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US Government To Release Electronic Passport

Posted by samzenpus on from the all-the-better-to-track-you-with dept.

XueCast writes "The federal government has announced that they will release new electronic Passport cards in either April or May 2008. The cards could be read wirelessly from up to 20 feet away, which could reduce the waiting time at border checkpoints. Deputy Assistant Secretary Of State For Passport Services, Ann Barrett said, "As people are approaching a port of inspection, they can show the card to the reader, and by the time they get to the inspector, all the information will have been verified and they can be waved on through.""

50 of 289 comments (clear)

  1. Awesome by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Funny

    Can't wait for this.. I can finally hack my way past border security, like in 24.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
    1. Re:Awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Funny. You're the seventh Jack Bauer through here today. Oh well, the computer says you're OK, so go on in."

    2. Re:Awesome by aminorex · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What's really cool is that now terrorists can rig bombs that only kill people carrying American passports.

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
    3. Re:Awesome by ozmanjusri · · Score: 5, Informative
      What's really cool is that now terrorists can rig bombs that only kill people carrying American passports.

      It's not just about Americans.

      Australians have had to use RFID-embedded passports for the past couple of years to comply with US regulations. Can't say it's sped up my travels at all.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    4. Re:Awesome by pcgabe · · Score: 2, Funny

      You're Korben Dallas?

      --
      Don't put advice in your sig.
  2. No air travel?! by s.bots · · Score: 5, Interesting

    $45 for an insecure card that can be read from 20 feet away and cannot be used for air travel? Thanks but no thanks, maybe when they have one permitted for air travel and with (at least) a method of enabling/disabling reading.

    1. Re:No air travel?! by daveo0331 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It makes a lot more sense if you think of it in terms of total number of trips and not total number of countries. Many major U.S. cities are located along the border (San Diego, Detroit, and Buffalo to name a few). Also, ever been on a cruise? It takes 2-3 hours to get everyone off one of those big cruise ships because of the need to get 2000 people through customs at once. This sounds like it could speed that process up.

      --
      Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
    2. Re:No air travel?! by Kagura · · Score: 3, Funny

      Who cares about RFID, I just want my stamps that say where I've been. I don't want an electronic record that I can't look at. :)

    3. Re:No air travel?! by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It makes a lot more sense if you think of it in terms of total number of trips and not total number of countries. ...
      It takes 2-3 hours to get everyone off one of those big cruise ships because of the need to get 2000 people through customs at once. This sounds like it could speed that process up. About as helpful as a band-aid on a sucking chest wound.

      The root cause of the problem isn't the number of people, i'ts the lame-ass system in the first place. It's a lot like DRM. People who want to enter the country for nefarious purposes will always have a variety of methods of entry that completely bypass these systems. But thosewho wish to enter legally have to jump through all the hoops. Essentially it punishes the law-abiding citizens and ignores the law breakers. Sure, the system will occasionally catch someone with a felony conviction in their home country who didn't know that would disqualify them from entry. But chances are, those people weren't up to no good, they were just on a trip like any other regular joe and denying them entry doesn't improve the situation at all.
      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    4. Re:No air travel?! by davester666 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Wouldn't it be almost as fast, and WAY more secure to just have passport 'reading' machines placed before the examiners, where you either swipe or place the passport in the device in some way. That gives the 'system' extra time retrieve any information for the passport examiner, but there is NEVER going to be this mythical 'wave-through'.

      There always has to be a delay for the immigration officer to a) verify that the physical person matches the person described by the passport and b) why they are coming and going and whether to extract money from them [duties or whatever].

      I don't know why governments have such a hard-on for passports and other identifiers [like drivers licenses] to be accessible wirelessly. Hell, they'll still probably swipe it to match the 'wireless data' with the physical card [because did the system read your passport, or the passport for the 20 people around you].

