[FYI] US lubes passports with RFID snake oil
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/20/us_passports/>
US lubes passports with RFID snake oil
By Thomas C Greene
Published Thursday 20th May 2004 13:36 GMT
Opinion As we reported recently, the US State Department will conduct
a trial of biometric passports this Fall, with any eye toward moving
to full production in 2005.
This scheme is supposed to help officials catch evildoers who are too
thick to get biometric passports issued to themselves under false
identities. It will, of course, be a great obstacle to knuckleheaded
exploding-sneakers types like Richard Reid and loose talkers like
Jose Padilla, although even moderately slick terrorists will not be
affected.
Mug me, I'm rich
One of the more dubious aspects of the new regime is the so-called
"smart chip," a spectacularly dumb RFID (Radio Frequency
Identification) gizmo that might very well broadcast data
indiscriminately to any device designed to receive it. There are
several ways to design such a chip, and the preferred design, from a
security point of view, would require the document and reader to be
in physical contact. A passive chip can be read at a distance by a
powered reader, but it doesn't have to be. However, it is likely,
given the tech industry's lust for adding 'features' whether they're
needed or not, that the chips will be readable from a distance. This
would make it easier to move large herds of travelers through customs
gates quickly, and it is likely to be pitched successfully on this
basis.
Newsletter
Unfortunately, this would also make it easy for street criminals to
scan crowds in search of naive foreigners likely to be in possession
of decent quantities of cash, like Americans and Europeans, say. The
RFID lobby has consistently neglected to address issues of personal
safety when sensitive, identifying information is being broadcast
secretly and indiscriminately by their nifty gizmos. Such electronic
documents are a boon to street thugs looking for probably-rich
tourists, and, more ominously, to sophisticated criminals and
kidnappers.
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