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Germany To Roll Out ID Cards With Embedded RFID
An anonymous reader writes "The production of RFID chips, an integral element of the new generation of German identity cards, has started after the government gave a 10-year contract to the chipmaker NXP in the Netherlands. Citizens will receive the mandatory new ID cards starting from the first of November. The new card allows German authorities to identify people with speed and accuracy, the government said. These authorities include the police, customs and tax authorities and of course the local registration and passport granting authorities. There are some concerns that the use of RFID chips will pose a security or privacy risk, however. Early versions of the electronic passports, using RFID chips with a protocol called 'basic access control' (BAC), were successfully hacked by university researchers and security experts."
New EU passports have RFID already. This is just a replacement for the barcode, right? The ID shouldn't have any information on it. If the implementers were smart ...
The passports already have RFID. This is about the identity cards. (which is only a card, compared to the passports that are too big to carry them around with you all the time).
Unfortunately, they will also make perfect bomb triggers, when the target walks by.
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
It's time to buy RFID-blocking cover/wallet/bag/whatever. Or feel free to have some fun with aluminum foil - http://www.rpi-polymath.com/ducttape/RFIDWallet.php
Germans must be able to identify themselves with either a passport or an ID card. There is no obligation to have either of those with you at any time.
The new cards do not use classic RFID chips but near field communication, which is much harder to attack from a distance (if at all).
Anyone who wants to sit this out can get a new ID card before November. The old ID cards cost 8 EUR and are valid for 10 years.
Walk past an e-paper advert board. It scans your ID, looks up your preferences and buying history and throws up a 20 foot high shot of a naked guy and directions to the local rubber fetish store.
Deleted
I've always wanted to be a german.
And now i can be a bunch of them!
Danke !!
Ihre R F I D Bitte
D anke !!
Aolso, Ihre RFID Bitte
Dank e !!
Ihre RFID Bitte
Danke !!
Ihre RFID Bitte
Danke !!
Ihre RFID Bitte
HALT !!
Even if it were, it would be dangerous. Giving someone remote access to your passport/ID card number is a security risk by itself.
They already have your face, anyone can take a picture of your face without you knowing it. If they can create a fake document matching that face to the right document number that's a big step towards stealing your identity.
You have that right. Letting people know how to use the chip would compromise security, you see. Don't believe the people who say the chip has already been broken. These weren't officially tasked to do so by the government, so their results don't count. Also, why are you asking questions about this in the first place? Do you want the boogeymen to win? This is for your own safety, man! How could you be against that?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
After 9/11, the US mandated biometric passports for all (if you wanted to enter the US).
No, they look to the government for guidance still. It's in the character. They still don't have real freedom of speech there.
OTOH, if you look at what set of circumstances us Americans revolted against the King Of England for and how it is today, all you see is more government and taxes than they ever accepted in every aspect of our lives. And people constantly clamoring for more as a solution to their problems.
This is the standard required by US immigration for foreign biometric passports.
And only with these you can take advantage of visa-waiver (minus ESTA, minus new tourism support fee) entry into the US.
So either your passport supports this, or you can make an appointment weeks in advance at a select US consulate in a city only a few hundred kilometers away if you want to travel.
So, overall - yeah, this is a deal, but it's a lot less big a deal than the summary makes it sound like.
Yes, and the government is out on tracking everybody! Really if they want to track you they will no matter what. If I have to choose between a RFID chip in my ID card or a tinfoil hat and wallet. I'll take the RFID chip cause the chance of it being useful exceeds the chance of the government bothering to track everything I do.
No, the thing is, without this kind of technology, they can choose a number of individuals they have resources to track at the same time. With this type of technology, they can track everybody at the same time. With modern storage capacities, a future government can retroactively check what you have been doing through your life.
And it becomes a slippery slope. It starts with tracking terrorist suspects, proceeds to solving other crimes, and ends with tracking people who disagree with the current party in power and threaten their next election win, and after that all bets are off. Just hope you never visited a house where some opposition activist lived back then...
I find the most intriguing part of this whole thing is the decision to outsource the chips to a Dutch company. I wonder how long it will be before all the RFIDs fail and send only a message saying "Give us our bikes back".
No left turn unstoned.
It's not like we didn't have ID cards in Germany before. Everyone already has an ID card and a number.
No, they look to the government for guidance still. It's in the character. They still don't have real freedom of speech there.
So it is only "freedom" if it is identical to your version of freedom ?
Please, cut down the arrogance a few notches, you'll notice the rest of the world likes you a lot better if you don't go around all the time assuming that your way is the one and only true path to whatever.
Our freedom of speech (I'm german) is as real as yours. We just have some priorities differently. For example, we don't allow people to threaten abortion doctors with murder under the cover of "free speech". Our version of your "free speech" is called "freie Meinungsäußerung". That has three parts: Free, speech and opinion. What it means is you can freely express your opinion. If you leave the area of expressing your opinion - and "we'll kill you" isn't an opinion anymore - you may run into trouble.
