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."

Comments

If only they listened...

[KingSkippus]

From TFA:

But in a federal filing, the [State] department said that 98.5 percent of the 2,335 comments it received since it issued proposed rules last spring opposed the program.

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.

Re:If only they listened...

[glesga_kiss]

Of course:

According to a classified document, "Special Operations and Joint Forces in Countering Terrorism" prepared for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, a new organization has been created to thwart potential terrorist attacks on the United States. This counter-terror operations group-- the "Proactive Preemptive Operations Group" (P2OG) will require 100 people and at least $100 million a year. The team of covert counter-intelligence agents will be responsible for secret missions designed to target terrorist leaders. The secret missions are designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.

Not covered in US media at all, apart from the LA Times where it apparently first appeared. The article seems to have disappeared down the memory hole; it's not on their website anymore.

A google for "Special Operations and Joint Forces in Countering Terrorism" throws back lots of info on this story.

Re:If only they listened...

[bentcd]

Blah blah. RFID has it's place, but it's a terrible idea in this context. Does anyone want a passport than can be read without your knowledge, by a random stranger?

Or by a random wayside bomb. The time is past when only the anti-terrorists could do surgical strikes . . .

Re:If only they listened...

[einhverfr]

Meh. Every letter I wrote about this elicited a BS reply that was clearly ignorant on the subject.

Here is the way it works....

Congressmen hire staffers to do some basic work regarding writing these boilerplate letters. Many do read their email personally, but some hire staffers to do it. In any event, here is how I have had the most effect.

1) Write quick respectful summary letters to your congressmen to initiate contact on a topic. Wait for the boilerplate form letter to come back.

2) Reply to the boilerplate form letter. Include your name, street address, and phone number at the top of the body of the email. Reply in some depth to the points and *cite your sources.* Show your congressmen that you care about the topic and know something about it. You will almost never get a direct reply from this second letter.

However, you will likely get more attention.

During the debate over the authorization to use military force in Iraq, I sent my senators a letter urging them to vote no on the basis that Lebannon was using the determination to go to war in Iraq to undermine Israeli water rights among other things (Sharon was threatening to go to war with Lebannon over the water issue, and everyone knew Bush couldn't let that happen if he really wanted to invade Iraq). I got a form letter back from Maria Cantwell. I replied to this, citing my concerns in more depth, providing links to articles in Al Ahram, Ha'aretz, and other Middle Eastern news papers about the effects on the region politically of the threat to war.

While I didn't get any reply to this second email, I thought it was interesting that when Cantwell spoke on the floor of the senate, she offered a clear (if incorrect and overly simplistic) rebuttle point-by-point to my letter. It was clear to me that she had personally read it and had thought about the issues I had raised, even if she disagreed with me. If nothing else, it was clear to me that I had been heard. (She supported the war in the name of removing a tyrant from power, but I question whether it was wise to replace the tyrant with the sort of anarchy in which international terrorism thrives.)

What I am trying to say is that each of us is one voice out of many. It is up to us to provide clear and concise communication with our congressmen about any and all issues that concern us. If only a few or even a couple of hundred people write about these issues, it is easy to disregard us as a political fringe. Congress is a marketplace of ideas and we have to participate in it in order to shape public policy.

A second point I would make is that it is often worth initiating contact before the item becomes big public news because it is more likely that the congressman has not made up his/her mind yet, and you are less likely to get a form letter.

In essence communication with one's congressmen should be the bread and butter of political involvement. One's vote is where one's political involvement ends, not begins. One's vote is simply a form of legitimating one's contact with one's elected officers.

Don't like it.

[conJunk]

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.

Microwaving passports

[GeorgeMonroy]

What ever do you mean? =)

Oh cool!

[wheezl]

Now I'll be able to walk right through Customs without stopping.

Riiiiiight.

Wonder how long it'll be...

[Mister White]

Wonder how long until this gets whored out..Unfortunately for us, RFID chips can be read by any schmuck walking down the block with a scanner, not just the ones at the customs desk in the airport. Essentially, you may as well just pass out flyers with your personal information on them...Is this REALLY where we should be heading?

Re:Wonder how long it'll be...

[Mister White]

While I appreciate the fact that there will be anti-skimming and encryption incorporated, that is not going to be sufficient. Just consider how strong the encryption can POSSIBLY be, as the chips currently available are only 128-bit. Plus, given the value of the information contained therein, I would bet someone would be putting cracking that encryption scheme on the top of their to-do list. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't this info be VERY useful to...say...terrorists, who have virtually endless resources?

Re:Wonder how long it'll be...

[Mr. Sketch]

I have serious doubts the RFID will contain "all your information."

And you would be far too trusting of our government since from TFA:
The regulations mean that as of October 2006, all new and renewed U.S. passports will contain radio frequency identification chips that will include a digital photo and all other information currently printed in passports.

All I can hope for is that it's encrypted somehow. Which means if the key ever gets out, all US passports will be readable via RFID. Best would be some sort of time varying key so passports in Nov2006 will have one key, passports in Dec2006 will have a different key, etc. This would limit the number of people affected by the discovery of a key, but the problem would still remain.

