Slashdot Log In
Canadians Wary of 'Enhanced Drivers Licenses'
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Feb 07, 2008 04:16 AM
from the tell-me-everything dept.
from the tell-me-everything dept.
Dr.Merkwurdigeliebe writes ""Enhanced drivers licenses such as those to be issued in B.C. will lay the groundwork for a national identity card", federal privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said yesterday.
Stoddart said the licenses, touted as an alternative to a passport for the purpose of crossing the U.S. border, closely resemble the Real ID program in the United States. She characterized that program as a way of introducing a "type of national identity card" for Americans."
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Is that a typo in the subject? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Is that a typo in the subject? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Is that a typo in the subject? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's how these things happen. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can get about without a passport or driving license, you can purchase goods without using your SmartCard - but why make life so difficult for yourself when, with just a couple of concessionary biometric measures, you can take the easy path?
There's never any need to convince the masses that something is a good idea; just convince the individual that it's not worth fighting.
Am I preaching? Hell no. When these things get introduced in the UK I'll grumble like hell and offer my vocal support to anyone who opposes the new identity scheme (whatever guise it eventually takes), but at the end of the day...
RFID is NOT secure! (Score:5, Insightful)
Is anyone else worried about all these RFID chips that companies and government seem to love putting everywhere? Credit cards? Products? Licenses?
They do realize that RFID is not secure, right? And that anyone with a few bucks can buy or build an RFID reader and cloner? So basically, the validity of your RFID scan is zero. Anyone who can counterfeit a license today will be able to counterfeit a license tomorrow, as long as they do a little research and invest in some extra equipment. It's a business - those who can't (or don't) adapt will die out, and those who do adapt to to the new market will succeed. But it will not be going away any time soon. RFID does not make anything more secure.
Re:RFID is NOT secure! (Score:4, Informative)
It really depends on what you mean by 'secure'.
I used to work for a company that used RF smart cards as one of their core technologies and you'd be surprised how secure they can be.
Without going into too much detail, these cards hold a cpu with a bit of memory (up to 1mb last I heard) that require a challenge response type handshake before you can communicate with them. If you don't have the correct card keys on your reader, you can't access the card. And I really mean you CAN'T read it.
An example of this is when we tested 'rolling' the keys on the cards.
You can change the keys on the cards and the readers. This is done in a scenario where the organization may be worried that a bad person might have their card/reader keys. It's a bit tricky and quite involved really, which is why organisations may choose not to roll keys or use keys at all.
We managed to waste a few batches of cards with buggy software that put unexpected keys on the cards. Since we didn't know what keys were on the cards we couldn't read them and you can't really go guessing 1024 byte keys.
Anyway my point is that these cards ARE secure. It's just that some implementations aren't.
Parent
Re:RFID is NOT secure! (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.bclocalnews.com/news/15335286.html [bclocalnews.com]
"The first is that the pilot project involves transferring a user database on encrypted CD-ROM disks to U.S. authorities so they can check it when people come to the border. With a passport, U.S. border agents rely on information kept in Canada to decide if someone should be admitted."
So, with the current system, a passport is scanned, and a computer in Canada flags whether they person is
Instead of an "alternative to a passport" (Score:4, Insightful)
Wary, not weary (Score:3, Informative)
"Wary" means they're distrustful of them, and don't want them to come in.
The linked article certainly uses "wary" so I assume that's what the
So how long until global identity cards? (Score:2)
Re:So how long until global identity cards? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Bunch of pussies. (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bunch of pussies. (Score:5, Funny)
It looks like you are taking a shot at those "sports heroes" with the big salaries. But those athletes with $50M/year salaries are actually a good thing. What do nearly all sports heroes do with their salary? They spend it! Big-name athletes drive expensive cars, they live in huuuuuuge mansions, they eat in expensive restaurants, and they buy lots of "bling". Those expensive cars pay the salaries of the salespeople at the car dealership as well as the mechanics who change the oil. The huuuuge houses provide wages for carpenters, electricians, house keepers, etc. Every $500 dinner tab at a fancy-schmany restaurant pays the wages of wait-staff, cooks, etc. What better way to stimulate the economy and get money into the hands of people who work for a living than to give it to a pro athlete? When was the last time you heard a story about a pro athlete who had millions in the bank? It's very rare. Nearly all of them spend it as fast as it comes in (or faster).
