Slashdot Mirror
WarCloning, the New WarDriving?
ChrisPaget writes "After my legal skirmishes with HID a while back, The Register has coverage of my latest RFID work — cloning Passport Cards and Electronic Drivers Licenses from a moving vehicle. Full details will be released at Shmoocon this weekend, but in the meantime there's video of the equipment and articles all over the place."
I always thought they should do more. I'm not particularly scared of it, but I always thought that since there's a massive amount of information available on you anyway, why not implement this in a useful way?
Go to a job interview, they could have a resume, letters of recommendation, supervisor comments, phone numbers, etc already on file. No more wasted paper or wasted time filling out the same info on different forms.
Go to a hospital, they could already have the meds you're on, anything you're allergic to, and any afflictions you currently suffer from along with symptoms, last blood pressure reading, x-rays, etc -- even if you've never been there.
Enlist in the military, they'd need things for that, including competencies, education, etc.
Insurance companies, well, unfortunately would have limited medical access.
The uses for a big pool of info, with limited access, would be massive. The best thing is that it wouldn't be available online -- it would be available on a data crystal or some other media capable of storing massive amounts of information. You could even have a retina scan or a galvanic skin sensor to make sure the right person has the medium, rather than a crook who ran off with your wallet or an identity thief. RFID doesn't scare me. I think it could be a step in the right direction. As a man who's tired of answering questions and filling out forms, I think this could be a boon, not a bane.
Take a lesson from London video cameras and spread the RFID readers at each intersection, and now you can track everyone in the city remotely.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
The first thing I did after receiving my RFID-embedded passport was to pick up one of these.
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
Yeah, but I bet it's easier to make a RFID protected wallet than extracting it from your skull.
Dilbert RSS feed
Interestingly enough, when I got my new Passport Card, it came with a little Faraday Cage sleeve (metalized mylar) with the instruction to put the card there when not in use. I don't remember getting anything like that when I got my (RFID carrying) Passport a while back, so maybe there's some realization of the problem on the issuing end...
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
I thought about this when I first heard the news about RFIDs being included in passports -- and money. Now that there is a practical implementation, it is time for a bunch of privacy advocates to get a marquee style display and go to an international airport. They could stand outside of the arrivals customs area and scan and display people's personal information in order to demonstrate how completely these tags violate the passengers' Fourth Amendment rights.
The sign might look something like this:
That should get people's attention. And it should be quite entertaining until the airport authorities figure it out. When they do, it would also be nice to point out that Freedom of Assembly is also an inalienable right!
All data is speech. All speech is Free.