American Passports to Have RFID Chips 668
pr1000 writes "Wired is reporting that the State Department is planned on adding RFID chips to new American passports, starting with diplomat's passports in January. Those worried about the privacy concerns of RFID should take notice, as this rollout could set a precedent."
ID... (Score:1, Interesting)
Bastards!
Tracking... (Score:5, Interesting)
This new step is another step towards control - remember, that is what this is all about. Bad guys get around the system - the 9/11 guys were all bona-fide visitors. Good guys, which is everyone else, gets tracked and watched.
I'm glad I'm outside the country 8+ months of the year.
Failure (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Law Enforcement (Score:3, Interesting)
No encryption, only a digital signature...
He even admits it at the end of the article.
Now let's see what those tinfoil hats think about this. This could becoma a very interesting discussion
Anyway, once again I'm so glad I'm not American.
Re:Failure (Score:4, Interesting)
And even worse : who will be blamed if your tag is stolen ? You ? The gov ? Certainly not the crooks as they usually get away with everything. My guess is that the new passport will carry a EULA that shifts all responsabilities to the carrier.
RFID co-channel interference? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Simple solution (Score:3, Interesting)
The reasoning is that if you (want to) block those signals, you're probably out attempting to steal something
Biometrics imposed on the world (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems only fair that similar invasions of privacy should be imposed on Americans too. What's good for the goose...
RFID activated Mines (Score:1, Interesting)
Govt makes own citizens walking targets! (Score:4, Interesting)
So the US government is making it easier for people to target its own citizens. Nice.
The Terrorist Bomber's Dream! (Score:5, Interesting)
So, lets assume that the RFID chips in US Passports will be readable from "a long way away". Doesn't matter if it's 10 feet, 20 feet or 50 feet. Lets just say it's more than a few inches.
What does this mean? It means that a bomber with a moderate budget could build a detonator for an explosive device which goes off when it can detect the presence of an RFID chip.
It doesn't need to actually read the chip (lets assume the passport data is encrypted), it just needs to know it's there.
Furthermore, it could count the number of unique RFIDs which are currently in range, and only detonate the explosive when enough of them are seen at the same time.
It could be planted days, weeks or months in advance, and it'd sit there until its batteries ran down waiting for the right moment to go off.
The result is a bomb which only goes off when a sufficiently large density of American citizens is present.
- mark
A signature would only provide limited security. (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course it will be difficult to change the data and create a fake passport, but you could copy the tag from someone else's passport (without their knowledge) and use it in identity theft.
A complication would be that blank RFID tags cannot be obtained with the same serial number (current RFID tags mostly have unique serial numbers that are pre-programmed by the chip manufacturer). I would expect that the serial number is included in the signature calculation.
However, you could still build your own functionally equivalent "RFID tag chip" using off the shelf logic components and program any serial number you like. It would not be as compact as a real RFID tag, but it could be used in situations where the tag would be read without being visible.
Going naked won't do it... (Score:3, Interesting)
Gait Recognition Technology May Aid Homeland Defense
The characteristics of your walk may not be as distinctive as the swaggering of John Wayne or the sashay of Joan Collins, but your stride may still be unique enough to identify you at a distance -- alone or among a group of people.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and elsewhere are developing technologies to recognize a person's walk, or gait. Results indicate these new identification methods hold promise as tools in the war on terrorism and in medical diagnosis.
Gait recognition technology is a biometric method - that is, a unique biological or behavioral identification characteristic, such as a fingerprint or a face. Though still in its infancy, the technology is growing in significance because of federal studies, such as the Georgia Tech projects, funded by the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
At Georgia Tech, one study is addressing issues of gait recognition by computer vision, and the other is exploring a novel approach -- gait recognition with a radar system similar to those used by police officers to catch speeders.
The ultimate goal is detect, classify and identify humans at distances up to 500 feet away under day or night, all-weather conditions. Such capabilities will enhance the protection of U.S. forces and facilities from terrorist attacks, according to DARPA officials.
"We need technology to find the bad guys at a distance around federal buildings," says Jon Geisheimer, a research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). "That is the original application. And after Sept. 11, we began to see the usefulness of these technologies in airports."
Because gait recognition technology is so new, researchers are assessing the uniqueness of gait and methods by which it can be evaluated.
"We know that we can get some information on gait, but that it is much less diagnostic than faces," says Aaron Bobick, an associate professor of computing and co-director of the computer vision project at Georgia Tech. " Currently, we can't recognize one in 100,000 people. At the moment, gait recognition is not capable of that, but it's getting better so it can act as a filter."
In its early development, gait recognition technology likely will serve as a screening tool in conjunction with other biometric methods.
