engadget.com — "Despite the various privacy concerns that have been repeatedly raised in regards to e-passports, the US is going ahead with their plans to launch the system this Monday. Not all newly-issued passports will be RFID-enabled, since mass production has been held up by the ongoing legal dispute over the technology."
Aug 12, 2006 View in Crawl 4
aaazAug 12, 2006
RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They're not going to increase security at all. I shall carry my passport in a wallet lined with aluminum foil, no one is reading mine.
aidenagAug 12, 2006
the simpliest way to avoid having this happen, is have as many americans as possible REFUSE to use them.... After 6+months of nobody using them.. the Feds will realize they cant make it happen. its like Passive resistance has been lost on this generation.
aidenagAug 13, 2006
Diggerd.. you must not know how easily these will be abused... I mean if you like the idea of a Terrorist in a foriegn country using an RFID scanner with a boosted range to spot an american to kill, feel free to use these.. toss into this the everyday crooks, thiefs, kidnappers and criminals that will utilize it and... this is a BAD idea.. But again, feel free to use it..
diggerdAug 13, 2006
Excerpted from various source:__How far away can the RFID chips in passports be read?__ (Sunday, 17 April 2005)Moss brought along some test passports with RFID chips embedded in the covers, some with and some without an experimental outer RF-shielding layer in the covers to prevent the RFID chip from being read except when the passport is opened. Moss claimed that, even when opened these could be read from no more than 10 cm (4") away, as he demonstrated with a tiny RFID reader attached to the CF-card slot of a PDA, which he had to press firmly against the passport to read the passport data and digital photo.Next up on the CFP panel, Barry Steinhardt of the ACLU demonstrated reading of an ISO 14443 chip (the same type of RFID chip specified by ICAO, and which the Passport Office claims to be using) taped to a passport, using a jury-rigged reader that would fit easily in a daypack, from more than half a meter (18") away, on a stage cluttered with enough RF-emitting equipment to qualify as electronic counter-measures. (This was CFP, after all, where even some of the conference bags contained wireless "sousveillance" cameras.) At a press conference later in the day, with only slightly more time to set up his equipment, Steinhardt was able to read the passport-type RFID chip with the same reader from more than a meter.sourced@: <a class="user" href="http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/000558.html">http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/000558.html</a>and__Avery Dennison RFID > What is RFID? > Frequently Asked Questions__Passive tags are the most economical RFID tags and the most common tag used in supply chain applications. They don?t have onboard batteries like active tags, because they get their power from RFID readers. The RFID reader sends electromagnetic waves to the tag?s antenna. Using energy from these waves, tags broadcast a signal back to the reader.sourced@: <a class="user" href="http://www.rfid.averydennison.com/us/rfid_faq.php?cat=3">http://www.rfid.averydennison.com/us/rfid_faq.php?cat=3</a>AND__DHS Completes E-Passport Test at SFO__The interrogators were capable of reading inlays that protect data through a security system called Basic Access Control (see DHS Testing E-Passports in San Francisco). * <a class="user" href="http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/2088/1/1/">http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/2088/1/1/</a>The DHS has not revealed the names of the companies that supplied the chips or inlays embedded in the tested e-passports. All the e-passports are designed in compliance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards. sourced@: <a class="user" href="http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/2274/1/1">http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/2274/1/1</a>more info on the ICAO's BAC standard here: <a class="user" href="http://www.icao.int/mrtd/download/documents/TR-PKI%20mrtds%20ICC%20read-only%20access%20v1_1.pdf">http://www.icao.int/mrtd/download/documents/TR-PKI%20mrtds%20ICC%20read-only%20access%20v1_1.pdf</a>or just read this (if you're still here...)__Feds Rethinking RFID Passport__Basic Access Control, or BAC, works this way: The data on a passport would be stored on an RFID chip in the passport's back folder, but the data would be locked and unavailable to any reader that doesn't know a secret key or password to unlock the data. To obtain the key, a passport officer would need to physically scan the machine-readable text that's printed on the passport page beneath the photo (this usually includes date of birth, passport number and expiration date). The reader would then hash the data to create a unique key that could be used to authenticate the reader and unlock the data on the RFID chip.sourced@: <a class="user" href="http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67333,00.html">http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67333,00.html</a>Okay - so ~maybe~ a terrorist with a (100lb) backpack can pick me out of a crowd from a meter away... Provided I'm carrying a passport (we'll discount the hostage scenario, since they'd only screen me by personal ID in my wallet, right?) which uses non-BAC standard and a semi passive chip.Still don't see a problem with it.
johndiAug 13, 2006
Aidenag, I agree and got my new passport early to avoid this mess. I couldn't go for the abstain from passport method since it's required for my job.