US Government To Release Electronic Passport

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.""

Comments

Awesome

[QuantumG]

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

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Awesome

[aminorex]

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

Re:Awesome

[ozmanjusri]

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.

No air travel?!

[s.bots]

$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.

Re:No air travel?!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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.

Re:No air travel?!

[kabrakan]

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.

Ummm.

[Idiot with a gun]

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.

Re:Ummm.

[XanC]

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.

Re:Ummm.

[The_Wilschon]

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.

Re:Ummm.

[Original Replica]

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.

Re:Ummm.

[porpnorber]

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?

Re:Ummm.

[roystgnr]

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.

"Waved on through..."

[Hamster Lover]

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.

Re:"Waved on through..."

[wizardforce]

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...

Wonderful.

[FriendlyPrimate]

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

Re:Wonderful.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Wonderful.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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.

Don't see how it will help with lines

[Yath]

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.

Hallelujah!!!

[moxley]

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!