Canadians Wary of 'Enhanced Drivers Licenses' 258
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."
Is that a typo in the subject? (Score:5, Informative)
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
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!"
Re:Why so afraid of a national ID card? (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 government, but also the private sector will have access to the database (vastly multiplying the possibilities security lapses).
Given their recently demonstrated skill at misplacing and misdirecting people's confidential information, I'd just as soon not have to carry a card that can be used to recreate an audit trail of every time I've been in contact with any facet of government, ever.
To compare with a couple of European examples, in Germany centralisation of storage is illegal (for historical reasons), and when you replace a card, previous records aren't linked into it. In Belgium, storage is again at the local level and there is no cross-referencing.
Basically the British ID plans operate on a far vaster and more pervasive scale than the few examples you've tried to compare them to.
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.
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.
Re:RFID is NOT secure! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Is that a typo in the subject? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Won't fly. (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:RFID is NOT secure! (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 a risk or not. With this new system, data has to be transferred to US computers, and we don't know what they will do with it.