With two years of experiments and analysis almost complete, researchers on both Georgia Tech projects are hopeful for continued funding to conduct further studies. They must address numerous technical issues and it will be at least five years before the technologies are commercialized, researchers say.
In the project using radar for gait recognition, results from experiments, data analysis and algorithm design are promising, says Geisheimer, who works under the direction of GTRI principal research scientist Gene Greneker, and collaborates with GTRI research engineer Bill Marshall and Georgia State University Professor of Biomechanics Ben Johnson.
Gait recognition by radar focuses on the gait cycle formed by the movements of a person's various body parts move over time.
"The magic goal we're shooting for is accuracy in the high 90 percent range," Geisheimer says. "We're not there yet, but our initial results are encouraging and promising."
Researchers correctly identified 80 to 95 percent of individual subjects, with variances in that range among the three experiment days.
The next step is to build a more powerful radar system and test it in the lab and then the field. In experiments last year, subjects started walking 50 feet away from the radar and then walked within 15 feet of it. But researchers are now building a radar system that can detect people from 500 or more feet.
In the study of gait recognition by computer vision, researchers distinguish their approach from others with a techniqu
Re:Tracking... (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you saying that the parent post of yours is doing some xenophobe afirmations?
The point is that if you go to US and you're not from the US (I do not say american... cubans are americans too) you have a serious risk of being humiliated by US frontier guards, being the risk proportional to:
- Size of your moustach
- Darkness of your skin
My brother went to US last year. He has no moustach, but a aggressively black hair and he has a dark skin. He was locked by the airport guards for 3 hours. They even assured that he was on a black list (!!!) only to scare him to see his reaction.Well, if that is what you call freedom
Scanning butts for cash (Score:4, Interesting)
This reminds me of a comment along similar lines.
When the U.S. mint added the shiny metallic strips to the bills, a friend of mine claimed quite seriously that it was so that it would be possible to "scan your butt" (or wherever you carry your wallet) to see if you were carrying loads of cash. My response at the time was sceptical, especially since the comment came from someone very non-tech, but wonder if it is even technically possible.
If the material is conductive, it should respond/reflect/absorb a specific frequency much like chaff does. Would it be possible to build a cash scanner? And if so ... "where can I get me one?" ;)
Re:Law Enforcement (Score:2, Interesting)
The real issue is to know whether we need passports as a single RFID could store it all, each of the element being encrypted for a specific usage only...
Great for Terrorists (Score:1, Interesting)
RFID-Triggered bombs that will only explode when americans are in close vicinity.
Re:Simple solution (Score:3, Interesting)
In a very basic explaination the blockers work by send all possible RFID numbers(in the billions and billions) so that readers get over wealmed and give up.
Thier is some talk that when RFID become more used that bags will have the blocker chip in them. This would allow the all benifits of RFID for the consumer but also allow privacy. Some other ideas have a keychain fob with an alert, when you are being read, so that you can switch on/off as you want.
Re:Failure (Score:4, Interesting)
There has never been a document which cannot be forged. Even if such a mythical document could be created there is still the problem of criminal gangs getting a foothold in the issuing of "real" documents, through either getting a job with the issuing agency or bribing/blackmailing existing employees.
And even worse : who will be blamed if your tag is stolen ? You ? The gov ? Certainly not the crooks as they usually get away with everything.
When it comes to identity theft the "crooks" include foreign governments. Even when they get caught, as recently happened in New Zealand, all they got was a few months in jail...
Re:Tracking... (Score:2, Interesting)
I am sorry, I do not plan to visit the US anymore. I am sure there is plenty to see and many cool things there. But I do not have anything against American people, and I will sure welcome they here in my home city, Rio de Janeiro.
Re:The Terrorist Bomber's Dream! (Score:3, Interesting)
Bruce Schneier thinks the reason the RFID chips are being mandated for passwords is to permit the US Govt to read them from long distances in crowds.
He's not exactly the kind of guy who makes this stuff up.
Same principle, different application.
- mark
Re:Law Enforcement (Score:3, Interesting)
UK too (Score:3, Interesting)
The data should be covered by the DPA so if I ever get a passport with a chip i'll be sure to ask for a printout of what's on it. I don't know if these will be RFID chips or not, i'd hope not, it will only be a matter of time before someone's passport is stolen while its still in their pocket.
Re:Tracking... (Score:5, Interesting)
Do as to others etc. Not that Blair would ever upset Bush though, I wonder what will happen if Kerry gets in...
Re:Or, on the other hand for target selection (Score:3, Interesting)
Worried about privacy? Buy some RAM! (Score:3, Interesting)
If you put your passport in a static bag, wouldn't it act like a Faraday cage and shield your passport from being detected?
