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Privacy United States

Privacy vs. Security: Biometric E-Passports 227

Posted by michael from the no-fly-list dept.
ftblguy writes "Countries such as the UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Canada, US, Australia, and New Zealand are currently looking into adding RFID chips to citizens' passports. The chips would contain data such as a digital image of the person's face. A real-time facial scan of the carrier of the passport would then be matched to the data encoded in the chip. But privacy advocates such as CASPIAN are concerned that this data could get into the hands of the wrong people or that governments could use the data to track their citizens as they go about their personal business. But, with all of the terrorist threats lately, bringing passport documents into the digital world is sure to increase security."
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Privacy vs. Security: Biometric E-Passports More

Privacy vs. Security: Biometric E-Passports

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  • Just wait (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sugapablo ( 600023 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:30AM (#10037114) Homepage
    Soon they'll want to implant RFID tags (or something similar) in your left molar. Everyone will be able to be traced from a simpe computer terminal. Great for parents who's kids are kidnapped, or hikers lost in the mountains, bad for everyone else.

    • Re:Just wait (Score:5, Insightful)

      by denthijs ( 679358 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:43AM (#10037147) Homepage Journal
      And all in good spirit of a non existant terror threat.
      America hasn't put itself on a threatlevel lower then orange and probably never will.
      A quote from 1984 might be the best justification for this;
      The war isn't meant to be won, the war is meant to be continuous
      I only hope the US-citizens will see this for what it is and not re-elect another 4 years of warmongering.

      • Re:Just wait (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Everleet ( 785889 )
        I only hope the US-citizens will see this for what it is and not re-elect another 4 years of warmongering.

        If we had a choice, we probably wouldn't. Unfortunately that issue, along with every other issue the government faces, has already been decided by the Party. The public has the oh-so-heavy choice of which face reads their speeches for the next few years.

    • Re:Just wait (Score:4, Insightful)

      by danormsby ( 529805 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:44AM (#10037154) Homepage
      But why do this with RFID as a unique tag? Surely our faces or speech or irises are unique enough. Hold a database of those rather than implant another unique key?

      • Re:Just wait (Score:3, Interesting)

        by 88NoSoup4U88 ( 721233 )
        As of a month, when making a photo for a dutch passport, you are not allowed to smile ; as this would disturb the 'default' position from where all the other positions of the face can be determined (for face recognition) : This info is embedded within the passport.

  • dupe (Score:5, Funny)

    by mishmash ( 585101 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:31AM (#10037118) Homepage
    dupe [amazon.co.uk]!

  • Ho hum. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I probably wouldn't object to this idea, if I just knew that I could turn it off.

    • You can 'turn it off' (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Benm78 ( 646948 )
      Really, it would not be that hard to temporarely disable the RFID function. I can imagine how this RFID feature would be usefull when 'reading' the passport at, for example, an airport.

      However, the RFID feature has no use when you just walk around with the passport in your wallet. In fact, this could be a privacy concern, since you could be 'tracked' without your consent. If you worry about this, loose the tinfoil hat and buy the tinfoil wallet.

      Or you could carry your passport and other RFID-enabled d

  • Not effective (Score:5, Informative)

    by lachlan76 ( 770870 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:35AM (#10037125)
    This is NOT a secure system, since you could put in a fake picture of a face into a passport.

    Biometric systems are not secure as a means of authentication, they are too easy to fake.

    The three ways you can authenticate a person are:
    1. What they are
    2. What they have
    3. What they know
    A good security system combines at least two of these. This one does, but since it only authenticates against what you have, it is not very good. If each passport had a key encrypted with a passphrase (like in PGP), and you needed the passphrase to use it, you would have good protection against stolen passports.

    But these don't do that.

    • If each passport had a key encrypted with a passphrase (like in PGP), and you needed the passphrase to use it,

      then every Joe User would write his passphrase ON the passport.

