E-Passport In the Works 300
ExE122 writes "In an attempt to curb falsification of passports, the United States has placed an order for millions of embedded ID chips. 'The chips carry an encrypted digital photograph of the passport holder. The chip is designed to be read by a special device that will be used by U.S. government workers who check passports when travelers come through border crossings. The State Department began issuing what are being called e-passports to tourists last week and will gradually increase production. State Department spokeswoman Janelle Hironimus said existing passports will remain valid until they expire but, eventually, all U.S. passports — about 13 million will be issued in 2006 — will contain such chips.'"
WHY? (Score:5, Insightful)
American Made (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do we always have to get everything from the Germans? (beer & cars for example) Why can't the government contract this out to good ol' American workers? Especially since it deals with National Security?
encrypted? (Score:5, Insightful)
But simply encrypting the message with a symmetric key (as seems indicated by the blurb) would be bad for security, because many people would have the key, and so it would provide a false sense of security.
Re:WHY? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WHY? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:WHY? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WHY? (Score:2, Insightful)
If it's done properly it would be harder to produce. Anyone can write to a mag-stripe, but the Chip and Pin system in the UK, for instance, is more secure.
Re:WHY? (Score:3, Insightful)
It has TECHNOLOGY! The technology will solve all out problems! Next we can add encryption to the technology so that it will be even more technological! And because Americans can't even wrap their heads around evolution, there's no way this nation of idiots will figure out what a load of BS this is and demand that politicians stop wasting resources on pork like this and actually get something done!
Re:WHY? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I blame it on the lack of logic today (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, according to the TFA: The chips carry an encrypted digital photograph of the passport holder..
Remember everyone, just by going out in public you are letting the world know what you look like! Time to start investing in brown paper bags
It's a revenue plot (Score:2, Insightful)
2) wait for major security hole to be found
3) come up with a fix
4) ???
5) PROFIT!!!
Step 4 is to make people who want the fix to pay for a replacement passport.
The e-voting-machine vendors are taking the same approach. Ditto many other technology vendors.
I don't see the problem here... (Score:3, Insightful)
Will it eventually be hacked/copied? Yes. Does that mean we throw up our hands in the air and stop trying? Taking a defeatist attitude gets us nowhere. When this one gets hacked, we'll add more forgery deterrents. Take at look at the US currency; its the same thing.
It is just one more tool we can use to keep pace/ahead with those that want to forge them.
The Main Reason is it's Faster (Score:5, Insightful)
The objective is to be able to process more people through customs faster and with more data captured as they get off ever-bigger airplanes.
This doesn't address a control point failure (customs) which is inevitable, but it looks good on paper and sounds really good.
FYI: Yes it's possible to store a picture and a fingerprint template on the contactless modules in question, but more likely it's storing a hash that looks the data up in a DB. Sending a picture file or a fingerprint template across the reader would be pretty slow.
Re:10 years (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, it ignores the fact that all the Sept 11 terrorists had valid passports / drivers licenses. How exactly does this help us again?
Re:Been thinking about this one. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep. Reliance on a very large central database. What if the database goes down? What if the database gets hacked? With the very large number of people you would have to have entering data into the system, chances are one or more those people will allow unauthorized access into the system, either intentionally or unintentionally.
What if the person checking ID loses connectivity to the database?
Example: I want to steal $25,000 out of your account. I forge your passport, complete with chip and everything. Then, my accomplice uses a DoS attack to knock out the bank's connection to the passport database.
Teller cannot verify against the database, assuming the database is down in some way. The bank, of course, has to be able to do business with or without the database, so it has a policy of visually verifying the passport against some other form of ID. I have such an ID already forged, no electronic verification takes place, ka'ching! I have your $25,000.
Re:Americans traveling to other countries. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Prefer?" I prefer quite a bit more time off. I would imagine most people do. The problem is, U.S. corporate behavior is geared toward maximizing profits at the expense of the employees and an imaginary work ethic that drives people into the ground and causes them to change jobs on an average of every two or three years and careers on an average of every 10 or 15 years. You ask, stupidly, who pays for Europeans' 6 weeks holiday -- obviously as a cultural norm the employer shells it out. It's a quality of life issue.