If so, and I haven't tested this (anyone wanna try?), then if you upgrade the RAM in your PC you should be "protected" from these RFID privacy problems.
Re:Or, on the other hand for target selection (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Or, on the other hand for target selection (Score:3, Interesting)
I, like MOST Londonners are VERY amiable to tourists, it keeps the London economy ticking, and many time I have gone to central london during the weekends, where myself and my friends have been very friendly towards tourists, showing them around, and stuff. Although we get nominal "expenses" for this, in reality we do it because we enjoy it, and love to learn about others. I ESPECIALLY am fond of New Yorkers, who I view as coming from London's sister city. I am also Sri Lankan born, just for your information, so i am not a typical "white man, from little england"
EVEN "Loud Mouthed Texans" are GREAT fun to be with. They are VERY noticable, but that doesnt mean they are not appealling.
In reality, I skipped out a couple of details in that description of what happend. The man in concern was ALSO being racist and offensive to Chinese and Black people, saying london is "full of japs with cameras" and "niggers running the show" that the Mayor should take a stand and deal with it.
There WERE a lot of offended people, and a confrontation seemed likely to erupt. I said what i said to introduce humour into the OTHER passengers and to diffuse what could have been a very bad situation. It worked.
As i got off the train, i contacted the underground staff at the station and explained what was happening, and they had a polite word with him, and it was pretty evenly resolved. Afterwards I did see the funny side to the whole thing.
My original post was a reflection of the humour that myself and my fellow passengers felt at the time.
Guys, its friday, lighten up! For gods sakes, humour is sorely needed here.
As for your views about British Drunken Yobs, well I am safe to say, they are not welcome by the majority of the Brits either.
Re:Or, on the other hand for target selection (Score:3, Interesting)
Another experience that trip was in a cafe near the tube station at Green Park? I think. A woman was sitting at the table staring at a bunch of coins. She asked us what these were. I didn't have much patience for it. I figured that the coins had their denominations stamped on them and knowing simple math would be sufficient. The guy I was with figured that she just wanted rough equivalents, like the penny is the penny, there is no eqivalent to the 2p coin, the 5p coin is like the nickel, 10p dime, 20p quarter (though not as many p) 50p no common name for th equivalent. I guess that one was just funny because it was strange. It's easy to pick on US tourists, because there are so many of them.
I realise that when you travel, you go to relax, you also put yourself in a new place, but why do tourists also seem to turn their brains off when they leave their home city/country etc?
Hint for tourists to London, stay on the right side on the escalators in the Tube. I saw some old guy, well maybe middle aged, poke some tourist in the back with an umbrella, who then tripped. I laughed so hard, I almost fell over myself.
Re:The Terrorist Bomber's Dream! (Score:3, Interesting)
Why wait? They could do it now with the RFID in $20 bills. Hey, by counting number of unique IDs, they could target only wealthy Americans.
Re:Tracking... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's the fuss about? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well said.
I don't have much of a problem showing an ID to someone that asks for it, and I know why and what they are looking for and who they are. But being surveilled to the point that they have a complete ID on me with no physical intervention is a little scary.
Its not too tough to track someone today after the fact with such things as CC receipts, easypass things, witnesses, phone records, etc. But these things take a warrant, again after the fact. Being criminally investigated in realtime, err, no thank you.
How does this work? If you treat someone like a child, they will act like a child. If you treat someone like a criminal, they will be a good upstanding citizen? I don't think so.
If the feds want to update the passports with electronic technology, use barcodes or something. Actually, the more I think about it, it might be much more stealth to have a reveresed engineered passport RFID tag to say whatever you want. I don't see how this would be illegal because its not fraud or falsifying a document because if anyone asks for the passport, give it to them, but drive by scanning, I'm Homer Simpson and my ssn is 078-05-1120. Thanks for asking.
Overwhelm the system? (Score:3, Interesting)
Embrace it. Cover yourself in so many RFID devices that a scanner simply can't read them all reliably. I have no sense of how many that might be, but it would seem technically difficult to scan several thousand devices all at once. At a nickle per, you're really only talking about a couple hundred bucks even if you have to buy the devices yourself. With stores like Walmart essentially giving them away, you might not even have to do that. Sew them into your jacket or something so that when someone scans you, they're greeted by a cacophony of garbage signals.
Extend it. It won't be long before someone figures out how to either a) make their own RFID devices or b) modify existing ones. And there will be a window of opportunity before Congress makes doing so illegal. If you can make a chip that matches another, you can appear to be someone else. Or to be in two places at once. Or to teleport across a store or a country in a heartbeat.