Giving an athlete $50M/year is like giving hay and water to a cow. The cow doesn't hoard the hay and water in its body. After the cow ingests the hay and water, a number of "calves" can all take a turn at one of the teats. (How's *that* for a Slashdot analogy?)
Parent
Re:Bunch of pussies. (Score:4, Insightful)
You folks have a short memory... the Viet Cong kicked your asses using old rifles and discarded bean cans and a willingness to die. Read up on guerilla warfare sometime. BTW, a trillion dollars in Iraq and lots of missiles and tanks hasn't won it, either.
For that matter, Gandhi didn't use a single bullet, just serious nerve and (American) strategy.
Parent
Why so afraid of a national ID card? (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in continental Europe in a country where everyone is expected to be able to identify himself to the police at any time, in a country where there's a central voter register and if you move, you are expected to register yourself with the local town inside of 3 weeks. That sounds like the total police state, doesn't it?
Lets see how this works out in reality:
[b]Identify yourself[/b]: Usually any official document with picture is ok, in reality this means in most cases your driving license - issued nationally, your national ID card or your passport (which many people have anyway to get to the sea in summer). As most Americans have a driving license anyway, this wouldn't change a lot of things for a good part of the population. The issuers of the driving licenses might need do a little more work checking the identity to prevent issues to the wrong name or wrong dates - but this wouldn't affect the common people.
The benefit of having a national ID card on the other hand is, that there's only a small number of documents used commonly and if you have one, you are identified. No more 'Bring 3 types of ID' stuff. You have your driving license, your passport or your ID card, you are set. If those are good enough for the police, they are good enough for everyone else too (eg banks, insurances, airlines).
As those official documents are quite important, forging those, getting those in wrong names or otherwise messing with them is taken very, very seriously by law enforcement. You don't mess around with your driving license just to get some beer before you should (which wouldn't be a problem anyway, once you get a driving license you're also considered old enough to get alcohol), that would send you quite quickly to jail. This improves the general trust in those documents.
At the same time identity theft a lot less of a problem here. If you need to identify yourself, you show one of those documents and everyone is happy. Should, for instance, a bank teller have doubts about your documents, you'll just be invited for a coffee while the police quickly drops by to check your documents. If it clear, fine, if it doesn't you're in deep deep trouble. To try getting around with a fake identity, you immediately raise the stakes to the level of a federal crime, which in most cases isn't worth the risk to small time criminals.
[b]To the police:[/b] So yes, the police may ask you at any time to identify yourself. If not, they can put you in lock-up for some time (similar to the 24 hours available to the American police if one can trust crime shows) to check your identity. In day to day operation, is seems very similar no matter if there's a national ID card scheme or not. If the police doesn't like your face, they can give you a hard time.
For people without ID, there are some procedures to get identified, but those take time and effort. If you happen to be one of the unfortunates without ID, your ID got lost / stolen / whatever, you do it only once to get a temporary replacement before having the new ones issued.
[b]Central voter register:[/b] So wherever you live, you are forced to register yourself inside 3 weeks. This is done mainly for the voter register, to have an idea who can vote in what district, for the tax man and for the police who likes to have a total control over the citizens.
The voter register is a good thing, it makes fraud and manipulation at the time of elections a little harder - you ain't registered officially in the district, you ain't going to vote for it.
The tax man is unfortunately very unavoidable. No matter if there's a national ID card or not, Mr. Tax man will own you and your data - in Soviet Russia and everywhere else too.
The police might have it a little easier to start up to indulge in their totalitarian police state fantasies if they have a national ID card. But if they don't they just dig into the d
National ID Register (Score:4, Insightful)
However, most people do not understand about the database and do not care about the ID cards, so people who think it's a good idea are in luck. I guess we will see the consequences in twenty years time.
Parent
Re:National ID Register (Score:5, Insightful)
You guys are confusing "creating a database" with "creating a primary key".
Let's for the sake of the argument assume that the tinfoil hat crowd is right and that the big spidery evil government works as they think it does. If the governments wants to create the database, but doesn't get the ID through legislation, they will create the database anyway and just use some other key, and live with the inconvenience of an occasional duplicate record or even exploit them, e.g. for creating extra voters. Whether the government collects data on everything you buy and everywhere you travel is completely independent of whether there is a national ID.