Robustness

[sjhwilkes]

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?

tin foil

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad I got the matching wallet when I bought my hat

Farraday

[misleb]

I should patent the Farraday Passport Sleeve. My slogan would be, "The 'tin foil hat' for sane people."

Oh, damn. I need to patent stuff before I post the idea to Slashdot.

-matthew

Enhanced productivity.

[OgGreeb]

On the plus side, it will be much easier for terrorists to wave a RFID scanner and pick out the Americans on an international flight.

X-Ray Scanning?

[forand]

So what happens to the RFID when it goes through a dozen X-Ray scans? How about just sitting in my pocket at 35k ft? Have these chips been tested to show that they will continue to work after normal wear of a passport? My passport certainly takes a beating everytime I travel: x-rays, increased radiation due to high elevation, bending, humidity, etc. I doubt all these things have been tested for.

I really don't want to have to wait and hour and miss my flight as the prove that I am who my passport says I am just because some stupid chip failed.

Papers please!

[isotope23]

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.

Re:the passports of all U.S. citizens

[DrSkwid]

If you want a taste of freedom you should try visiting France disguised as a black North African. You'll soon find out how much fun having no papers is.

Slashdot editors take note: NOT RFID!

[John Harrison]

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.

Re:Slashdot editors take note: NOT RFID!

[John Harrison]

The passports have several protections to prevent unauthrized transmittal of data. These include a cover that blocks radio waves and Basic Access Control. These measures are not perfect and a /. debate over them would be useful. You can learn more about the shortcomings at:
http://eprint.iacr.org/2005/095.pdf

I am going to repeat myself here. Let's have a debate about the technology that is going into these passports and not the RFID boogeyman that isn't going into them.

A few words of sanity for an insane idea...

[KC7GR]

Let me state right up front that, technological and potential privacy issues aside, I don't think this is going to make passports any more secure. I further believe the arrogance shown by the U.S. towards other countries in this matter ("You WILL convert to this same standard if you want your citizens to be able to visit our country") is absolutely typical of our current administration.

In other words, I don't agree with it.

WITH THAT SAID: Allow me to point out a few facts, based on previously-published material and my own knowledge of RFID technology.

First and foremost: What no one seems to have noticed (it may not have been reported in TFA, which I've yet to read) is that the State Department is, reportedly, going to weave their idea of a Faraday Cage right into the covers of the new passports in the form of a metallic-filament weave. Bruce Schneier mentions this on his site already.

This should, in theory, effectively counteract any sort of attempt to read the thing remotely when the passport is closed. If you're really paranoid about it, you can place your passport into an ESD Shielding Bag, available from most electronic component distributors such as Allied Electronics, DigiKey, or Mouser.

On the subject of long-distance remote reading: I doubt very much we're going to see, as one other poster pointed out (paraphrasing), "criminals with laptops and a portable reader under their coat" any time soon. For starters, the return emission from most passive RFID chips of the low and mid-frequency ranges (125-148kHz and 13.56MHz) is very weak. The chip would require a significant amount of close-up RF energy to excite it, and a large antenna and high-quality receiver to pick up the return signal.

Going further along those lines: Remember that RF field strength decreases quickly, as you move away from the source, according to the Inverse Square Law. The main reason that the low and mid-freq chips are only readable up to about 3 feet away is because, in order to have them work from further away, you'd need a transceiver the size of a large HF ham radio setup, and equally large (and obvious) antennas (the lower the frequency, the physically larger the antenna has to be).

For a criminal to effectively read such chips with portable equipment, they'd have to be standing more than close enough to the security folk to attract unwanted attention.

While I have found some references to the State Dept. having been able to read the test passports from 30 feet away with "special equipment," I also recall that this equipment was hardly portable, and required direct connection to AC power to be operable at all. In other words, it needed a lot more power than an easily-portable battery source could provide, and it was hardly what I would call surreptitious. Based on that stated range, I have reason to believe that the DoS was using 915MHz RFID tags for their test. Such tags are, according to this list, very much readable from at least 25 feet away.

I've been unable to locate any references on which specific frequency or type of RFID chip will be used in US passports (anyone else have any references on that?) Despite that, I think it's premature to draw conclusions based solely on the news articles to date. News articles do not, after all, make for a technical white paper.

I would suggest that those who get the new passports, and that have the technical know-how, try to read them with an appropriate RFID reader. Try different distances and angles, see if you can actually read the thing with the cover closed and (if possible) try a variety of d

Go Directly to Jail

[voice_of_all_reason]

US Passport, page 6, paragraph 2: US Government Property. "This passport is the property of the United States Government. Upon demand made by an authorized representative of the United States Government, it must be surrendered." Paragraph 4: Alteration or mutilation of passport. "This passport must not be altered or mutilated in any way. Alteration may make it INVALID, and, if willful, may subject you to prosecution (Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 1543).