Now, I certainly wouldn't suggest tampering with a device in a passport, of course, but the possibilities at Walmart are pretty interesting.
Even if you just buy legit devices from existing manufacturers, RFID can and will be used to consumers' benefit. RFID chips could be hidden by investigative journalists in products returned to stores and then used to prove that the store turns around and sells the item as "new" again. Not a big deal for a book, perhaps, but interesting when the item is, say, a car or a mattress or a rump roast.
Contactless Smart Cards - NOT RFID (Score:1, Interesting)
This doesn't mean that there aren't privacy issues, but they are different and more complex than the RFID ones.
You are a very, very, very stupid person. (Score:4, Interesting)
The 'terrorists' upon whose actions all of this insane police state nonsense is based were funded and manipulated by both the U.S. and Israel specifically because the psychopaths in power want to stay in power so that they can have all the money, power, sex and cocaine. Having to work for a living, or serve in the military [rense.com], is scary for them, and so they choose instead to trick all the trusting citizens into believing in 'terrorists'.
Anybody who looks at the details clearly will see the manipulation.
Remember the 'terrorist' passport they, 'found' on top of the smoking remains of the WTC?
That is just one of a hundred loose threads, and if it doesn't get your brain ticking, then you are either sleeping or dead, and you richly deserve the hell you are seeing rise around you.
"Oooh. But Conspiracies don't exist! It's impossible for a large number of people to keep a secret!"
Yeah? What the heck does that prove? NEWSFLASH: Conspirators do not NEED to keep secrets when the populace has been brainwashed into constantly looking the other way whenever a piece of evidence pops up.
People would rather fight and yell and argue in favor of the psychopathic manipulator rather than deal with the truly awful possibility that they are being raped. This, in fact, is exactly the reason psychopaths are so dangerous. Normal people are hardwired into certain behavioral traits which make them excellent marks for this sort of manipulation.
Any 'terrorist' who uses RFID passports to blow up Americans will be doing so with the consent of the military industrial complex, and your spreading of fear is making those jerks giddy with the joy of a mind-job successfully executed.
I have to live in this world, too, and imbeciles like you are contributing to the misery smart people also have to deal with. Arrogant? Gee, sorry. I'll just quietly go off to a barbed wire camp so you don't have to feel like an idiot.
-FL
Dangerous? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Gods own country ... (Score:3, Interesting)
RFIDs are getting us further from Amageddon. No longer will they be stamped on out foreheads or right hands, but they will be able to read the number of the beast straight from our pocket. Thus, we will have averted Armageddon.
Re:There IS an RFID DOS (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't take false security in miss-applying technology.
Some lead bags to make them flexible, use lead paint. The lead particles are suspended in the paint and are not connected to their neigbors. This will block the very short wavelength of X-rays, but allow longer wave radio to pass right on through as the lead particles are not very much of a wavelength at UHF frequecies and below. You are looking for someting that is fully conductive to kill the E field component of a radio wave to make a Farady Cage.
A cage made from particles not connected to it's neighbors may not work well at frequencies it's not designed to shunt.
Here is an experiment you can do right in your own kitchen.. Follow the directions carefully to avoid equipment dammage..
If you have a good strong cell signal in your house (like I do), call your cell phone.
Now place it in your microwave oven.
***** Do not turn on the oven! ******
Close the door.
****** Do not turn on the oven *****
Did the signal get lost?
Is the phone still connected?
Do you have any signal strength on the display?
Here is the explination of why the phone may remain connected.
The cavity of the oven is a metal box.. It should fully block RF.. It does.. The door is metal. It should block RF.. It does. The joint between the door and the cavity should have an RF seal..
Well it kinda does. The door seal on a microwave oven consists of a row of 1/4 wave stubbs that reflect energy from the magnetron back into the cavity preventing their escape. It reflects an RF short from the open end of the stub back to the gap between the door and the cavity. This reflected short connectes the door to the cavity making a continious connection to that frequency. If the door seal gets dirty or has anything caught in it, it no longer works properly. That is why the oven owners manual is worded strongly on keeping the door seal clean, in good shape, and having nothing caught in it. This stub does not work at frequencies it's not designed for. It blocks 802.11b just fine. Your 2.4 GHZ phone might not work in the microwave as that's the frequency it's designed to block. Other frequencies get past with some attenuation.
This applies to the lead film bags. They are OK at X-rays, but may fall short in UHF and VHF.
Do the microwave/phone experiment with your cell phone and the film bag. Did it loose connection when placed in the bag and the bag closed?
If the phone did not loose the signal, then you may want to try another solution.