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    5. Re:No air travel?! by mikiN · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't know why governments have such a hard-on for passports and other identifiers [like drivers licenses] to be accessible wirelessly. My guess is there will be eleventy-two-and-a-half bazillion answers to your question scattered around the posts in this discussion, but let's put mine directly and neatly below it.

      Passports and drivers licenses are simply the most common IDs that people carry on their person when they move about. /me dons tinfoil hat
      Making these IDs scannable wirelessly allows Big Brother to track people carrying them remotely. That innocuous looking traffic light at the crossing, that lamp post on the street corner or that turnstile at the subway entrance could serve more than just the purpose which its shape and form may seem to convey. /me takes off tinfoil hat, wraps tinfoil hat around IDs, puts package into pocket
      --
      The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
    6. Re:No air travel?! by kabrakan · · Score: 5, Informative

      Customs isn't mainly for crime, its for economics. At least at the canadian border, i see people held back all the time because they brought too many goods over and the receiving side wants to tax their stuff. The next thing they're worrying about is foreign food that could introduce diseases.

      You're right that this is useless tech however. It takes about 4 seconds for a border officer to process your passport. The reason there are bottlenecks at ports of entry is because there tends to be a maximum of two border agents for every 50 people trying to cross.

      --
      Slartibartfast:"Is that your robot?"
      Marvin:"No, I'm mine."
  3. Ummm. by Idiot+with+a+gun · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Every security measure I've seen for RFID involves some encryption, and a "Handshake" between the reader and card. In a packed situation like an airport, it would be really easy to have an electronic device sniff this handshake, and by pretending to be a reader, lift multiple passport ID's off of people while passing by. Sounds dangerous to me.

    1. Re:Ummm. by XanC · · Score: 4, Informative

      There are certainly ways to perform key exchanges and begin encrypted communication without being vulnerable to eavesdropping.

      My understanding (which may be wrong) of the main problem with these RFID devices is that there is in fact no handshaking or encryption, and that the device will happily spill its guts to anything that asks.

    2. Re:Ummm. by The_Wilschon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Perhaps a larger (and maybe more real to Joe Sixpack) reason to be concerned is that you are even more easily pegged as an American, without any need to break the encryption or handshake (if there is one). Being identified as an American can make you a serious target in a lot of places for a lot of reasons, ranging from the terr'rists wanting to kill you to just some dude in an alley in Paris who wants to rob a rich guy instead of a poor guy. Americans tend to be rich.

      --
      SIGSEGV caught, terminating

      wait... not that kind of sig.
    3. Re:Ummm. by Amouth · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Americans who travel tend to be rich. fixed that for you

      --
      '...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
    4. Re:Ummm. by mi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      .70 Euro to the Dollar.

      100+ Yen to the Dollar, yet the Japanese aren't considered particularly poor...

      We yanks aren't so rich any more...

      The ones, who are walking around in Paris, are still quite rich — by the standards of a lowlife robber, anyway.

      --
      In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    5. Re:Ummm. by Propaganda13 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Why do you need a device with the range of 20ft? How about range of 2 inches and place the reader 20ft down the line?

    6. Re:Ummm. by Original+Replica · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because the senator's buddies aren't interested in a mark up reselling barcode readers ($80), when they can markup RFID readers.($1700) Besides RFID is so much more tech heavy it's gotta be better. Better security theater that is. Joe Sixpack will be terribly impressed that there is a computer-thingy in his passport.

      --
      We are all just people.
    7. Re:Ummm. by mi · · Score: 3, Informative

      [...] there is in fact no handshaking or encryption, and that the device will happily spill its guts to anything that asks.

      There should not be much more "guts" to spill, than the passport number itself. This will not give an attacker much information at all — other than: "There exists a passport with this number," but in those few seconds, that it takes a person to walk up to the counter, their giant picture will already be on the officer's screen for verification...