And no, we don't look for the government for guidance. In fact, our current government is such a joke, anyone who does look to them for anything except satire is retarded. However, what we do is not share the ridiculous paranoia about the government that is visible in the US. We don't think anything done by the government is automatically evil and to be mistrusted. We view the government as an entity much like many others - capable of both good and evil.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Second World War was generations ago. The lessons have been forgotten, so authoritarianism and militarism are once again on the rise in Europe, and will once again lead to the world burning. That will be followed by the survivors being horrified of what they have seen and done, and swearing "never again", but a few generations later things will deteriorate again. That is the cycle of human history, and it cannot be broken, since no matter what lessons you might learn, your children won't, and their children certainly won't care.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Adam Savage's talk on the 2008 Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference on why Mythbusters was forced to not do the "how easy it is to hack RFID tags" episode is very, very interesting.
http://twitter.com/object404
You are mistaken as to what is freedom of speech in USA, nobody is allowed to make direct threats of murder for example, but one can have an opinion that abortion doctors must be killed, it's an opinion.
Of-course one person's opinion may lead to another person's action, but the correct thing to do is to hold the one who takes action as the responsible party, not the one who says he has an opinion.
I am not American, in fact at this very moment I am in Germany, though I am Canadian, born in the former USSR.
I hold every single thing that government says or does as suspicious, I don't trust government at all, in any single one thing ever, and I am not an American.
You can't handle the truth.
What TFA forgets to mention is, that the ID card remains valid when you kill the RFID chip, as it still allows a person to be identified. Also, the fingerprint is a voluntary information to be stored. Most people won't know or bother and just let them store it anyway, though. For my fellow citizens: get yourself a new ID card w/o RFID just now (it is only a few Euros more expensive when you "loose" your current ID). If you have to get, for some reasons, an ID card with RFID on it, just put it in the microwave oven for a minute or so. Chaos Computer Club has proven this to kill the chip reliably.
However, the fundamental liberties encoded in the German Basic Law (it's not a Constitution in the US sense) have eroded substantially in the last decades, because, unlike the U.S. with is very reluctant to amend its Constitution, Germans love to modify their Grundgesetz regularly... mostly to make it worse, i.e. take one more liberty away.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Yes, mandatory chip implant...
If you are without: Please come to the side and put your arms on the back. Click (handcuffs)- pfft, there you go, now you have one.
However, no ideologue, from the Left or Right, can reasonably claim we can house and feed the rest of the world as it decides to show up on our doorstep.
Sure they can, perhaps not showing up on our doorstep, I mean a single nation can only hold so many people, but with universally available contraception so only people who want children have them, curbing population growth, and sustainable farming and forestry, there is enough arable land on the planet to feed and house 6 billion people.
The problem is the insularity of nations, we want to make our own citizens happy but we don't give a shit about the rest of the world. I realise I am being absurdly idealistic but you claim it is not possible. It may never heppen, but it is quite possible for all nations to band together and guarantee welfare for all human beings
IPPA Computer: Welcome to the Identity Processsing Program of Uhmerica! Please insert your forearm into the forearm receptacle!
IPPA Computer: Thank you! Please speak your name as it appears on your current federal identity card, document G24L8!
Pvt. Joe Bowers: I'm not sure if...
IPPA Computer: You have entered the name "Not Sure." Is this correct, Not Sure?
Pvt. Joe Bowers: No, it's not correct...
IPPA Computer: Thank you! "Not" is correct. Is "Sure" correct?
Pvt. Joe Bowers: No, it's not, my name is Joe...
IPPA Computer: You have already confirmed your first name is "Not." Please confirm your last name, "Sure."
Pvt. Joe Bowers: My last name is not "Sure!"
IPPA Computer: Thank you, Not Sure!
Pvt. Joe Bowers: No, what I mean is my name is Joe...
IPPA Computer: Confirmation is complete. Please wait while I tattoo your new identity on your arm!
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
"It may never heppen, but it is quite possible for all nations to band together and guarantee welfare for all human beings"
That's utter babble, not insight. It is theoretically possible for winged monkeys to fly out my arse, but it isn't likely.
What you are proposing is Communism, which has the minor drawback of containing the seeds of its own destruction in the power structures it must have to be made government.
It makes no sense for everyone that has anything to sacrifice themselves for their less-accomplished, less-competent, culturally-self-destructive fellow humans who will just drink the well dry. Why should I want to live in a mud hut so everyone else can live in mud hut?
Do-gooder humans have an interesting tendency to ignore likely outcomes of implementing their ideas.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I just hope you're proud of yourself...
Actually its "Minority Report" all over again...
Imagine NEVER AGAIN being able to do anything you're ashamed of.
Be PROUD of being kinky, 'cause EVERYBODY's gonna know.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The lessons have been forgotten, so authoritarianism and militarism are once again on the rise in Europe, and will once again lead to the world burning.
Having lived in Europe on and off, sadly, I can confirm this. Part of the problem is European arrogance: for more than two centuries, Americans have had to listen to Europeans about how superior their culture and political systems are, only to watch them self-destruct like clockwork. Europeans simply can't imagine that their supposedly superior culture leads to mass destruction and mass murder, again and again.
