We're in ur passport, readin' ur data
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So yeah, if I'd been paying attention, I would have renewed my passport last summer. As of August 2007, all US passports have RFID chips embedded in them. For those of you not in the know, RFID tags are how libraries know when you walk out with an un-checked out book, how pet ID chips work, and how strangers with RFID readers can detect your passport without you knowing it.
Now, it would be easy enough to redesign the "e-passports" (am I the only one sick to fucking death of everything high tech being called "e-something"?!) with more RF shielding, so they could only be read when the passport was fully open, but that's not what the government did. Instead we have passports that can be detected from several feet away, if the passport is open a fraction of an inch (as it quite likely will be, if you're carrying it in your jacket pocket or purse).
So then someone can copy the chip data, store it elsewhere, and decrypt it at their leisure …
Or your passport could simply be cloned …
Or when the decryption process becomes commonplace (US passports are valid for ten years, go ahead and tell me it won't), terrorists could use the data to remotely trigger explosives (video at the end of this post) …
Or, because, "The United States has outsourced the manufacturing of its electronic passports to overseas companies — including one in Thailand that was victimized by Chinese espionage," blank US passports could be counterfeited or stolen, and used by whoever wants to pass into the US for whatever reason (The Washington Times) …
What the fuck is this?! First of all, the RFID chip is completely fucking pointless for the purposes the government says they were introduced for. The chip doesn't store any additional identifying data that isn't already shown on the information page, and the encryption system requires the passport to be optically scanned before the information is transmitted in a readable format. So, basically, they still have to take your passport, open it, and run it through the optical scanner … exactly like they did before.
No additional security is actually provided. It takes exactly the same amount of time to be scanned by immigration staff. The "biometric data" on the chip is just a fucking copy of your passport photo, and last I checked it was a lot more accurate to have a human compare your face to a photo than to try and use facial recognition software. Not one fucking iota of added security … but a whole hell of a lot of privacy risk. So what the fuck is the point?
Each passport has a static decryption key, used as a digital signature to verify the authenticity of the data. So, by tracking your passport key, a record of your movements can be created. And the US has required that all countries participating in their Visa waiver program begin issuing compatible RFID passports, so all travelers into or out of the US from any of those countries could be tracked as well.
Paranoia? Perhaps. But if the sole purpose of the RFID chip was to improve security, it would have been far more secure to use a system of randomly generated keys rather than encoding a static decryption key into the optical scan data. Or hell, you really want security, forgo the RFID chip altogether, and use a good old-fashioned magnetic strip … or if you're worried about counterfeit passports, you could utilize the same anti-counterfeit techniques used in modern paper currency. Fucking hell, there's a dozen things that could be added to or changed about US passports to improve security that would work better than this half-assed scheme.
So what to do, if you don't want to walk around with your ID exposed to the world? You have a couple options:
- The RFID passports are still valid travel documents, even if the chip malfunctions. Microwave ovens disable them pretty damn well.
- But if you want to avoid suspicious scorch-marks on your passport, you can do what I did, and get an RFID security passport cover*.
DIFRwear passport covers have RFID shielding sewn into the cover, and your passport is stored in a side pocket, to ensure it stays fully closed. So your RFID chip can only be read when you actually remove your passport from the case. (I picked theirs because not only does it work, but it's one of the least expensive and most 'normal' looking passport protection products I found. Here's a video of the DIFRwear passport cover in action.)
—————-
flexilis security staff demonstrate passport-detonated explosives
*Yes, I do get a small commission on sales of the passport covers. But I honestly did get one for myself. And it's nice.
Aluminium foil placed inside a passport cover will also act as an effective shield (cue tin-foil hat jokes).
Also, to destroy the chip without leaving suspicious burn marks, hit it a few times with a hammer!
http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Disable_Your_Passport%27s_RFID_Chip
Oh, and just to make the whole 'extra security' thing even more laughable, the decryption key is actually data printed in the passport itself:
"the key needed to access the data on the chips should be comprised of, in the following order, the passport number, the holder's date of birth and the passport expiry date, all of which are contained on the printed page of the passport"
(see http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs )
All new e-passports have already been cracked (just google for it). There is NO extra security at all, just yet more wasted effort and money in the fight against them thar terrrrrists
10th May 2008 at 8:40 pm | permalink |I need to tell friends of mine who are going abroad about this.
Makes me wish I would've gotten mine last year.
11th May 2008 at 7:06 am | permalink |@Copely: Thanks for the hammer tip. :-) I'd read somewhere (not on the passport case manufacturer's site, fwiw) that wire mesh is more effective for blocking detection than plain tinfoil, but lacking an RFID reader to test it, I really couldn't say.
And yeah, the 'decryption key' is all visible data, which is encoded into the optical scan code at the bottom of the data page. Really sneaky, eh?
@Hellationships: Yeah, I travel abroad almost every year. I may just try the hammer trick also, and see if they mean it when they say even an electronically malfunctioning e-passport is still valid as a travel document.