      It would still be a hole, but a much smaller one than it may seem at the first suspicious glance. It will, hopefully, be further narrowed by making these passports respond to RFID-readers only when they are opened and, maybe, only when directed towards the reader — simply by making the passport's cover with some RF-blocking material.

      All of these measures will make your hypothetical eavesdropper rather impractical even without encryption.

      People have been using EZ-Pass and similar (oppressive) RFID-readers for many years now to go through highway robbery, ehm, tools... Yet there are no stories of EZ-Pass numbers picked-up by hidden crooks and plugged into fake EZ-Pass devices for resale... Maybe, someone is doing it, but it sounds more difficult, than crossing into the US through the Southern border.

      --
      In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    8. Re:Ummm. by porpnorber · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What I really don't understand about the entire discussion is this: what the border guards actually look at is not what's written on your passport; it's what's stored in their database (from which, in the case of your own citizens, the passports were generated in the first place). So all that is needed is a serial number, right? You type your SSN into a keypad (or for that matter, swipe any one of your credit cards—nobody believes that the security establishment pays any attention to data protection laws, anyway), your photo pops up on the guy's screen, and if it's you, you're through. Everything else is either a holdover from the days before networks, or a diversion.

      So ... what's this really about? I ask this not as a tinfoil hat question, but because I'm truly mystified.

      I'll say it again. Now there's an Internet, you do not need to carry ID. The Man already has your file, and it's only because 'biometric' face recognition doesn't actually work yet that you carry any cards at all. There's no reason for cards to hold any data beyond a big number. There's no reason for them to be unique. There's no need for them to encode anything that can be used against you. There's no reason for any of this nonsense.

      The only motivation I can think of for these measures is so that they can charge you more application fees for the new ID. What on earth am I missing?

    9. Re:Ummm. by Terri416 · · Score: 2, Informative

      You're pretty much right, but it depends upon which govt you ask, and when.

      Originally, the concept was that a bus load of people could simply drive across the border and their passports would be read from the roadside as they passed. Sounds simple enough, but there was no assessment of the security. No handshake, no encryption. These designs would have lead to worse things than datatheft; think roadside bombs programmed to kill anyone with a passport in the name of Jack Bauer. Assassination was never so easy.

      Because so many of the technical decisions were made then, and the politicians are too vain to flip-flop, we have a number of permanent problems and work-arounds.

      Firstly, there's the RFID. This is wireless and interceptable. The cards are powered by the interrogation signal, so there's nowhere near enough power for the card to carry out encryption, so there's no authentication of the interrogation signal so anyone can interrogate the card. Therefore no crypto handshake. There's also no change in the cyphertext from one interrogation to the next, so assassins can still trigger a bomb using the cyphertext without the need to decrypt anything.

      Another political decision was that the cards are to be contactless. No contacts. Really. You can't provide power or interrogate the cards by other means, so you can't do an end-run around the above problems.

      This also means there can be no cryptographic authentication of the card itself. Hello forgeries. These forgeries will have their limits since the data can be digitally pre-signed. Hopefully, all the data is signed, but given the competence of the deciders, I wouldn't bet on it. Actually, I will. We all will.

      There have been some attempts at making the cards less of a liability. Data can be pre-encrypted. However, the lessons of DVD CSS have taught us that One Key To Rule Them All is no security at all, so all cards must have unique encryption keys.

      This leads to another problem: if you can't handshake (because there isn't power for crypto processing) how does the scanner at the airport discover the key, without the key being broadcast in the clear to everyone in 20m? The answer is some kind of optical scanner, so you have to put the passport on a scanner to allow the key to be read (almost in the clear), but without radio broadcast. This introduces the same inconvenience as a contact card, but without the security.

      Don't allow your optically readable data area to be photographed (eg by a long lens). Really. This is your only real protection.

