Canadians Wary of 'Enhanced Drivers Licenses'

Dr.Merkwurdigeliebe writes ""Enhanced drivers licenses such as those to be issued in B.C. will lay the groundwork for a national identity card", federal privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said yesterday. Stoddart said the licenses, touted as an alternative to a passport for the purpose of crossing the U.S. border, closely resemble the Real ID program in the United States. She characterized that program as a way of introducing a "type of national identity card" for Americans."

Comments

Is that a typo in the subject?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whould that not be 'wary' instead of 'weary'?

Re:Is that a typo in the subject?

[driftingwalrus]

It should indeed wary. Weary means that they are tired of it. Wary means that they are cautious about it. Computer spellcheckers are not as effective as people think.

Re:Won't fly.

[Vectronic]

"The Canuk's won't accept an ID card. They have just as many guns and ammo as the US does and they really don't like being screwed with."

Canuck*

But I dont think we (im Canadian) would be very wise to use guns to express our anger towards this identitfication card, considering thats part of the reason why its trying to be implimented, because aparently us crazy Canadians are ever so fond of sending terrorists to your country. :|

http://www.johnvandongen.com/

"He sat on the Select Standing Committees on Agriculture and Fisheries and on Crown Corporations, as well as the Official Opposition Caucus Committee on Children."

"Before his election to the Legislative Assembly, John operated a dairy farm in Abbotsford."

First of all, I have NO idea what the "Caucus Committee on Children" is, and the only references to it that I can find only come back to various biographies of John Van Dongen... but considering he used to heard cattle, and is involved with some comittee of children? now he wants to heard adults? I digress.

As much as I'd like to believe that this ID Card wont "make it", that we will wake up, and finally realize whats going on...im sure it will eventually, even though most Canadians avoid entering US Soil now, even though our dollars are nearly par, simply because we know its going to be a hassle, and most of us are more aware of the Patriot Act(s) than Americans are... it wont be long before we have a National ID (as apposed to the Provincial that exists now), then a Continental ID card, (North American Union) because "its so much easier", it wont be long before its on the news and daytime TV...

"it used to take me 20 minutes to cross the border, having to dig up all my papers and such, but with this new ID Card it was a snap, was as quick as buying my groceries through the self-check-out isle, its great!"

Re:RFID is NOT secure!

[jimboindeutchland]

It really depends on what you mean by 'secure'.

I used to work for a company that used RF smart cards as one of their core technologies and you'd be surprised how secure they can be.

Without going into too much detail, these cards hold a cpu with a bit of memory (up to 1mb last I heard) that require a challenge response type handshake before you can communicate with them. If you don't have the correct card keys on your reader, you can't access the card. And I really mean you CAN'T read it.

An example of this is when we tested 'rolling' the keys on the cards.

You can change the keys on the cards and the readers. This is done in a scenario where the organization may be worried that a bad person might have their card/reader keys. It's a bit tricky and quite involved really, which is why organisations may choose not to roll keys or use keys at all.

We managed to waste a few batches of cards with buggy software that put unexpected keys on the cards. Since we didn't know what keys were on the cards we couldn't read them and you can't really go guessing 1024 byte keys.

Anyway my point is that these cards ARE secure. It's just that some implementations aren't.