Parent
Re:National ID Register (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with current government databases is that they need cleaning up. There are lots of duplicate or inaccurate records, even though supposedly unique keys already exist (e.g. social security numbers, passport numbers). The ID cards act in the UK is at least partly about setting up a framework to reduce that problem: the plan is to interview passport applicants and record their biometrics before assigning them their unique NIR number. The civil service hopes that this will clean up the data, making the database more useful for whatever purposes they have in mind. This process is not cheap, so the ID cards act provides the funding and the "popular mandate" required to go ahead with it. It is hard to see how the data could be cleaned up in any other way. However, some would say that the project is unnecessary, that the £20bn would be better spent elsewhere, and that the eventual goals of the project are questionable.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I bring your attention to the following inflamitory, apocryphal, forward I got the other day:
--
Actual letter to the Canadian Passport office
Dear Mr. Minister,
I'm in the process of renewing my passport, and still cannot believe this.
How is it t
Re:Why so afraid of a national ID card? (Score:5, Interesting)
The funny thing is: Here in Europe we have ID cards, but we're very rarely asked to present them (I've had to show mine last time to get the birth certificate for my daughter). However, in the countries that seem so proud of not having national ID cards, everyone and their dog wants my ID for all kinds of crap (I'm 30+ years old and still they want to see my ID if I'm buying alcohol. And they wanted to see it when I was accompanying my wife to the federal building where she had to take care of some paperwork. ID necessary to enter what's essentially an office complex, WTF guys ??), forcing me to carry my passport around everywhere I go (which is _very_ annoying as it doesn't fit in a wallet and there's going to be major hassles if it ever gets lost or stolen).
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Because of what it could be used for. What ever happened to all those Jews who used to live on the continent anyway? I know that a lot of them moved to America, Canada, Britain and Australia but they don't seem to have that many relatives back home these days.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The majority of the Jews killed during the war lived in Eastern Europe and were killed after the conquest by the German Army, which basically just marched in and carted everybody off. Not having an ID card didn't save a lot of lives.
This is a straw man argument, and a particularly disgusting one.
Those that fit into t
Re:Why so afraid of a national ID card? (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets talk about what Europe does to the gypsies. ID schemes are a form of social control. They require people to do things " a certain way" and live their lives precisely and exactly according to rules.
Now the situation in this particular article is exactly who gets access to the database, and the whole 10m tracking thing. The biggest problem is one of "mission creep". So if someone can read your ID without you knowing, then anyone could, say a grocery store. Or any institution. Or any individual. What happens if I set up a system where i can tell people near me that they've been near me before. I think they'd get pretty creeped out by that. A great way to stalk someone let me tell you.
Just because you think ID cards are working out "great" for you, doesn't mean that (a) they are actually working out great and (b) they'd work out "great" here too. The inconviences are not daily, but in the aggregate, all for what benefits?
- Claimed reduction in "identity theft"
- this problem is uniquely american for 2 reasons that are solvable without ID cards:
- Treating the SSN as a secret that only 1 person knows. Easy to solve.
- Credit card companies are deliberately slack about security. No online pin transactions, no signature verification, etc.
- Identifying yourself is easier.
- This is not a real problem people have in their day to day lives. For most people their existing driver's license (or state ID) is sufficient, it has a picture and a signature. Done. Unlike Europeans, American and Canadians don't cross borders often. Being required to extra prove your identity is something that hardly ever happens.
So to summarize: Streamlining bank sign up processes and fixing bank/credit card company problems for them by giving yourself a easy to track ID doesn't seem like a very good trade off to me.
Last but not least, I think you are forgetting these IDs are readable at a LONG DISTANCE. You could drive past people and read their IDs. With some data collection, GPS system and mining you can construct a name -> ID number mapping that in theory only the police should have.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, that's exactly the strange part. You give the your ID all the time, you have things nearly as good as a national ID (Driving license?), you are already registered in many Big Brother Databases (Income tax? Mobile phone records? Social Security?) and with all this the "I don't have to ID myself"-myth goes on.
>Last but not least, I think you are forgetting these IDs are readable at a
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Could someone please explain to me, why ... Canadians ... are so afraid of a national ID card?
Here in BC, the provincial government subcontracted out some of the management of our provincial health care records to a subsidiary of an American company. This means that we essentially lose sovereignty over those records, through any quasi-totalitarian homeland security intelligence bungle the Americans want to cook up. It is an end-run (intentional or not) around our political protections and sovereign rights.