      The schemes for optically scanning the keys varies. The dutch tried to mangle a key using personal data such as name, date of birth and passport issue date; this scheme was broken on a laptop in two hours by knowing only a few details and brute-forcing the rest. The best scheme which could be used would be to put a random number on the passport, send it to the issuing government's computers and get the key back that way; but then the computers could supply all the other info too, so why bother with the RFID? Another political decision rules this out - the passport must be readable without a network connection to central computers. Ho hum.

      So the key must be stored on the card, and must be readable by any official reader. Remind you of anything? DVD CSS? We're back to the One Key problem again. This time it will be different (yeah, right). Criminals will have a choice: either find the One Key (a once-only task), or steal one of the hundreds of thousands of readers which will be distributed around the world and use that. Once that key is known, all the world's passports become open books.

      So that's it. We're screwed. We are *so* screwed.

      Your tax dollars at work!

    10. Re:Ummm. by swillden · · Score: 2, Informative

      Every security measure I've seen for RFID involves some encryption, and a "Handshake" between the reader and card. In a packed situation like an airport, it would be really easy to have an electronic device sniff this handshake, and by pretending to be a reader, lift multiple passport ID's off of people while passing by.

      Umm, no. You should really learn something about cryptography and/or RFID before making statements like this.

      1. If these can be read from 20 feet, they're true RFID tags, not contactless smart cards. That means (a) they can't carry any more data than a single ID number and (b) they don't have any sort of encryption.
      2. If these cards did have encryption, and the implementors weren't idiots (and they're not), then it would not be possible to eavesdrop on the communications unless your reader knew some appropriate secrets.

      In fact, what these devices have on them is either your passport number or some other unique ID which can be used to look up your passport data. Either way, there's no sensitive data here.

      The real concern is the issue of being able to identify Americans at a distance. If you choose to get one of these cards, just be sure to wrap it in tin foil before you put it in your wallet.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    11. Re:Ummm. by roystgnr · · Score: 5, Funny

      You seem to have reached that awkward transitional stage where you're smarter than the government, but not yet smart enough to realize that yes, you really are smarter than the government.

      Don't panic. The transition doesn't take very long, and when it's complete you'll be amazed to discover how much else starts making sense too.

    12. Re:Ummm. by Viceroy+Potatohead · · Score: 2, Informative

      That strikes me as somewhat disingenuous. The Yen has always been more closely equated with the cent than the dollar, Looking at the history of the Euro, it's pretty clear the value of your dollar is not as strong as it was, at least in comparison to the Euro (ie, you're not as rich as you were). Actually, that site is kind of interesting. The behaviour of your dollar compared to the Japanese's is very strange compared to a fairly consistent trend in the currencies of Canada, Britain, Australia, Malaysia, South Korea, China, Russia, the EU, or India. All of whom are major trade partners and/or highly competitive with the US. It's cherry picking a bit, I'd agree, because there are some counter-examples like Mexico, but with such a similar devaluation of your dollar happening throughout all these other markets, I wonder what's up with Japan.

    13. Re:Ummm. by ContractualObligatio · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Can you name a single example of an American abroad being killed by terrorists (or by a dude in an alley in Paris) where the motive was the victim being from America, as compared to any wealthy nation?

    14. Re:Ummm. by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 2, Informative

      Can you name a single example of an American abroad being killed by terrorists (or by a dude in an alley in Paris) where the motive was the victim being from America, as compared to any wealthy nation?

      Robert Stetham
      Leon Klinghoffer
      Many others

  4. Uses Standard RFID Technology. by Zymergy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Tin foil billfolds and passport covers are already being sold: http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&safe=off&q=RFID+blocking+wallet&btnG=Search

    Nothing a microwave oven on high for 2-3 seconds (or a hammer and hard surface) won't solve: http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&safe=off&q=RFID+disabling+passport&btnG=Search

    1. Re:Uses Standard RFID Technology. by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 2, Funny

      Tin foil billfolds and passport covers are already being sold

      Joke's on you... DHS is forbidding passengers to carry more than one square inch of tinfoil through security, or more than three square inches in checked luggage, because it could be crumpled up and fashioned into a weapon.

