carving up the spoils, in fact helping to rebuild both friend and foe alike. I think you confuse the hysteria and politically inspired exaggerations of the moment with long standing behavior, well long in the US sense of history not European sense.
I suspect that the hysteria and political differences are due to the US believing it is in a major war (War on Terror, not Irag) and Europe being in what many Americans would say is a state of denial. It doesn't really matter if it is true or not, it only matter that many Americans do feel that we are in a multi-decade multi-generational war with "terror" and they will accept temporary restrictions on liberty. I'm speaking in general, I don't know that RFID's on passports qualify as an attack on liberty. The hysteria may really be more luddite in nature. When the war/crisis is over government excesses will be rolled back due to public pressure, no rebellion required. Been there, done that.
What is the point of putting these chips in passports?
I am would like to hear some reasons for doing this and not just
"A spokeswoman said the department is convinced the electronic passports will provide enhanced security."
How will this increase security? There is already a bar code in the back of my passport. I have no idea what it says but a machine should be able to read it. I would think it would be easier to get a machine to read the text and the picture on the front page than to put chips in the passports and then deploy readers for them all over the place. Am I completely wrong?
Who is going to make these chips? I might like to buy some stock.
I have read a bunch (not all) of the comments here and understand that many people do not want this, but can a few people discus, even as a devil's advocate why this might be a good idea?
I'm sure they'll be eager to hear from an expert like you.
Actually, John is an expert on smart cards, both contact and contactless, and he knows a fair bit about RFID as well. Actually, in the context of the present discussion, he is so expert that he can't talk about what he knows, and I can't either. When you've signed a lot of NDAs you have to be very circumspect about what you say, which usually means you have to err on the side of not saying anything, even if it's probably public information.
In industry parlance, RFID means one thing, and contactless smart card means something else. The two use different frequencies, different protocols and have *very* different capabilities.
You'd better tell the State Department that. They certainly seem to think that it's RFID. It's not their fault; NIST told them.
Yes, the State Department sometimes misuses the terminology. If you look at the text, they also do understand the correct usage:
After that introduction, they mostly call the chips RFID, probably because it's a more convenient shorthand. That's reasonable, given that the document has already explained what they're really talking about. It is not reasonable to embark on a discussion about the merits of the technology without first defining what the technology under discussion is.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
So what happens if say, I leave my passport in the microwave, or decide to use it as an impact mat when flattening bottle caps with a hammer - and miss, hitting (disabling) the RFID chip? Am I arrested for destruction of a federal document? The paper's there, the chip just doesn't work.
I don't know about you, but all my RFID devices keep getting accidentally microwaved or damaged from blunt trauma...
moox. for a new generation.
Padilla didn't denie in his defense that he was not an enemy combatant. They tried to get him off for other reasons. I am behind our law enforcement all the way.
Dude, all he is asking for at this point is a trial to determine whether he has violated any laws, like the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which if the Government can prove what they are saying, it is very likely that such would be violated.
What the defense is claiming at the moment is that "enemy combatant" is a meaningless legal term in this context and that Padilla deserves a fair trial. Indeed the motion for summary judgement basically says that even if everything the governemnt says is true, that he still deserves a fair trial. Nothing more nor less.
In essence, nobody has really tried to get anything more than a trial. The time has not come for anything other than arguments that continued detention in the absense of a trial contravenes our Counstitution. That is the only matter that has been before a court (and, mind you, it is one of a limited number of aspects of the case that can be decided by judges in the absense of a jury). In other words, until such a time as Padilla receives a trial, the facts in the case are not the subject of the disputes. (IANAL, and evidently you are not either).
More on this below though.
Yes I would give the government as much reign as they have today. All your concerns about reduced freedoms are hypothetical, what ifs and conjectures. There have been a few screwups...Abu Graib and I'm sure you could name others, but all in all they have a pretty good record.
Extraordinary rendition?
These are not isolated incidents.
I might be inclined to limit airline access to martial artists and boxers if they recently changed their name to Mohammad.
And I suppose you don't think that the Free Excersize clause of the First Amendment applies to Muslims either, right?
Now about Padilla and the role of the courts in these things.
The most closest parallel I have seen to the case of Padilla was the case of ex parte Milligan in the immediate aftermath of the civil war. Milligan was accused essentially of materially aiding the insurrection and was tried and condemned to death by a military tribunal. He appealed to the civil court system via a habeas petition, and the case was decided eventually by the US Supreme Court (Justice Davis wrote the opinion of the court). Here are some excepts from his opinion (with some lay analysis by me):
"No graver question was ever considered by this court, nor one which more nearly concerns the rights of the whole {119} people, for it is the birthright of every American citizen when charged with crime to be tried and punished according to law. The power of punishment is alone through the means which the laws have provided for that purpose, and, if they are ineffectual, there is an immunity from punishment, no matter how great an offender the individual may be or how much his crimes may have shocked the sense of justice of the country or endangered its safety. By the protection of the law, human rights are secured; withdraw that protection and they are at the mercy of wicked rulers or the clamor of an excited people."
If such is the birthright of American citizens, then it is wrong to arrest and detain an American for a significant period of time or subject him to harsher sentences (such as death in the case of Milligan) without due process of law, including the constitutionally guaranteed trial by jury.
"Time has proven the discernment of our ancestors, for even these provisions [i.e. the fifth and sixth amendments], expressed in such plain English words that it would seem the ingenuity of man could not evade them, are now, after the lapse of more than seventy years, sought to be avoided. Those great and good men foresaw that troublous times would arise when rulers and people would become restive under restraint, and seek by sharp and decisive measures to accompl
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