      • You wouldn't be any worse off, since you still need physical access to the passport to be able to read it off. And with the current system, if someone has access to the passport they can just steal it anyway.
    • You're right. You'd think people on this site would know better. In computer terms, there's no such thing as security on the client. The client is untrustworthy. At some point the system will be hacked and then people will be able to put whatever they like in the chips in their fake passports. Of course, customs and immigration officials will trust the technology and won't believe that the thing is fake. The only way this kind of thing will fly is to keep the information in an internationally shared d
    • > The three ways you can authenticate a person are:
      > What they are, What they have, What they know

      The trouble is that the government really wants to know "what you want", rather than any of those things. Using "what you are" to determine "what you want" works only by extrapolating from previous behaviour, and is necessarily restricted to past offenders. What we need is a passport that requires you to state your intentions every time you use it. It could go something like this:

      "It looks like you are

  • quickly, think of a reason, (Score:3, Insightful)

    by way2trivial ( 601132 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:35AM (#10037128) Homepage Journal
    and order a 'sample quantity' know..

    they'll be needed in the years to come...

  • digital != greater security (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tpgp ( 48001 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:36AM (#10037129) Homepage
    bringing passport documents into the digital world is sure to increase security."

    Surely noone believes that do they? Why?

    Digital is inherently easier to copy then analogue - I think this would decrease security.
    • I pass hundreds of people in an airport who could have RFID readers and thus would have my data to copy and retransmit. Get that data from me and a few hundred other people and they will find someone they look enough like that they can make a very effective fake passport.

      This data should not be transmitted contactless. Are you going to tell an immigration official, "Just scan the passport in my pocket"? No, you will still present the actual passport, so they can simple touch a smart card style chip on the
    • ... was at my old company. They decided that people just weren't using secure enough passwords or changing them often enough. To fix the problem, they forced passwords to be x number of characters, with mixed capitalization, and at least one non-alpha character. Oh, and the passwords had to be changed every 90 days, and couldn't match the last four passwords. To make it even more confusing for the average joe, they decided to have the login password and email password be reset on different/staggered 90
    • There's no doubt that storing a duplicate of the printed information in a digital form (especially if cryptographically signed... which, sadly, it's not) would make passports many orders of magnitude more difficult to forge. That wouldn't help defend anyone against terrorists, of course, but it would help protect against fake IDs.

      I admit that accessing the information using RFID is an unnecessary complication: It makes the chip easier to destroy at-a-distance and doesn't add much in the way of functiona

  • The price you pay... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...if you don't want terrorists to drive airplanes into large buildings or nuclear power plants.
    Security doesn't come for free. You have to invest something for getting it. No sane person would run a Windows or a Linux box on teh internet without elaborate security setup.
    And in anti-terrorism this translates to getting better passports with more detailed information.
    For all the people who start to whine about privacy: if there is really a problem with this then your problem is not the passport. Your pro

    • Re:The price you pay... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tpgp ( 48001 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:39AM (#10037137) Homepage
      ...if you don't want terrorists to drive airplanes into large buildings

      You are a retard.

      The 11/9/2001 terrorists had valid passports. This system would have done nothing to prevent that attack.

  • why rfid? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:38AM (#10037134) Journal
    Seriously im all for storing a picture of the person on their card if it makes general facial recognition easier but why the fuck does it need to be RFID someone please explain why a normal chip on the card would not do?

    • An RFID chip doesn't need any contacts, so all the machines involved (passports, readers, etc) last longer, and you only need to hold the chip near a reader, and not line it up and touch it.

  • Kidding, right? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CleverMonkey ( 62124 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:39AM (#10037135)
    Whenever I hear "with all of the terrorist threats lately, bringing passport documents into the digital world is sure to increase security," I cringe. The idea that something which sounds like increased security will actually amount to increased security without any real analysis is an all too common reaction these days.

    Think about the TSA (Thousands Standing Around|Take Scissors Away) - does taking knitting needles make anyone safer? The biggest change in airline safety because of 9/11 was 9/11. Before folks figured that they could just quietly land in Cuba and live on peanuts for a few days before they would be brought home. All that has changed, but it didn't require billions of dollars, air marshals, or any of the other visible crap the government did to create the illusion of security.

    While biometric passports might make identification more certain, you need to fully look at who/where/how passports are used, and see if these measures will actually be useful in the real world. Urg.
    • While biometric passports might make identification more certain,

      Might not ... Any reasonably competent forger will be able to download the required information into a fake passport with no more effort than making a Costco membership card.

      The UK scheme is nothing to do with security, its a scam to take $100 off every man, woman and child in the country to pay for the war in Iraq.

    • Re:Kidding, right? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by winwar ( 114053 )
      Heck, it could reduce security.

      Why?