That is the cycle of human history, and it cannot be broken, since no matter what lessons you might learn, your children won't, and their children certainly won't care.
Other continents haven't been following this cycle. The US has had centuries of continuity and progress. South America and Africa don't have stability at all, but they don't have European delusions of grandeur either.
There is something uniquely wrong with European politics and European culture.
I don't know, we live in a vastly different world than the ones before us. We are continuously confronted with what war achieves. Together with that, the introduction of the Euro means that we Europeans are very much in trouble together when we start a war with our neighbor. The history of the world is changing very rapidly, if there was any cycle it might well and truly be broken by now.
The most aggressive country by far is the US. It makes war with countries that never even threatened the US. It takes the drug war outside it's borders and destabilizes large parts of the world because of it (instead of ending their own problems with poverty). That the US does not have any wars inside of its borders (and outside of prisons) does not mean that there is no war there. So let the first country without sin cast the first stone.
The most troubling thing for me is the economic stability. If masses of people get out of work and there is mass poverty, then political correctness is the first to suffer (like in pre-Nazi Germany, were the nation went bankrupt after the first world war).
It is illegal to threaten anyone in America with murder or any other form of harm. You have been reading and believing too many anti-American rags. (all rags published in Europe, for example).
Cut down your own arrogance a few notches.
Your government (Germany) has been maximum evil overlords more than once. Why do you have the idea that they have changed? Maybe they have learned to be less obvious about it, and not get caught?
The American gov sucks big time, and will abuse any power that they can get their hands on, legally or illegally.
Your gov is the same.
The only difference is the morals and ethics of the people currently in the gov with access to these powers.
American gov employees are low on the morals scale.
I am sure Germans are similar. I think there is something about working for the gov, and military, that reduces morals, and attracts people with low morals, like our Bill Clinton, and a recent top gov official in Germany?
Comparing bad to bad just wastes time and energy. They are all bad. Get over it. Stop crowing that your bad gov is not as bad as ours.
wake up and hold your nose
Americans are NOT required to carry ID at all times.
Neither are us Germans (yet), we only have to own one. Most people do carry it, though.
(+1, Disagree)
How does this even get modded up? Are slashdotters that uninformed?
The standard requires the chip interaction to work at least up to 20cm distance. That doesn't mean it stops working at 21cm. In the same way the car whisperer guys talked to bluetooth carkits kilometres away that was only supposed to work up to ten metres, you can stretch RFID to at least 20 metres. In fact, that demonstration was why USA RFID passports come with tin foil embedded. And you only need a metre or two for a detonator to go off.
Before you think that's alright then: Other governments don't provide that tin foil at all, still denying the problem.
The chip is still uniquely addressable every time. You don't need to get the mark's name from his ID card (you've done your homework), and you can figure out what RFID tags he's carrying even on a busy street by following him long enough, like how cars find their own RFIDed tyre pressure meters.
As to BAC vs PACE, I don't really care. Broken by design is BAD, and I don't want RFID in my ID cards at all. No, fixing it up with spit and baling wire, excuse me, tin foil, is not good enough. For my privacy and security both, ID needs to not be readable without me even noticing. Same goes for RFID payments and a whole raft of other things. I want proper design, not this new technology vendor solution looking for a problem pushing jerkfest. It's sticky man. Get me a clean card already.
I somehow feel like I'm repeating myself, governments have better things to do than track everybody and everything. If they want to track somebody or a certain group of people they'll do it no matter what, tracking 100 people or tracking 1000 won't raise the costs of their operation that much. If they're so poised on tracking you, they can already track your mobile phone everywhere you go anyway actually; yet I'm sure you're constantly using it. You probably have a digital tv that could keep track of everything you watch and they could have filled your computer's HD with trojans through a backdoor the manufacturer was forced to install and the microwave oven could keep track of how much times you eat per day and kill you if it deems you're not an economical asset by using the RFID tag in your identity card to target you and boil you from the inside out. Really, where does the paranoia stop, but yes the government is out to get all of us! Not to mention the technical challenge of reading a near field RFID tag from a distance of over 1m. You might think it's easy but guess what, it isn't. Near field is generally anything under 20cm. And while that might seem pointless to you, anybody who ever bothered to study electronics will note there are a few problems with the tracking theory at this point. The coil and electronics in the RFID tag were designed with this distance in mind and as such are limited in power. You might be familiar with the law of Biot-Savart. Next combine it with the definition of magnetic flux and you might want to slap the result inside the electromagnetic induction formula and you'll see how unrealistic this task really is. Additionally why is it people automatically make the assumption the government only has evil intentions?
Although you may not be a troll, your information comes from bad movies, or old ones maybe.. Don't know.. If you could get past a little paranoia, and sense of superiority, and actually travel to Europe.. I think you would be shocked at how wrong your view of the world is.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
According to a Supreme Court decision, in every state you are required to show your drivers license or state ID if requested by a peace officer. (Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, 2004)