NEWS: New RFID travel cards could pose privacy threat

RFID is a nightmare in every way...

Just like gun legislation it doesn't hinder real criminals at all but pens in anyone who plays straight tighter than ever.

for those of you using the if you aren't doing anything wrong why should you care logic.... wake up!!

Speaking as someone who played on the black side of the chessboard I can say to you unequivocally... it's not us they're after. But dissent among the sheep or a general restlessness will soon be readilly discernable through so called marketting anticipation software.

To put it bluntly it's like identity theft... so far the longest running consistently reliable moneymaker out there. Not a thing has been done to reliably combat it, just like rfid the current system is easy to short circuit and that is the way certain people like it. But make no mistake if you rank and filers buy formula 409 by the case expect a batf or otherwise fed to show up (PS 409 won't work for what it used to so I haven't said anything damning)

If your government cared it'd focus it's efforts elsewhere... where I'm not saying :p

Actually RFID is not primarily used to support security measures. The primary reasoning for its inception is economics and efficiency. You can speed up purchases, or border crossings in this case. It saves millions in labor costs/man-hours as well as time. Of course it can be used to track people, just like a card number or social security can beused to track activities. But you do not have to carry it wherever you go.If they say you do, join me in a glorious protest of mass destruction of them and we will of course respond accordingly to any action taken as a result of it.

Originally posted by DYepes
...Of course it can be used to track people, just like a card number or social security can beused to track activities. But you do not have to carry it wherever you go.If they say you do, join me in a glorious protest of mass destruction of them and we will of course respond accordingly to any action taken as a result of it.

Lol ! I hope we won't get to this !

If we do get to this it would be one the best things to happen IMO. The peole fighting the governmentmay have an affect in breaking down their control. After all they are completely funded by our tax dollars. If we go to war with them, they lose their funding... see what I am getting at. They will have some weapons at their disposal, but we will have ur numbers. When its all over we probably will have a better system of government come out of it where the people have daily and ultimate control over which laws are passed, as well as awareness at any major gathering center (grocery stores, retail centers, shopping malls, gyms, courthouses, police stations, even jails and prisons).

Ran across a couple articles today that seem to pertain to this topic. DHS and HHS collaborating with various industries to register travelers and share info in the event of a flu pandemic...

DHS, HHS make secret pact to share airline passenger info

The departments of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security have a secret agreement to exchange airline passenger information as part of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plan to help combat pandemic flu, the Air Transport Association (ATA) said in a filing with the CDC.

...

The existence of the secret agreement between DHS and HHS surfaced in a filing the ATA made last month with its comments on proposed CDC regulations that would electronically track more than 600 million passengers a year traveling on more than 7 million flights through 67 hub airports.

...

The sharing of information between DHS and CBP appears to violate a passenger data sharing agreement between the European Union and the United States executed in May 2004, Steinhardt said. That agreement limits DHS to using data it obtains from EU airline reservation and departure control system databases to prevent and combat terrorism and other serious crimes, including organized crime, that are transnational .


Steinhardt said this agreement does not cover the exchange of passenger name record data to help combat pandemic flu.

"CDC plans flight e-tracking" [GovHealthIT.com, Nov. 23, 2005]

CDC propsoed passenger tracking regulation [CDC]

ATA Comments on CDC passenger data rules [CDC]

ACLU comments on CDC passenger data rules [CDC]

EU/U.S. passenger data ageement [EU]



Then see how far they've come with Registered Traveler:

InfoZen wins $148M TSA contract

InfoZen will manage information technology systems in the Transportation Security Administration's Office of Transportation Threat Assessment and Credentialing (TTAC) under a new contract.

The agreement, worth as much as $148 million, calls on InfoZen to operate and maintain the IT infrastructure, networks and program applications for TTAC, said Raj Ananthanpillai, InfoZen’s chief executive officer.

TTAC assesses threats to land, sea and air transportation and oversees traveler credentialing programs, including Registered Traveler.

“No longer a performance model, TSA’s ITMS provides lessons” [Federal Computer Week, April 10, 2006]

TSA privacy policy hit” [FCW.com, April 5, 2006]

“Industry aids Registered Traveler” [FCW.com, Jan. 11, 2006]


Are we seeing any common threads here? Traveler credentialing programs?