    2. Re:Uses Standard RFID Technology. by aussie_a · · Score: 2, Funny

      Please forgive me for not realizing something that plausible was a joke.

  5. These will be optional. by SpudB0y · · Score: 2, Informative

    You must opt-in to receive one of these terrorist magnets, so leave your tinfoil wallet at home.

  6. "Waved on through..." by Hamster+Lover · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From TFA:

    "As people are approaching a port of inspection, they can show the card to the reader, and by the time they get to the inspector, all the information will have been verified and they can be waved on through," said Ann Barrett, deputy assistant secretary of state for passport services, commenting on the final rule on passport cards published yesterday in the Federal Register.

    Hahahahaha. You have got to be fucking kidding me. I have been the United States on two separate occasions via air in the last few years and in both cases neither myself nor any of my fellow passengers were ever "waved on through" inspection. Everybody got the royal ass raping treatment and this comment by Ann Barrett is just a bureaucratic pie-in-the-sky sales job for the new passports.

    1. Re:"Waved on through..." by wizardforce · · Score: 4, Insightful
      ya.. spend a few hours in customs and save ten seonds by not having to manually read the passport... efficient use of their resources isn't it?

      but because it's a real pain in the ass being treated like a "suspect" from the minute you drive to an airport until you drive out of one. Now ask me if I think the US is "winning the war on terror"?
      I think we know by now that the "war on terror" isn't going to be decreasing terrorism [it is in fact increasing it] nor is it protecting freedoms or safety, it is in fact eroding freedoms that they never had the right to take away in the first place. sigh... as an American, I hope this never spreads to Canada but judging by recent events, it may indeed happen anyway...
      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    2. Re:"Waved on through..." by Swampash · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I just don't travel to the USA any more. It's not worth my time or my dignity. When conferences and business meetings get scheduled, I make sure someone else goes. Inevitably they get back complaining about some jackbooted stormtrooper screaming "PAPERS! PAPERS!" at them, and vow never to go through it again.

    3. Re:"Waved on through..." by Jerry+Rivers · · Score: 2, Informative

      "Foreign nationals can have legal residency in the US, but would normally be required to present a valid passport from their country of origin. Similarly, US citizens residing in other countries would be presenting a US passport."

      This is partly false. U.S. permanent residents need only present their Permanent Resident Card to enter the U.S.. Of course, if they travel anywhere that requires they have a passport they would have one from their country of citizenship anyway. But Canadians, for example, do not need a passport to enter the U.S. if they are U.S. permanent residents, and they do not need a passport to enter Canada.

      http://www.dhs.gov/xtrvlsec/crossingborders/whtibasics.shtm

      --
      The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
    4. Re:"Waved on through..." by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I travel a lot for my career, and in fact just returned from China with a few colleagues (CES starting in 4 days and all). The grilling I get entering other countries is a LOT less than what my colleagues received entering the US.

      Does the US entry suck? Yes, it does. But in my experience in the last year when I entered Canada (driving across the border at Sumas), China, Japan, Chile, France, the UK, Indonesia and Russia I got a lot more scrutiny and more of the "ass raping treatment" you complain about that what I witnessed today how 3 Chinese nationals were treated on entering the US.

      Guess what - countries LIKE to know and control who's coming into the territories, and if you think the US is unique then you haven't traveled much in the last 5 years...

      But that's OK, it's hip and oh-so-chic to rag on the US. Shows how progressive and enlightened you are!

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  7. OPTIONAL for frequent travelers that want it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How could you leave out this little detail from your story?

    I know the universal ID/RFIDs are legitimate stories, but this card story is non-story turned into a potential page churner ONLY because of the single detail left out of the write-up.

    Shoddy editing job.

