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Cruising Fisherman's Wharf For New Passports' Serial Numbers
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.'"
It's strange that politicians and other managers seem to have a totally different idea of the meaning of the word 'security' than other people.
-- Cheers!
And safety is really easy to come by in a hotel in Somalia.
Or you could, you know, stick the thing in the microwave for ten seconds. Enough to zap the chip, not enough to toast the paperwork.
Good luck trying to cross the border with your "forged" passport.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
[sarcasm]Yes, heaven forbid the United States catch up with the rest of the developed world and get a system that works better while costing less.[/sarcasm] Passport security and health systems have nothing to do with each other, please let you brain do the thinking, not your mouth or your gut.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
No, people shouldn't have to pay $20 for a way to make this technology safer. The government should improve their own shielding, and use more secure protocols for RFID transmission.
Well I am completely against the apparent weak encryption and their lack of shielding but I think the big brother concerns are a little overblown. I don't think this is part of some massive systems to track us. Unless the U.S. is setting up this massive trackng network on cruise ships and all over foreign countries... I don't think it will suck in much.. unless of course they enjoy getting receiving data from my passport that always reports that I am 1) at home or 2) on my way to the airport. Seriously.. what U.S. citizen carries their passport everywhere they go domestically?
Yes, but the people in charge still haven't listened!
Yeah, and I'm less concerned about passports being counterfeited than I am about people carrying US passports in other countries being targeted for mugging. Those passports are valuable, you know.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security has been promoting broad use of RFID because 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.
Fixed.