But please, don't insinuate that just because you're a driven workaholic with nothing better to do that the rest of us would 'prefer' that lifestyle. I think, given 6 weeks of guilt-free holiday, most Americans would take it gladly.
Re:Americans traveling to other countries. (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you kidding me? "As a nation", we take what we can get. And all we can get is 2 weeks per year or less.
I don't think there's a man, woman or child alive that wouldn't want more than 2 weeks vacation. This is not a "cultural habit", this is just the dynamic of our employer/employee relationship. Employers want to ride their employees as hard as they can and employees are just doing all they can not to get fired.
Of course, us backwards wierdo liberal faggy Europeans get 6 weeks holiday.
Wow, who pays for that?
If the entire society accepts that this is normal, then no one pays for it.
Let's face it - the world works the way it does because we accept that the world works that way. If it worked differently, we'd accept that too. I mean, who's "paying" for the fact that you're sleeping 8 hours a day rather than working? You, and the rest of American society (at least to this point) has drawn the line at having at least enough time off every day to sleep. Nobody "pays" for that; that's just the way society has chosen to work. Could companies make more money if all of their employees worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Sure. But you don't "pay" for something that never existed in the first place. That downtime is just downtime, not a debt that needs to be paid.
We Americans are overworked. We work more hours, on average, than any other nation in the world (yes, including places like Japan, which lets its employees have an average of 25 non-weekend days off per year). But it's not by and large because we want to, it's because we're demanded to and because employers have decided for us that this is the cultural norm. Someday, maybe we'll get in step with the rest of the world and realize that there are more important things in life than work.
Re:Americans traveling to other countries. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't see the problem here... (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as anti-counterfeiting measures, the 9/11 terrorists had valid passports and IDs, so how exactly would this prevent terrorism? If an immigration official lets his guard down because a person has an RFID passport, he may be ignoring other tip-offs that would alert him to suspicious activity. This would probably only really effect illegal immigration.
Again, no one is saying that we shouldn't increase security measures. But let's not claim that this is a panacea, or going to do something that is actually can't. Americans seem to have the belief that some simple technology will solve any problem we encounter. The reality is that we have to hire and train competent personnel in immigration and security. Mass surveillance, face recognition, gait recognition, etc. will not keep us safe from terrorism; motivated terrorists will always outsmart the machine or system. What we need is human intelligence, building contacts and infiltrating groups. These sorts of technological fixes are just to pacify jittery Americans into thinking that something is being done.
Re:Americans traveling to other countries. (Score:2, Insightful)
This is true. In fact, I live in upstate NY and feel it would take a lifetime just to fully explore my own state let alone the rest of the coutry. There is a whole lot to do in the U.S. and not nearly enough time to do it in.
Re:I don't see the problem here... (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea is that the easiest method of passport forgery is just to alter the picture. You nab my passport, stick your picture on it, suddenly you can pretend to be me, and not just for border crossing. Well, if my picture is also on there in a number of other formats, that makes it much harder. Now you've got to replace them all, and that means you have to have the technology to do all the different formats.
It's no magic bullet, just like having coloured money won't stop all counterfitters, but it helps.
Re:Americans traveling to other countries. (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. I know a lot of people who don't even take their available 14 days/year of vacation, even though they're not at any risk of being fired if they did.
Actually, very few people in my line of work are at risk of being fired. On the contrary, people are motivated by wanting promotions and to get ahead of the next guy. If you gave everyone 4 weeks of vacation, they probably wouldn't see it as an opportunity to take more vacation, but as an opportunity to work more hours than other people, and thereby get promoted more quickly. Or if you're paid hourly, get more overtime.
And we're not talking about wage slavery here either; the people I know who chronically give up their vacations aren't scraping by to make rent, they're trying to get promoted so they can get a better apartment, a nicer car, a more expensive suit, etc.
I think that people give up vacation much more readily because they want to get ahead, than because they're afraid of losing their jobs. You'd probably have grounds for wrongful termination if you got fired for taking your allowed vacation (2 weeks), yet most people don't even take that. Why? It's not because they want to stay in their current jobs, it's because they want to get more, and given the choice between vacation now, and the chance at making more money later, people take the shot at promotion. It's not fear, it's a desire for betterment (aka greed; your choice of terms).