  8. most everyone here would wrap it in foil by circletimessquare · · Score: 3, Interesting

    however, average joe blow is going to go to niagara falls in canada, he'll be scanned and scammed as he wanders around, and by the time he drives home to schenectady that evening, someone in russia will be selling his info to someone in china

    at times like these, why root against incompetence? it always seems to win

    so go with the flow i say

    anyone want to rent a 3rd story apt in niagara falls canada with me and point an rfid reader out the window?

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  9. I travel from Mexico regularly..... by desertfool · · Score: 3, Funny

    And this is a joke. I, and my family (Mexican wife and 'mixed' child) get waved through when we say "American" at the border. Now my wife is a naturalized citizen, but they take one look at me (white as can be) and we get one question before we are waived through.

    As for an RFID solution, what makes that better than the 'instincts' of the Border Patrol? I think that could be faked so fast that a young male of middle eastern descent could could get through as an asian business person just because the border card said so. //Trolling, just for the fun of it. I have a lot of unearned karma....

    --
    Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
  10. Wonderful. by FriendlyPrimate · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oh wonderful. Now when I'm overseas, the terrorists can identify me as an American in a crowd from 20 feet away.

    1. Re:Wonderful. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      you dont need rfid to identify American Tourists abroad, they are pretty obvious anyway.

    2. Re:Wonderful. by The+One+and+Only · · Score: 3, Funny

      Just make a bomb that's triggered by chewing gum and obnoxious behavior?

      --
      In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
    3. Re:Wonderful. by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 4, Informative

      RTFA. This is a device that you get in addition to your passport. You probably leave the device in your car, and it comes with a metallic sleeve so you can shield it when you're not crossing borders. You do not take it with you when you go traveling on a plane. Your point is moot. All US passports issued in the last year or so already have RFID's embedded in them. So it amounts to the same thing.

      Furthermore, these new passports have a half-assed faraday cage built into the cover, but like so much of government it really is half-assed. All it takes is for the cover to be open by less than a centimeter, as might easily happen in lady's purse, and the RFID is no longer protected against unwanted access/detection.
      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  11. Don't see how it will help with lines by Yath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What nonsense. If they could be "verified" by machine, they wouldn't need to stand in line in the first place. Travelers stand in line for physical inspection and crowd control, and the card can't help with that process. Unless it can count the books of matches in my backpack and measure my lithium battery, all it will do is save a few seconds of pulling out my wallet. Sounds neat, I guess.

    --
    I always mod up spelling trolls.
  12. encryption doesn't matter by Simonetta · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Encryption doesn't matter for a passport...if you are hunting Americans and Americans are the only ones who have RFIDs in their passports.

        If you have a device that detects RFIDs and you find someone walking down the street in a country outside the USA with an RFID on their person, then that person is most likely to carrying an American passport. If you are looking to kidnap or kill an American because your God has given His OK to do so (the mullah told you so), well then chances are very high that you've found one.

        So run up and do Allah's will. If it's a woman or child, so much the better because there is less likelyhood that they will fight back or resist.

        This RFID in passports is such a bad idea that it is all but unimagineable that any other country will do it. Americans have become obsessed with techno-fascist stupidities since the Saudi Arabian massacre of their people in September 2001. They need to step back a little and give some serious thought to what is a good idea and what is only a technological fad with unwanted consequences.

    1. Re:encryption doesn't matter by BlueStrat · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And the Americans, who go through the trouble of trying to disguise themselves, will wrap their passports in foil, or something.

      Who wants to lay odds on the chances of the US government making such "obstruction and/or obfuscation, or possession of such obstruction or obfuscation device(s) or material(s)" at any time by such a passport holder highly illegal? It would follow with the rest of the brain-dead security theater "logic" we've seen so far.

      Cheers!

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
  13. Hallelujah!!! by moxley · · Score: 4, Funny

    Thank the American God that they solved this problem, because those piece of shit regular passports barely fucking worked and were an accident waiting to happen..(and a fire danger)....

    Seriously...with all their "paperness" and "non-electronicky" and all that.

