E-Passport In the Works

ExE122 writes "In an attempt to curb falsification of passports, the United States has placed an order for millions of embedded ID chips. 'The chips carry an encrypted digital photograph of the passport holder. The chip is designed to be read by a special device that will be used by U.S. government workers who check passports when travelers come through border crossings. The State Department began issuing what are being called e-passports to tourists last week and will gradually increase production. State Department spokeswoman Janelle Hironimus said existing passports will remain valid until they expire but, eventually, all U.S. passports — about 13 million will be issued in 2006 — will contain such chips.'"

Comments

WHY?

[rkhalloran]

A 'chipped' passport would be susceptible to drive-by scanning, adds nothing a mag-stripe couldn't, and will likely be more expensive to implement. What's the point?

Re:WHY?

[gEvil (beta)]

It's all about appearances. Nothing more, nothing less. If the general population thinks that high-tech passports are more secure, then high-tech passports are what they general population will get.

Re:WHY?

[Red Flayer]

A 'chipped' passport would be susceptible to drive-by scanning, adds nothing a mag-stripe couldn't, and will likely be more expensive to implement. What's the point?

The same reason we can't take bottled water on an airplane -- pandering to gullible voters.

Re:WHY?

[eno2001]

Because... some stupid fucking PHB somewhere heard that RFID is the "next big thing (TM)" and just had to have it before those damn Canadians do. I honestly think that's all it comes down to. Someone thinks RFID sounds cooler than 70s mag stripe technology. If you ask me it's fucking stupid. Of course what do I know, I hate the direction the United states has taken the past six years. I'm fucking trapped here though because I can't just afford to pick up and leave. Have to make the best of in these hard times.

Re:WHY?

[amliebsch]

If the chip only carries an encrypted photo of myself, then thieves can't steal any information that they couldn't get by looking in my general direction. But it does make the passport much more difficult to forge, and more difficult to use fraudulently. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

encrypted?

[Lord Ender]

When they say "encrypted," do they actually mean digitally signed? Being able to provide a digitally signed (by a government key) passport photo in a machine-readable form would be good for security.

But simply encrypting the message with a symmetric key (as seems indicated by the blurb) would be bad for security, because many people would have the key, and so it would provide a false sense of security.

Scene at the customs office

[krell]

"Mr.... let's see 5AVE On Va1iumViagraCialis? Yes, everything checks out. Welcome to America!"

I blame it on the lack of logic today

[MikeRT]

One of the things that is a lot more common today than it has been in American history, yes, even back in the "bumpkin days" of America pre-industrialization, is that people just don't critically think anymore. "Special device?" Anyone with a modicum of critical thinking skills would look at a few simple things and freak:

1) All computer security systems have been defeated.
2) This is kinda like one of them thar computer security systems that has been defeated.
3) I'm carrying this thing around the world, and any schmo who can defeat it, can identify me faster than the police can.
4) There are a lot of terrorists and terrorism sympathizers who'd just love to off me because I'm American.

If you aren't careful, you'll be broadcasting enough info out there that you'll be easily victimized.

Americans traveling to other countries.

[krell]

"Because we all know how often Americans travel overseas."

Hey, I went to New Mexico twice in the last 6 years. That's fairly often, I think.

Re:Americans traveling to other countries.

[clickclickdrone]

I used to find the low number of Americans with passports rather scary and insular until someone pointed out you only get 2 weeks vacation a year. With the US being so big and varied, it would take you most of your life in 2 week chunks to check out home let alone foreign places.
Of course, us backwards wierdo liberal faggy Europeans get 6 weeks holiday :-)

Re:Americans traveling to other countries.

[morgan_greywolf]

I, for one, welcome our new McDonald's-cramming, identity-stealing, drive-by-shooting North American overlo......

oh, never mind.

Re:Americans traveling to other countries.

[Maximilio]

Americans can arrange their vacation vs. work time quite easily. As a nation, though, our cultural habits come down to preferring about 2 weeks per year.

"Prefer?" I prefer quite a bit more time off. I would imagine most people do. The problem is, U.S. corporate behavior is geared toward maximizing profits at the expense of the employees and an imaginary work ethic that drives people into the ground and causes them to change jobs on an average of every two or three years and careers on an average of every 10 or 15 years. You ask, stupidly, who pays for Europeans' 6 weeks holiday -- obviously as a cultural norm the employer shells it out. It's a quality of life issue.