What I do think would be popular here would be the ability to take your vacation and sick time as cash. If you required companies to give employees their unused vacation time at the end of the year, I'd bet that you'd see the amount of vacation go down even further as people chose cash over leisure time. In Europe, where they effectively have that option already, it's less popular. Obviously, there are differing values at work.
Re:Americans traveling to other countries. (Score:3, Insightful)
"The problem is, U.S. corporate behavior is geared toward maximizing profits at the expense of the employees and an imaginary work ethic that drives people into the ground"
Which clearly indicates you believe that U.S. Citizens are pushed against their will to work as much as they do, because the CEOs and other corporate bigwigs want to increase the amount in their already overfull pockets. Then you say...
"But please, don't insinuate that just because you're a driven workaholic with nothing better to do that the rest of us would 'prefer' that lifestyle."
So which is it? Is that 2 week limit there because of people being workaholics and not wanting more vacation time, or is it there because the employers push harder than they should and only allow 2 weeks?
Personally I've never had a job where I had 2 weeks official vacation time per year. And I'm a U.S. Citizen.
I can clearly see from the anti-U.S sentiment here in the responses exactly WHY most Americans would prefer not to travel. It could also be due to the fact that while a lot of European countries are very tiny, the US is very large. Why go to another country when you can go somewhere in your own country that is easier to get to, somewhere you have never been before, and somewhere that won't cost you your entire vacation budget on airfare? An American can even expand their travelling habits to include visiting other countries, namely Mexico and Canada, so that they can spend their entire life vacationing once a year somewhere in North America, and never go to the same place twice.
Americans are not all rich. Not even most of us. Most Americans don't have a passport, because they will NEVER BE ABLE TO AFFORD TO TRAVEL OUTSIDE THIS COUNTRY in their lifetime. It is not because they are workaholics, or Xenophobes. If you work 6 days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day, it does not automatically mean that you are addicted to work. It most likely means that your job sucks, you have no prospects for a better job, you have no skills (or more importantly, documented notarized certification) to get a better job, and you have to support your family.
The cost of living in the US is now so high, compared to the "average" income, that we live in a DUAL INCOME culture. This is where there must be the equivalent of two incomes coming in, in order for a single family to be able to afford an "average" lifestyle. Guess what? Only those with an "average" or better lifestyle get to take 2 week vacations. THe rest of us working schmucks get to work on holidays (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, Etc.) and don't look forward to a vacation. THe rest of us working schmucks find that our vacation time comes when we get burned out with the job, and spend a few weeks looking for another. That's our vacation.
Looks like you Europeans are the ones with all the money and leisure time. Looks like YOU should be the ones on the world crusade to help the needy. We did our part. We saved your countries over 60 years ago. Get off our backs. How about a Thank you? How about taking US out for a vacation?
It's nice and all that the travel industry is growing and attempting to get more secure with the addition of these identifier chips. Soon, we won't need a separate passport. Soon, our regular Identification (what ever that turns out to be) will be all that is needed to travel. ANd I'm sure it will include a digital component.
More Lack of Logic (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, according to the TFA: The chips carry an encrypted digital photograph of the passport holder..
Remember everyone, just by going out in public you are letting the world know what you look like! Time to start investing in brown paper bags
You seem to be missing the whole point here. According to logic, it doesn't really matter what contents are being stored on this chip. It could be an encrypted random number for all anyone cares, since (as the GP correctly noted) the very existence of any such embedded data is sufficient to remotely flag the holder of the passport as an American. I can only hope it's unnecessary to point out the many reasons why this is so undesirable.
Re:bomb makers can now target americans (Score:3, Insightful)
This could potentially become a huge problem for Americans traveling overseas, especially considering that the Government advises Americans abroad to not advertise the fact, while at the same time, they're equipping us with radio beacons that scream "HEY! OVER HERE! THAT'S RIGHT! HERE! LOOK! AMERICAN! AMERICAN!"