    Someone call Apple!

  14. How about people read the FA?? by RodgerDodger · · Score: 2, Informative
    From the FA in question:

    The $45 card will be optional and cannot be used for air travel. Travelers can opt for a more secure, if more costly, e-passport that costs $97 and contains a radio frequency chip that can only be read at a distance of three inches. Privacy and security experts said the new passport cards that transmit information over longer distances are much less secure.


    Also in the FA it is stated that all that is contained is the passport number - presumably the rest of the details get looked up.

    So, here we have a card that:
    a) costs still more money.
    b) can't be used at airports (just land and sea border crossings)
    c) can't identify you to random strangers - they'll need access to the US passport database.

    So the point of this is that when you're driving across the border from Canada, they've verified your passport details while you wait in the queue, then all they do is take a look at you and send you through to customs.

    Of course, this same thing could be done by having a second checkpoint to do the Q&A stuff.

    Now, can we please take all the comments about lines at the airport out of the discussion?
    --
    "Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
  15. Be careful about the embassy... by ChePibe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I worked for a summer as an intern at a U.S. Embassy, so when it comes to your plan to run to the embassy if you're in trouble, consider the following:

    1. If the trouble is criminal in nature, and you're accused of the crime, the embassy will probably just hand you over to local police. True, you can receive visits from your consular officer after you've been put in jail, but that's after the fact. Everything you've seen in Hollywood on this subject is 100% incorrect. An American Citizen Services officer I spoke with jokingly told me that his job consisted of calling parents and telling them, "yes, I know Johnny's a good boy, but he did something really stupid here, and now he's in jail. No, we can't actually do anything for him other than visit him. Sorry."

    2. The consulate is used to dealing with American citizens without passports - it replaces lost/stolen ones all the time. A photocopy won't hurt you at all in that respect - just tell them your passport is lost, but present a photocopy. They may want to know more personal information, and you'll have to pay a fee, but you'll be fine.

    3. If you believe the embassy will provide you great protection, think again. It's not like the movies - there is no company of Marines there to defend all the Americans in the gates. An embassy generally depends on local police for security and its small (quite small) contingent of Marine Security Guards (MSGs) for the last line of defense. Even then, their primary concern is the classified material. That said, there is nothing in this world like walking into your office and seeing a big MSG at the door. You know that, as an employee of the US Government, it'll take something approaching an army to get past that man so long as he's got breath in him and Rules of Engagement that allow him to fight. I've never been in the military, but God bless the USMC. That said, as a mere citizen, I wouldn't depend on the embassy to provide you any great protection and, if it comes down to that, do keep in mind that the embassy will likely be a big target for angry mobs.

    Personally, I would recommend waiting out any big disturbance and, if things appear to only be getting worse, getting to the airport ASAP with your passport - and you'll have a much better chance of not getting your passport stolen if it was in a safe in a location you can access when everything hit the fan. And trust me, huge riots can pop up at any time, without much warning. I was in Argentina in December in 2001... what a month. I felt good knowing that my passport was in a safe, across town in a quiet part of the city, in a locked building, behind a gate, with a security guard, rather than on my person in the middle of a riot.

    4. As far as hotels, at least in some European countries, it's my understanding that registering your location is a basic part of life. I believe that in Italy (could be totally off) that people are required to register (in theory) with the local police. Hotels register their clients with the police as well (I think... once again, don't take this as hard and fast truth). Your documents are generally held for this purpose. But, as this isn't too big a deal, most hotels don't push you on it.

    Long story short, I'd think twice about keeping a passport on me 24/7 if I don't absolutely need to do so (as in the Russia example cited above).

  16. Come on in! by dj245 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    People who want to enter the country for nefarious purposes will always have a variety of methods of entry that completely bypass these systems.

    I recommend a fake ID with a birthdate of February 29. Customs systems reject this date so they can't look up any records.

    --
    Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.