      Currently a screener has to LOOK at the passport. They actually might have to use a few brain cells. They might find something isn't quite right and investigate further.

      If the screener thinks the new passport is "secure" or the computer is always correct, they might (probably will) just let the computer think for them. The computer says the passport is valid, well, go right on through.

      Biometric passports may speed up processing. Increase security, nope.

  • "with all of the terrorist threats lately" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AC-x ( 735297 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:40AM (#10037140)
    How the hell will this protect us from terrorism? I'm sick and tired of our governments trying to implement 1984 under our noses in the name of security.

    For example, I'm sure no-one would notice if a farmer bought a load of fertilizer and diesel fuel, and no one would notice if he drove a van into the centre of some large city, but that's all he'd need to do to blow up a lot of people.

    The only way we can truly protect ourselves is to quite literally monitor everyone's actions 24-7, but if that were the case I'd rather live in North Korea.
    • Well, to get the amount of fertilizer necessary to make this sort of bomb, i believe there is someone whose job it is to notice. Isn't the FBI supposed to check out farming operations that require a certain amount of this type of fertilizer?

      • Re:"with all of the terrorist threats lately" (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @08:37AM (#10037337)
        Huh?

        A typical farmer would by TONS more than McVeigh used in Oklohoma. That's the point.

        Building a bomb, especially if size isn't too much of a consideration, is EASY. There are many, many ways to do it.

        Further, it doesn't take a large bomb to make terrorism work.. someone tossing sticks of dynamite (easily available all over the world) into nightclubs would get people worked up just about as well. The whole point of terrorism is that it's cheap... a single event and a few deaths is so spectacular that everyone forgets to put it in scale. More people died in car accidents in the US last year than did on Sept. 11th, but the US isn't throwing billions into auto safety or cars that self-drive. More people died from smoking-related disease, but you don't see the government outlawing tobacco.

        • Thats true. For some reason i was thinking only along the lines of a massive truck bomb using that specific type of fertilizer to destroy a whole building or something. Too early to be smart, i guess.

          Hey, it sounded airtight and insightful in my head. Until now.
        • More people died in car accidents in the US last year than did on Sept. 11th

          Make that last month.
        • While I understand what you're saying, there are a few key differences;

          1. The government does have a lot of cops out on the road giving a lot of tickets, vehicle citations, etc. They've invested in road signs and all kinds of ads against drunk driving, speeding, liscensing, etc. I'm not sure that self-driving cars would really reduce accidents, especially given our current technology and the public resistance to public transit is too great. They haven't created airplanes that 'self-fly' yet either.

          2. Deat
    • I'm sure no-one would notice if a farmer bought a load of fertilizer and diesel fuel, and no one would notice if he drove a van into the centre of some large city, but that's all he'd need to do to blow up a lot of people.

      Sure, but people don't just go and do that kind of thing without any prior planning. The intent has to be there first, manifesting itself in deviations from regular patterns of activity and other abnormalities in the lead-up to the act. Abnormalities which the government relies upon noti
    • Someone buying a large quantity of fertilizer could tip off the FBI. But that's aside the point:

      A very important fact that seems to be overlooked all the time is that most of the terrorists have *legit* passports. So what good is it if they have RFID tags in them?

      I just am waiting for the day that you will be able to disable RFID using only EM based tools, so there is no apparent physical tampering, but the RFID device stops working... kinda like when they swipe merchandise on that powerful magnet so y

  • This may decrease security... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Homology ( 639438 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:42AM (#10037145)
    But, with all of the terrorist threats lately, bringing passport documents into the digital world is sure to increase security.

    Why should that increase security? Perhaps there will be even more opportunities for forgeries. From Bruce Schneier' Crypto-Gram [schneier.com]

    There's one other problem with identity documents: the ease of getting legitimate documents in fraudulent names. Several of the 9/11 terrorists obtained fraudulent IDs from the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles by paying a corrupt employee $1000 each. These weren't fake IDs. These were real IDs in fake names, with all the holograms and micro printing and whatever else the driver's licenses have to make them hard to forge.

    • Actually, it makes things less secure, because the training courses will emphasize that these "unbreakable" cards will give nearly perfect results. A good forgery will be even less likely to be questioned.

      Most of the cr@p instituted falls under the "keeping honest people honest" area of security.

