Cruising Fisherman's Wharf For New Passports' Serial Numbers

Posted by timothy on Sunday July 12, 2009 @12:02AM 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.'"

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Security by tsa · 2009-07-12 00:04 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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1. Re:Security by innerweb · 2009-07-12 00:19 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  What the heck do you think they intended the RIFD passports for? They are meant to be used to track people. They are working as intended.
  InnerWeb
  
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  Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
Re:Nothing to worry about... by blackraven14250 · 2009-07-12 00:29 · Score: 5, Insightful

And safety is really easy to come by in a hotel in Somalia.
Re:Dupe of a dupe of a dupe. by Metasquares · 2009-07-12 01:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yes, but the people in charge still haven't listened!