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[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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