If you know many Canucks, you'll know that a certain significant percentage of us are touchy
Don't trust in Government (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately our courts were
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You're describing a simple piece of identification. The British plans are to store or link 50+ categories of information to the ID, cross-reference these and store them all centrally. Slap on a legal requirement to notify the government of any change in these 50+ piece of information. Add to that that not just go
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Old style European ID schemes simply don't have this to the same degree, nor is there any attempt to cross reference the contents of these database with other repositories of information. The danger is that the ability to tie this information together can and will be abused, not just by the government but by any of the organisations who suddenly make it compulsory for you to share your ID with them before they will have anything to do with y
Re:Why so afraid of a national ID card? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll tell you I'm afraid of this type of thing/attitude, from a Canadian perspective anyways.
For me, it doesn't come from fear or mistrust. It's simply a matter of freedom. The freedom to go about my daily life without having to explain my intentions or actions, or to prove that I'm allowed to be wherever I happen to be. Freedom of mobility is guaranteed under the Canadian Constitution.
I also happen to enjoy the freedom from arbitrary questioning/interrogation. The freedom from being monitored, from having my movements/purchases/actions tracked, perhaps to be used against me by someone in government I may have pissed off at some point in my life.
If I'm under arrest for suspicion of whatever, then fine. Under the current system I'll have my day in court. And up until now, I still trust my legal system (for the most part). Under a 'papers please' society, I wouldn't trust any member of law enforcement or the judiciary, I would be living in fear. Please try and remember that a government is supposed to be in place to serve the citizenry, not to monitor/track/control. People who through a trusted system of due process are deemed criminal should be monitored, but a free citizen should be under no such magnifying glass.
I truly fear the day that the freedoms I enjoy now, that my forefathers gave their lives for, will be a distant memory, that can only be discussed via 'approved' texts.
Even as a Canadian, I'm scared to go to the U.S. for what's it's become. I fear that 1 wrong move, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time could land me in world of pain or trouble.
Again, the reason I don't want any sort of national ID card is that I simply enjoy my freedom too much, and I will fight to the death to keep it.
P.S. although not perfect, I do feel that for the most part, at this moment I do live in the freest (sp?) country in the world
Parent
Re:Why so afraid of a national ID card? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You just explained why most of the US doesn't want ID cards of any type and how the system/government/police can screw you over if you don't get with their system. It doesn't take an extr
Non-driver = Non-citizen (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Incidentally, a real national ID card would completely solve this problem.
Re:Non-driver = Non-citizen (Score:4, Informative)
A national ID doesn't solve any particular problem people have on a day to day basis.
I can tell you what a national ID will make worse: identity theft. Oh but wait you say - a national ID is highly verified and impossible to duplicate or forge. Never say never - a national ID will have forgeries. Except since everyone "knows" that a ID is not forgeable, those who will be the unfortunate victim of identity thefts won't be able to get off the hook.
A similar situation has happened recently. Newer model cars with immobilizers are "unstealable" - until they are not. There is a good Wired article about this:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.08/carkey.html [wired.com]
a choice quote:
"Since you reportedly can account for all the vehicle keys, the forensic information suggests that the loss did not occur as reported," the company wrote to Wassef, denying his claim. The barely hidden subtext: Wassef was lying."
Now imagine instead of cars we're talking about your identity. If your ID is not forgeable, then anything done with your ID tagged to it is clearly done by you. Now imagine these RFID IDs are in fact trivial to clone with the right equipment... now what?
In the end, what problem are we solving? I keep on hearing in the US the Real ID solves the issue of multiple drivers licenses from multiple states. But if that hole was plugged would it prevent terrorism? Probably not I'm thinking. Then what problem would it really help with? Tracking down and punishing people for trivial crimes will end up being the #1 application of these things.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Won't fly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure the Chinese have ID cards and sure they execute people. I'm not for any form of ID card, but it seems as though you're insinuating that they're somehow connected, and that's a fairly stupid link.
ID Cards != Execution by lethal injection
Parent
Re:Won't fly. (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, an ID card *per se* is not a scary thing. The scary thing is the collective databases your government or companies(*) create, and the tracking of phone records, movements (through ID cards, EC/credit cards,
My government (Germany) introduced biometric information into passports through the EU backdoor, when the first attempt failed on a federal level. THAT's scary! The former Secretary of the Interior pulled that trick on us.