  • False dilemma (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) * on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:45AM (#10037158) Homepage Journal
    Prove first that these new technologies will in fact increase security and then I'll argue the privacy case.
    • Prove first that these new technologies will in fact increase security and then I'll argue the privacy case.

      A very good distinction. The way this is done, however, is they make a case that these things might increase security and then they spend taxpayer dollars implementing it. If there is no increase in security in five years the claim is made that the system hasn't been adequately refined. If there is no increase in security in ten years the results are used to justify spending more taxpayer money o
    • You can see it also the other way round.

      Today all passport have pictures in them, and most are machine readable. At most borders, the passports will be read by a scanner anyway. If the scanner scans the picture or reads the encoded picture from another place makes no difference for privacy and there's no need to panic.

      The big privacy concern is what data is associated in the databases with your passport number - which is easy to scan even today.

      The whole RFID-craze seems just to be scam by the chip vendo

  • I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)

    by savagedome ( 742194 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:46AM (#10037159)
    But, with all of the terrorist threats lately, bringing passport documents into the digital world is sure to increase security

    First of all, and as 300 other comments would be pointing out by now, all those bastards on 9/11 planes had valid passports too. Whether passport is valid or not doesn't prove nothing.

    Plus, IMHO, its harder to forge a non-digital passport. Thats a real skill. You can't walk into Radioshack, buy $70 worth of equipment, come back home and start playing with the RFIDs on the passport if its digital and all.

    If its a non-digital passport, sure as hell if you indeed plan on forging/tampering it, you will have to find someone highly skilled that can accomplish that. And, if its a bad forgery job, its very easy for a human being to spot that.

    My 0.02

  • Unspecified threats (Score:3)

    by BillsPetMonkey ( 654200 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:46AM (#10037160)
    "But, with all of the terrorist threats lately, bringing passport documents into the digital world is sure to increase security"

    Has the lack of digital passports ever facilitated a breach of security? You know that the 9/11 hijackers had valid US passports. If they had digital RFID passports on them instead would they somehow have thought twice about hijacking the plane?

    It's dorks like you who will eventually get CCTV into people's houses with the apologist "hey if you've got nothing to hide ... "

  • Linux (Score:3, Funny)

    by Alosja ( 787167 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:46AM (#10037162) Homepage Journal
    Will my passport run linux? There must be a way :)
  • But, with all of the terrorist threats lately, bringing passport documents into the digital world is sure to increase security.

    Thanks for the wishful thinking, but "bringing passport documents into the digital world" (whatever that mean) is not exactly a silver bullet for security.

  • What terrorist threats? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:49AM (#10037170)
    The post implies that with all "the recent terrorist threats" this is in some way a good thing.

    There hasn't been a terrorist attack in any of those countries for some time now - certainly not an attack of any form. Can somebody please tell me what evidence of threats we have despite that which is given to us by the same people who lied about WMD in Iraq?

    The terrorism is happening in countries that will not be aided by the countries listed in the article putting RFID tags into passports. It's just another excuse to have another civil liberty stripped from you. Don't accept it.

  • make sure EVERYONE can read the chips (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:49AM (#10037172)
    Not just Government officials. My security is NOT increased by a powerful elite having information about me while I don't have information about them. Surveillance technology is probably unavoidable. But if implemented in the "Free World" (or the West), it should be Public Access, so that any citizen can keep tabs on anyone. Recognise that that most schemes that the government proposes do NOT follow this principle, as they are really seeking additional power over the populace, not seeking to help security.

    Preserve the balance of power: require all surveillance systems to be public-access.

  • It's too late now (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WildBeast ( 189336 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:55AM (#10037186) Journal
    Privacy is on it's way out.

  • You can't *increase* security (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:58AM (#10037189) Journal

    Only reduce insecurity

  • This is insane (Score:5, Interesting)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @07:58AM (#10037191) Journal
    Ok ive RTFA and it doesn't explain anywhere why these things need RFID. There's absolutely no reason for it! Sticking all this information on standard 'smart-cards' would be just as effective (well i don't know how effective or what its really supposed to do anyway but it would produce the same effect). In the article it just says these are designed to only operate up to 10cm (we all know what that means) but 10cm is still enough for someone to scan your back pocket! The only possible argument is that the contacts on chips wear out and people are too lazy to stick their cards in a reader! That's not an argument. So the only thing we can conclude is:

    the people in charge of this are:
    a) totally stupid
    b) totally ignorant
    c) getting a buy 1bn get 1bn free deal on RFID
    d) designing this so they can scan people without their knowledge

    take your pick.