Is not that different from the VeriChip idea any ways.

Read here for more VeriChip: Helpful Tracking Device or too "Big Brother"?

My son just received a new U.S. passport, which he had to get in order to travel to Europe next month with a college music group. It doesn't look different from my own U.S. passport (issued in 2003), and the passport covers don't seem to have an embedded chip.

Can anyone please tell me whether I should get my son's passport tested for RFID capability? And what testing technology is most reliable? Finally, if this 2006 passport does contain an embedded RFID chip, are there any "cloaking devices" out there that travelers (especially our children) could use for privacy protection after exiting the airport passport checkpoints? Thank you very much.

I have read the Darkelf thread on RFID, which is closed to posting by most members. My question, however, does not seem to be addressed by Darkelf thus far.

The cheapest & easiest cloaking device for an RFID chip embedded in a Passport would be to simply wrap the thing in aluminum foil. You are talking about a very weak radio transmitter that is easily blocked.

[edit on 8-6-2006 by Astronomer70]

Thank you, Obi-Wan. Will do.

RFID passports have some, shall we say, "issues" concerning safety that could be taken advantage of... things can get "hot" - How about a passport triggered RFID sensitive explosive? Total improve; IED + RFID = Ka-Boom.

FYI and enlightenment:

www.tgdaily.com...

Video and audio from the above link...

[edit on 3-8-2006 by V Kaminski]

Isn't there a way to deactivate the RFID Chips once the item has been purchased, so that the store will know that it's been purchased before? That way, as soon as the item is purchased, the chip is deactivated/destroyed by some electronic/electromagnetic means. Prevents people from taking back items that they didn't get from a particular store.

TheBorg

as I recall bush made it by may 2008 these things were to be put into drivers licenses around the county. Interesting isnt it? How many of you carry your drivers license wherever you go?

Wow, there's a lot of mixed up info here.

First off, US-VISIT isn't a passport. It's an ID card you can use in lieu of a passport. US-VISIT is an E-field tag, which means it can be read from a short distance, 30 feet is probably pushing that really hard. I'd say more like 10.

The reason US-VISIT uses an E-field tag is so that they can let you go back and forth through a turnstile-like scanner and not have to check every Canadian individually. If you've got one, you just walk through and keep going.

E-passports are H-field devices. Mahaffey/Flexilis likes to stage dramatic (and often underhandedly implemented) demos at Blackhat. Like last year, when they dramatically declared that an e-passport could be read at 60 feet..then got caught using an E-field tag instead of an e-passport part. I'll give Mahaffey my car if he can read an unrigged passport at 10 feet. The best distance EVER managed, and it wasn't on an e-passport chip, but it was a much lower power H-field tag, was 28 inches.

That's it. 28 inches.

In order to do that, they had to have 10 Amps of exciter power, and use advanced DSP correlation techniques to pull the response out of the noise.

The e-passport parts draw far too much power to even begin to be driven at 28 inches, and they have built-in routines to prevent the multiple reads needed to do the DSP trick.

You see, there's this little thing, it's called physics. Physics says that the amount of power coupled between two coils (that's what's happening in an H-field tag) declines as the sixth power of the distance between the coils. Worse, H-field and E-field parts don't "transmit" squat. The h-field parts respond by modulating the load on the exciter. The more power you have to put through the exciter, the worse the signal-to-noise ratio gets, and as the power has to go up as the sixth power of the distance, it doesn't take long until the signal drops below the point it can be received. Period.

Now, there are many things that they're not doing well on that passport program as a whole. They're not using the encryption and tamper resistance built into the part, and it is prodigious. There is a lot of thought that went into that hardware, and they didn't use any of it. Stupid.

Next, they could easily have put a membrane button on the passport, so that it physically cannot transmit without you opening it and pressing the button. Didn't do that either.

There are many different types of RFID. You can't say "oh, I read that RFID can be read at 10 feet, therefore my passport isn't safe" because they are totally different TYPES of RFID. It's like saying "I read that cats kill and eat people, therefore Mr Fluffy has to go" not making the distinction between a house cat and a lion.

And no, I'm not reading this from a website, I design with this stuff.