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Cruising Fisherman's Wharf For New Passports' Serial Numbers

Posted by timothy on from the sub-exactly-because-for-even-though dept.

schwit1 writes "Fox News has an AP story on a hacker in San Francisco driving around and needing as little as 20 minutes to be successful in acquiring a passport number: 'Zipping past Fisherman's Wharf, his scanner detected, then downloaded to his laptop, the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians' electronic US passport cards embedded with radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags. Within an hour, he'd "skimmed" the identifiers of four more of the new, microchipped PASS cards from a distance of 20 feet. ... Meanwhile, Homeland Security has been promoting broad use of RFID even though its own advisory committee on data integrity and privacy warned that radio-tagged IDs have the potential to allow "widespread surveillance of individuals" without their knowledge or consent.'"

2 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Fighting the wrong battle by petes_PoV · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    That RFID, coupled with other technologies, could make people trackable without their knowledge or consent.

    People already are easilt trackable. CCTV coupled with facial recognition is a far more effective way to follow an individual than relying on a web of RFID sensors, needed one every 20 feet. This is especially true when the RFID sniffing is so easily defeated - keep your passport under your tinfoil hat. (To be fair, face recog. is also pretty easy to fool: fale beard and dark glasses, anyone?)

    However, keep up the paranoia, guys One day all your fears might just come to pass.

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
  2. Re:hmmm... by st0rmshad0w · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    We live in a country who's military funded by the federal government "protects" other countries.

    If my house is on fire, the fire is managed by a fire department funded by my municipal government

    Law enforcement is provided by a police or sheriff's department funded by my city or county government

    I drive to work on roads whose maintenance are funded by my county or state government

    I was educated at public schools funded by my county and state government

    Fixed that for you.

    Idiot. All those things are funded by YOUR TAXES. You think "the government" has like a night-stocking job at Wal-mart to earn the cash it spends?