Re:The flat world called the US (Score:2, Insightful)
Netherlands Land Area: 33,920 sq km (13,097 sq miles)
USA Land area: 9,631,418 sq km (5,984,685 sq miles)
State of Mississippi 121489 sq km (46907 sq mi.)
Well if you go on travel distance, I leave my home state quite often. However, we don't need passports to go from state to state. I have only been out of the country once (to Mexico) and it took about 10 hours to travel. Does that help much with perspective?
Re:Americans traveling to other countries. (Score:3, Insightful)
Out of the people who I've encountered who don't take their full 10 days (14 days? What country do you live in?), nearly all are concerned that either their work will pile up and overwhelm them on their return, or will get piggybacked onto their already overworked coworkers (and in return, they'll be picking up the slack for the coworkers.) Thus, they will typically accrue the time until they are forced to use it or lose it, and then will take it in the form of three-day weekends or "errand days" rather than an extended break.
This is contrary to the whole purpose of a vacation, which is to get away from work for a while and relax. Not having an extended time off leads to stress, poor production, family problems, and ultimately, one fewer employee.
Re:Been thinking about this one. (Score:2, Insightful)
You appear to be describing the ID card system to be implemented in the UK which is a bad idea for three reasons:
1.
It does not solve anything.
I repeat: no existing problem will be solved by ID cards.
Why?
Because there has to be an application process for a card. Say I don't have a card - how do I get one?
Answer: take along some existing ID.
And herein lies the problem - a system is only as secure as its weakest link. You can encrypt the data on the card and sign it and make it forgery proof (if that were possible), but I can still get one of these strong cards by showing up with my paper "birth certificate" and a bank statement. You can make the card as secure as you like, but it can only ever prove that you are the person who showed up at the card issuer with a couple of pieces of paper. Someone can blow themselves up on a plane whether they are carrying a card or not.
2.
The ID card system will essentially be a huge governmental IT project. The British Govt. has an abysmal record with IT projects - they invariably cost a fortune and do not meet requirements. I wouldn't give a sh*t about the cost, but the tax-payer will pay for it.
3.
The system sets a precedent and is another step on a slippery slope to the kind of country I don't want to live in - a beauraucratic, police/authority-fearing, guilty-until-proven-innocent, card carrying, 1984 dystopia where I have to prove my identity to faceless officials.
This ID card debate gets me!
Re:WHY? (Score:3, Insightful)
If the power goes down, they won't authenticate passports. Perhaps at the Mexican border, they'll stop anyone who looks Hispanic until the power returns. Perhaps at LAX, they'll stop anyone who speaks with a non-American accent (those who have American accents have either prepared enough that the passport will clear, or have been in this country for some significant length of time and probably gotten a valid passport). And perhaps they'll have a standard battery backup.
Most of the time, your passport isn't carefully scanned. The chip will be used merely as another means of authentication, not as mass surveillance; that would take too much time.
Re:Americans traveling to other countries. (Score:3, Insightful)
Germany is a modern industrial nation that has worked hard to overcome the disaster that was WWII. It was the first of the Axis nations to pay off its war debt, and has done all it could to counteract the influence of the National Socialist Party and all it did to the people of Europe.
The people of Germany suffered as much as the rest of Europe did (exclusive of the victims of the Holocaust) from the horrors of that war. While we think of the occupation of Europe by the Wehrmacht, we rarely think of the affects of the "occupation" of Germany by the SS. While allied nations such as the US and England repatriated German POWs quickly at the end of the war, the USSR not only took up to five YEARS to return some prisoners, but many never came home at all. My wife's father was on the Russian front, and he didn't come home till 1948. Many of the WWII generation of German soldiers died very early by American standards, due to the many hardships they endured. My father-in-law died several years before I met my wife in 1974 - he was in his fifties. By contrast, my mother-in-law is celebrating her 85th birthday in October. Many women in Germany of her generation lived decades longer than their husbands, with all the hardships that widowhood entails.
The German people have worked hard to rebuild their country after the war. They had to rebuild from almost nothing, and my wife's generation, and our children's, have had to work double so hard to overcome the stigma created by their fathers' and grandfathers' generation.
Next time, think before opening your mouth, or at least check to be sure that the chair to keyboard interface isn't out to lunch!