  • Only one thing you need to know (Score:5, Informative)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @08:06AM (#10037218) Journal
    The 9/11 terrorists had perfectly legal passports. So they wouldn't have been stopped no matter how good the biometrics. The various terrorist organisations got plenty of members who spend enough time in the west to get legal papers. They really don't need to bother with forgeries.

    This isn't about the war on terrorism or even "regular" crime. It is about the war on illegal papers as used in illegal immigration.

    Another point is that many european countries are getting closer and closer to introducing mandatory ID to be carried at all times. Add RFID tags and the next easy step will be to add RFID receivers everywhere to track every person.

    What, current law would prohibit it? So? This is europe, home of the holocaust. It is not what use tracking everyone will have now. It is what it will be used for 20 yrs from now.

  • Why is this either/or ? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by imsmith ( 239784 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @08:06AM (#10037219)
    Is it necessarily a foregone conclusion that privacy and security are in opposition to one another? I'll grant that privacy and sloppy security are opposed, but why have sloppy security at all?

    It seems to me that we (anyone who is the subject of either privacy or security) should be expecting BOTH, not accepting the proposition that the privacy-security issue (or the liberty-security issue) is a zero-sum equation.

    Yes, in the U.S. the current politics seem to indicate that 'They' don't care, but what I'm really saying is, even if the government doesn't care, shouldn't the governed?

    At the risk of sounding like a zealot, semantics matter and when we speak of privacy and liberty being 'traded' for security, we are tacitly conceding that we can do without either if we are scared enough. I personally want more liberty and privacy when I'm scared, not less.

    Just a thought to the writers of headlines and story titles.

    • Is it necessarily a foregone conclusion that privacy and security are in opposition to one another? I'll grant that privacy and sloppy security are opposed, but why have sloppy security at all?

      It is indeed a false dichotomy. The things that are really opposed are phony security and justice. Here's why: all these security schemes can be thought of as statistical testing protocols (systems that yield 1=Al Qaeda, 0=John Q Public). To make matters worse, the ones proposed by the Bush junta are incompetently d

  • What "terrorist" threats? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 22, 2004 @08:13AM (#10037243)
    You mean the ones based upon ancient and/or falsified information, much of it obtained under TORTURE by the U.S. Military?

    The "war on terrr" has only three purposes:

    1. To make key members of the US govt. richer
    2. To control citizens every move
    3. To realise biblical prophecy by igniting a "clash of civilisations" between east and west, ultimately resulting in the Zionists dream of "greater israel", leading the way for armageddon. The palestinians and a billion and a half arabs are standing in the way of this.

    That last bit might sound a bit far-fetched, but ask any fundamentalist christian zionist - for example one of the ones that have successflly brought about a coup in the U.S government.

    Now - you're not going to like any of these reasons - which is just why the govt want your biometric information on a national database so dissenters may be traced whereever they are.

    In order to do this, they have to scare you witless. This is what the endless "war on terror" is here for. The "terrorists" don't wear robes or turbans. They wear stars and stripes tie pins and appear on FOX news.

  • "Sure to increase security" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @08:15AM (#10037256)
    Yeah, right... so any Russian hacker or spotty-faced teenager can crank out fake passports in his garage. How long before the government's über-ROT26 encoding scheme is cracked? Once more, we'll end up with rules that penalize the law-abiding, while providing no protection against the criminal. Normal people will have to go through the annoyance WHEN, not if, the RFID tag in their passport fails, or is misread, and they are taken for Osama bin Laden, or Teddy Kennedy.
    Or wait, was this -1, Sarcastic?
    • I think it will provide a good income to pick-pockets, gangs will get together with rfid scanners walking around airports reading peoples cards and selling the data for a big proffit. They wont even need to touch you! and think of all the places they could get you - stick a reader under a chair in a cafe or waiting area and just reap in all the data you get, taxi-drivers in dodgy places want to earn some extra? let the local mob fit your car out with readers in the seats. RFID readers will be hacked and wil
    • I don't think that is sacastic at all. These things will get hacked & cracked very fast. There are too many countries catering to the terrorists that have supercomputers for it not to get done. The right sized bribe can buy anything. The UN oil for food scandal proves that.
  • Note that only the U.S. is advocating that digital passports contain unencrypted data about their owners that can be read from a distance. All other countries are supporting the idea that owner's data is encrypted on the passport by a key encoded in a barcode on the password, thus can only be accessed physically by a customs official.

