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...

[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 . . .

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? =)

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...

[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.

tin foil

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad I got the matching wallet when I bought my hat

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.

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.

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