(*) Yes, they WILL make the data available to the government, is "asked" to.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Eww. Why were they keeping their passports in there anyway?
Re:Won't fly. (Score:4, Informative)
Canuck*
But I dont think we (im Canadian) would be very wise to use guns to express our anger towards this identitfication card, considering thats part of the reason why its trying to be implimented, because aparently us crazy Canadians are ever so fond of sending terrorists to your country.
http://www.johnvandongen.com/ [johnvandongen.com]
"He sat on the Select Standing Committees on Agriculture and Fisheries and on Crown Corporations, as well as the Official Opposition Caucus Committee on Children."
"Before his election to the Legislative Assembly, John operated a dairy farm in Abbotsford."
First of all, I have NO idea what the "Caucus Committee on Children" is, and the only references to it that I can find only come back to various biographies of John Van Dongen... but considering he used to heard cattle, and is involved with some comittee of children? now he wants to heard adults? I digress.
As much as I'd like to believe that this ID Card wont "make it", that we will wake up, and finally realize whats going on...im sure it will eventually, even though most Canadians avoid entering US Soil now, even though our dollars are nearly par, simply because we know its going to be a hassle, and most of us are more aware of the Patriot Act(s) than Americans are... it wont be long before we have a National ID (as apposed to the Provincial that exists now), then a Continental ID card, (North American Union) because "its so much easier", it wont be long before its on the news and daytime TV...
"it used to take me 20 minutes to cross the border, having to dig up all my papers and such, but with this new ID Card it was a snap, was as quick as buying my groceries through the self-check-out isle, its great!"
Parent
Re:Won't fly. (Score:4, Insightful)
What on earth is this supposed to imply? That id-cards boost unjust trials? You cannot be hinting at the ethical problems connected with capital punishments, since the US uses capital punishment, too. Counterexample: In Germany we have had id-cards since after the war. We abolished capital punishment in 1951 and have a working juridicial system that adheres to the rule of law. So maybe the US should also look at positive examples of countries having id-cards. Your comment was simply polemic.
Parent
Re:Won't fly. (Score:4, Insightful)
What's funny and ironic about this is that the U.S. has had a National ID card for several decades. It's called a Social Security card. Just try to do something -- get a credit card, borrow money (any amount, any reason), get any form of insurance, get a job, get a driver's license -- without giving them your Social Security Number. In most cases it's impossible.
Parent
Re:Won't fly. (Score:4, Interesting)
Interestingly, the requirement is for a number, not a card. A random nine digit number is much easier to 'forge' or 'steal' than a physical card. By the time the crime is complete, the criminal is long gone. Illegal immigrants can get a job by providing the number to the employer, and it may take months for the mismatch to be recognized; if the name and ss# are a match, then it may never get recognized.
Identity theft is so common and easy because just about all it requires is that nine digit number. My mother's neighbor is a hardworking guy who for some reason has over a dozen credit cards and cell phones in his name all over the country, and several outstanding warrants for his arrest. HE'S done nothing wrong, but his number apparently was pretty popular for a while, and he has to bat clean-up on it on a continuous basis. He actually carries a card in his wallet that effectively says "I'm not the man you're looking for" to the police in case he gets pulled over for anything. In spite of that, it still often means a drive down to the station and waiting while higher-ups check out his story.
Sadly, the SS# fails as a security identifier because it was never intended as such; it was strictly supposed to be a primary key for identifying your contributions to the US Social Security system. In any security system, there should be at least a 'two-part' login process: who you are and what you know. The SS# is now being taken for granted as the 'what you know' part, and sometimes even as the 'who you are' part. Additionally, it's not a secret (you can't use a different SS# for each organization you give it to) and you can't change it.
Thought exercise: imagine that you're email address is your login and your ss# is your password for every site you visit on the internet; including your online banking. Now: imagine that one of the sites gets compromised.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Belgium has compulsory national ID cards, but no death penalty in conformance with the European Convention on Human Rights.
I hope that refutes whatever it was you were trying to prove.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A note to the Department of Homeland Security: Terrorists can get passports too.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, but then they have 6 months to consider the error of their ways! Well, if they're Americans going to another country to commit terrification.