  • Moderate Article? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Potor ( 658520 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .1rekraf.> on Sunday August 22, 2004 @08:30AM (#10037309) Journal
    But, with all of the terrorist threats lately, bringing passport documents into the digital world is sure to increase security
    Surely, this is a non-analytic proposition. And as such, an argument must be made. It is not evident that security will be increased. What is evident, however, as many people have pointed out, is that the volume of data-bases containing personal data will be increased. Nothing more.

  • facial recognition tech isn't very good (Score:3, Interesting)

    by raindrop#1 ( 176770 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @08:43AM (#10037358)
    Before we think that this is a panacea for our security worriess we should be aware that facial recognition technology isn't all that good. In ideal conditions, with a relatively small database of images, it works reasonably well. But as soon as you put it in a real world environment (an airport for example) the reliability goes way down.

    Once this is rolled out on passports, how many false negatives are they going to be getting? To my eyes, my own passport photograph doesn't look all that much like me. God knows what a computer would make of it.

    Essentially this is a way for Gov't to waste lots and lots of money without adding to security. If that's all they want to do, they should give the money to me - I'll waste it for them, no problem.
  • Unless these stupid RFIDs become scalar technology, simply using wallets made of conductive plastic would be sufficient for privacy.

    Well, my grandfather carried a silver cigarette case everywhere for decades. For me it's stylish and geeky to put some CF cards in it, but putting all RFID money/id stuff in it will be more appropriate in darker times.

  • I have two questions for the submitter (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @08:54AM (#10037390)
    1) How is this sure to increase security? Known terrorists are hardly the problem now; implementing this won't help against the known ones, and the unknown ones, well, they're unknown...

    2) What do you mean, "lately"? Some of us have been living with the possibility of a terrorist attack all our lives.
  • microwave! :)

  • I have a better idea. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mindaktiviti ( 630001 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @09:34AM (#10037519)
    Why don't we enact foreign policies that don't piss off the rest of the world?

    Or is this virtually impossible? Are there any good reasons for we the west is hated so much, that are absolutely necessary to our survival, and to others' survival? How differently could we do these things?

  • Unexamined assumtions AGAIN (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Catbeller ( 118204 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @09:48AM (#10037572) Homepage
    "But, with all of the terrorist threats lately, bringing passport documents into the digital world is sure to increase security"

    WHY? What does a passport have to do with terrorist threats? Is everyone bloody unhinged?

  • RFID is evil in this way that it can be read anytime by anyone without the person carrying it ever knowing. It's also very vulnerable to EMP, quite easy to damage, jam, fake...

    Why not something that is just as simple but requires simplest of actions from the owner. iButton [ibutton.com]. Just touch the small metal can (immune to mostly all "environmental challenges") to a reader, and the contents are being read. Or a Java program (embedded in the chip non-virtual java machine,) is being executed. Or the data will be acc

  • Canada is looking to do this because it is a requirement imposed on us by the United States.
    • Canada is looking to do this because it is a requirement imposed on us by the United States.

      How much would you like to bet that US and UK lawmakers will later point to Canadian deployment as proof?

      Don't worry, I won't blame Canada.

  • Keep the dialog calm (Score:3, Interesting)

    by irritus ( 789886 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @12:59PM (#10038475)
    - - I think we need to relax the tone when we talk about privacy issues like this. When we keep making references to 1984 and site personal opinions of the US President and foreign policy, we risk jading the uninformed. The same thing happenned with environmental issues. Throughout the 90's the news media bombarded us with a new environmental issue every year as if the world was going to end. The world didn't end. Now most people are apathetic problems that have only gotten worse. The only thing the average person does nowadays when the ozone layer gets more depleted is shopping for a higher SPF sunblock.

    - - That being said, the issue is cut-and-dry. These passports won't stop terrorism. The only thing RFID passport will do is make it easier for people with good forgeries to get on planes. As people become more dependent on high technology, the number of people who can abuse the system becomes smaller but the level of abuse they can perform grows. This does not make anyone safer, it makes the elite criminals who can crack the system richer. You don't have to be an expert hacker to give someone a fake criminal record, you just have to have the money and resources to hire one.