But please, don't insinuate that just because you're a driven workaholic with nothing better to do that the rest of us would 'prefer' that lifestyle. I think, given 6 weeks of guilt-free holiday, most Americans would take it gladly.

Heh heh

[rice_burners_suck]

I bet there won't be a device in existance that can actually read the chip that will be embedded in these passports. I say that because my Permanent Resident card (greencard) is supposedly the most advanced ID card ever made, with all kinds of weird embedded information and whatnot, making it impossible to counterfeit. Or at least that's the theory, because although they spend ridiculous amounts of money to make these cards contain all that personal information, there is reportedly not a machine in existance that can read the information off the card. Typical government nonsense. It's like trying to invent the modem with enough funds to build just one.

And if we're already on the subject of the government, why are they spending all this money to make sure passports can't be faked, greencards can't be faked, etc., if there is absolutely positively nothing being done to stop the flood of immigrants, criminals, drugs, and terrorists that are crossing our totally unprotected borders into this country every day? Every time this issue comes up, idiots say it's racism. Sorry, it's not racism to stop people and things that shouldn't be here illegally from coming here illegally.

bomb makers can now target americans

[RichMan]

So now the bomb makers can design bombs to explode when a certain number of american passports are within range.

They don't need to correctly talk to the passports only determine that they are american passports.

US Department of State announcement

[SgtPepperKSU]

I actually ran into this a few days ago while looking into getting a passport. They announced this on the 14th.

The Department of State has employed a multi-layered approach to protect the privacy of the information and to mitigate the chances of the electronic data being skimmed (unauthorized reading) or eavesdropped (intercepting communication of the transmission of data between the chip and the reader by unintended recipients).

It seems the passports will come with their foil hats pre-installed ;-)

Anti-skimming/eavesdropping measures

[SgtPepperKSU]

More info form department of state:

The Department of State has employed a multi-layered approach to protect the privacy of the information and to mitigate the chances of the electronic data being skimmed (unauthorized reading) or eavesdropped (intercepting communication of the transmission of data between the chip and the reader by unintended recipients). Metallic anti-skimming material incorporated into the front cover and spine of the e-passport book prevents the chip from being skimmed, or read, when the book is fully closed; Basic Access Control (BAC) technology, which requires that the data page be read electronically to generate a key that unlocks the chip, will prevent skimming and eavesdropping; and a randomized unique identification (RUID) feature will mitigate the risk that an e-passport holder could be tracked. To prevent alteration or modification of the data on the chip, and to allow authorities to validate and authenticate the data, the information on the chip will include an electronic signature (PKI).

The Main Reason is it's Faster

[mpapet]

Forget about the so-called security. It's "secure" to the vast majority of voters.

The objective is to be able to process more people through customs faster and with more data captured as they get off ever-bigger airplanes.

This doesn't address a control point failure (customs) which is inevitable, but it looks good on paper and sounds really good.

FYI: Yes it's possible to store a picture and a fingerprint template on the contactless modules in question, but more likely it's storing a hash that looks the data up in a DB. Sending a picture file or a fingerprint template across the reader would be pretty slow.

Re:I don't see the problem here...

[lawpoop]

I agree that we need to continue to constantly increase our security measures, but I believe there is a danger in supposed security measures which actually *don't* increase security. It causes the users of such measure to relax their guard, assuming that they are safe when they actually may not be.

As far as anti-counterfeiting measures, the 9/11 terrorists had valid passports and IDs, so how exactly would this prevent terrorism? If an immigration official lets his guard down because a person has an RFID passport, he may be ignoring other tip-offs that would alert him to suspicious activity. This would probably only really effect illegal immigration.

Again, no one is saying that we shouldn't increase security measures. But let's not claim that this is a panacea, or going to do something that is actually can't. Americans seem to have the belief that some simple technology will solve any problem we encounter. The reality is that we have to hire and train competent personnel in immigration and security. Mass surveillance, face recognition, gait recognition, etc. will not keep us safe from terrorism; motivated terrorists will always outsmart the machine or system. What we need is human intelligence, building contacts and infiltrating groups. These sorts of technological fixes are just to pacify jittery Americans into thinking that something is being done.