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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.'"

6 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Fighting the wrong battle by petes_PoV · · Score: 3, Informative
    A lot of times, you have a photo of the "suspect" who's movement you want to track (either from other surveillance, or a mugshot - or even from their passport phot. The reason you're told not to smile is because the P.R. software has a harder time dealing with it - same with glasses wearers.). All that's needed is to feed the photo into the recognition system and give it all your CCTV footage to crunch. This is how surveillance societies like Britain tend to do it now.

    You're right though, that you can't just type in "tell me where Joe Soap went on thursday afternoon" into the system and get an list of his/her whereabouts, but for targeted individuals, tracking without their permission has been available for some time.

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
  2. Re:Nothing to worry about... by theeddie55 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Except that the RFID shield you reference is entirely different to the passport shielding that video demonstrates to be ineffective.

    --
    Blazing Spiders
  3. These aren't passports by Electros · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just to clarify, these are passport cards which are a hard plastic card that can only be used to travel between Canada the US and Mexico. The "Real" passports also have an rfid in them but they have a faraday cage built into the cover so they can only be picked up when opened.

    1. Re:These aren't passports by jpallas · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not only are PASS cards not passports, but they use a completely different technology. This story is pretty much debunked at http://www.rfidjournal.com/blog/entry/4615.

  4. Re:Security by Poingggg · · Score: 3, Informative

    Who the Hell carries their passport around all day in their home country? Most of the time I imagine it would be sitting in a safe place at home.

    Here in the Netherlands we have to be able to prove our identity any time the police asks for it. The only way accepted by them is to show your passport, so we officialy HAVE TO carry our passports with us any time we are outside.
    Thank you America and your 'War on Terror' to give our political creeps an excuse to put that one through our throats!

    --
    What person will donate an airborne act of love?
  5. Re:Security by Grismar · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sadly, Poingggg is voicing an ever more common popular Dutch adage: "most of the world's current problems are America's" fault. And an American making a quip about it will probably garner little more than a "Typical" from the likes of Poingggg.

    Being Dutch myself, I would like to add that Poingggg is wrong, or at least woefully incomplete. We -are- required by law to be able to show our ID, however we are not by law required to carry it. This may seem silly, since you need to carry it to be able to show it, but what it means is that police are not allowed to ask for ID unless you are under suspicion of some other offense (that is, other than not carrying your ID).

    Also, the ID produced does not have to be a passport. Dutch driver's license or Dutch identity cards are also accepted valid IDs. Additionally, the law only applies to people over the age of 14.

    So, the only people at serious risk from getting their ID's copied as described (when not using a tinfoil wallet) are people in the age range 15-18 (impossible to get a valid driver's license), foreigners (only a passport, or some specific documents pertaining to asylum and long-term stay will do) and people unable or unwilling to get a driver's license.

    And sofar, the only people fined for not being able to produce the ID have been - to my knowledge - people who refused to produce it (even when allowed to retrieve it from elsewhere) or people who committed some other punishable offense in addition to not carrying the ID.