    - - You work in an airport. You're told the new security system is much better than the old one. It certainly seems more complicated to fake the system out. Therefore you are naturally less suspicious of anyone the machine approves. There only has to be one criminal out there who can make forgeries to fool your system. As soon as someone out there figures it out, this system is obsolete. Terrorists have money to burn, between selling opium and (the even more lucritive and addictive) crude oil.

    - - Undetected forgeries are the first failure of all security; human beings are the second. Has everyone forgotten how it was the terrorists got into the cockpits of those planes? They took hostages, and the pilots broke procedure by opening the door. Since in politics you can't effectively shoot down an idea without suggesting an alternative, I have a solution that takes into account forging documents and faulty PeopleSoft.

    Problems with the current solution:

    • These new passports could be faked
    • The 9/11 terrorists had valid passports
    • The 9/11 terrorists were armed with weapons which (a college student demonstrated) can still be snuck onto planes
    • Pilots could still fail to follow procedure (a hard thing for a human being to do when one knows one's choice will cause the immediate death of another).

    Solution: Make stronger doors that can't open while the plane is in flight, and require all planes use them.

    - - It's cheaper than adding all of this RFID crap, less offensive than racial profiling, and less intrusive than a body cavity search. Terrorists trying to force the door open would be stopped by Air Marshalls. When it comes down to it, stopping crimes before they happen is incredibly difficult, expensive, and ultimately impossible. Preventing crimes from completing successfully is far easier and less expensive.

  • Well... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tuxedo Jack ( 648130 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @01:16PM (#10038556) Homepage
    Just wrap your damn passport in aluminum foil already.

  • what threats? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by maxpublic ( 450413 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @01:17PM (#10038564) Homepage
    But, with all of the terrorist threats lately

    You mean the vague 'sky is falling!' warnings the government issues whenever it's numbers start to dip? Those threats?

    The only way to end those threats is to shoot every politician in the country. That'll also end the threat to our privacy too.

    Max

  • Just an update on Canada's position... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Edward Scissorhands ( 665444 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @01:30PM (#10038637)
    ....The Canadian government had looked into this for Canadian passports but a decision was made recently not to change the passport.

  • Wearning an invisible "bomb me" sign! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by a24061 ( 703202 ) * on Sunday August 22, 2004 @02:40PM (#10038982)
    Isn't it great when governments make it easier for terrorists to target their own citizens?

    If passports have RFIDs that can be read from more than a few cm away, terrorists will be able to build bombs triggered by the presence of citizens of specific countries. Politicians, thanks for looking after us!

  • Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @03:29PM (#10039228)
    But, with all of the terrorist threats lately, bringing passport documents into the digital world is sure to increase security.

    Surely this is a troll. Surely.

    The question is not whether this will increase security. It won't, of course, since America is a goldfish bowl with too many ways in and no way to control them all. Terrorists are perfectly willing to spend years and millions of dollars (pounds, rubles, whatever) planning each operation and they will find a way in. And I wouldn't be surprised to find this kind of embedded RFID system get hacked and be readily available on the underground market. At some point the things will need to be programmed, and if nothing else a supply of blank cards and a programmer will be obtained from whoever makes them. I mean, come on, black-market Social Security cards can be found and some of them are apparently indistinguishable from the real thing because they are the real thing. It's called an "inside job."

    The real question is: from whom must we be secured? And why? I've yet to see any rational discourse on the subject from the OHS or any of the other government organs involved that really makes the case that these devices (or any other form of technologically advanced tracking of the citizenry) will help in the (ahem) "War on Terrorism." The net effect will be to inconvenience and incarcerate some number of ordinary citizens who haven't a terrorist bone in their bodies while the real nut jobs use their hacked RFID's to walk right through airport security.

    England has spent an incredible amount of money in wiring their country with video cameras. The justification for this "investment" (and I use the term loosely) was to catch terrorists. Well, the camera network has certainly helped in apprehending purse snatchers and other petty thieves but things are still getting blown up over there, so one wonders just how effective it really is. Were heading down the same road, and when all is said and done ... will it catch enough terrorists to matter? Will it catch any? And will our society still be recognizably "free" at that point?

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