11th May 2008 at 1:31 pm | permalink |Haha, hysteria has corrupted us all. How about we just not have any passports? Would save everyone a lot of trouble. But whatever, I guess we have to protect our citizens from those terrorists and cloners out there.
It is really sickening at how paranoid some people can be though. You see, I live in a small village of 900 people, and I work at a grocery store. There is always this one Indian man who comes in and has a huge beard and a turban, the stereotypical "terrorist". And of course, people always give him weird looks and get scared. What do you think he has? A Bomb? We're in a fricken grocery store in the middle of nowhere….God. The human race is fucked…I have no hope for us anymore. Heh.
11th May 2008 at 10:38 pm | permalink |@Aimee: I think my town had about 650 people at the last census. On the one hand, it's nice because everyone knows each other (more or less), and people do, for the most part, look after each other. On the other hand, I've never met a gossipier, smaller-minded community in my life. If you put a new experience in their faces, and call them on their prejudice, most of 'em will back off and open their minds a little, but still … you'd think, if someone came into the same store all the damn time, people wouldn't think twice about it anymore, wouldn't you?
Getting rid of passports? What a wild idea. Almost like we're all humans living on the same planet, with the right to travel as we please? You commie heretic, you! ;-)
11th May 2008 at 11:54 pm | permalink |@alphabitch: Yeah I try to open some of the residents minds a little…but most don't listen to a 15 year old with piercings all over and dark makeup. Haha. Guess I screwed myself over there. But I did teach my sisters boyfriend not to be so sexist and racist anymore! Yay go me.
Yeah, you think we'd have the right to travel where we want without the hassle of getting some card saying we're legit. Damn countries and their laws. I'm even doing this school project right now on morals/laws, and if its our objective to follow them. Maybe I'll use this as an example. Yay for nihilism and anarchy! ^_^
Oh, and keep being your bitter old stuff. It really does make my day. :)
12th May 2008 at 10:01 pm | permalink |@Aimee: Well, as long as you're not walking around with a plate in your lower lip and 5lb. plugs in your ears, piercings are pretty much the most reversible mods you can do. ;-)
Other than that … morals and laws. That's a good one. A little something you might want to look into: Jury Nullification. Jurors in criminal cases actually have the right to declare a defendant innocent, if they disagree with the law s/he's being prosecuted under.
Judges will NEVER tell a jury that, when they give jury instructions. Prosecuting attorneys will disqualify any potential juror that even mentions it. But it is a right you have if you ever end up on a jury for, say, a marijuana possession case. ;-)
13th May 2008 at 1:00 am | permalink |Is it just North American countries, or does it seem like governments no matter what type are just fucking their country over for cash? *cough* Myanmar *cough* I'm pretty sure that Harper (Canadian Prime Minister) sent DART (Disaster something something Team) to China because he got pissed off waiting for visas so that they could help there. So in the end, they fucked themselves over…seems like that happens a lot with the world and UN in general *sigh* World peace just seems so unattainable these days.
13th May 2008 at 5:30 pm | permalink |The government needs a branch entirely devoted to seeing if all these "super-cool awesome techno-ideas" actually do shit other than look cool.
13th May 2008 at 7:48 pm | permalink |@Jen: I think any time a person or group of people gets into a position of power, they will almost always act in such a way as to keep it and profit from it … whether their "profit" is a power trip, the chicks, the money, the nifty pseudo-military dictator's uniform, or what have you, they want to keep it … and damn the little man.
@Adam Seale: Well, that could work, but only if they hired actualy techies to do it … which seems unlikely. ;-) Actual hacker-techie types would be figuring out how to make shit with tinfoil and chewing gum that still performed up to spec, instead of buying components from gov't contractors at grossly inflated prices. The US economy would collapse. ;-)
14th May 2008 at 11:31 am | permalink |Guess what. The combination of your driver's licence and birth certificate constitutes a valid "passport". The rest of the world doesn't seem to be quite as anal retentive about international travelers as the US is. And if you're coming back into the US as a US citicen … neither is the US. The new passport requirements are just a bunch of US buerocratic BS that the rest of the world really doesn't seem to give a flyin f^ck about. Sure, you might have some problems with Lateischa at the US Customs desk while you're getting ready to leave. But she'll just call her boss Shameackah who will then call her boss Tyrone who will in turn call his boss Fred at home … and you know damn well that Fred isn't about to stop watching the game with Steve and miss the second half to come down to the Airport, so …. boom … you're on the plane! Because Fred know's enough about the law to tell Tyrone to tell Shameackah to tell Lateischa to let you through the gate. Of coarse, the ppl at the State Dept. are NEVER going to suggest that you read the fine print behind the new US Passport laws ….. hell, they probably don't even know there IS fine print available!
15th May 2008 at 12:22 am | permalink |@Richard: If the rest of the world doesn't care so much about documentation, why did the immigration agent at Gatwick Airport almost deny me entry because my 8+ year old passport wasn't optically scanning properly?
"you might have some problems with Lateischa at the US Customs desk [...] she'll just call her boss Shameackah who will then call her boss Tyrone who will [...] call his boss Fred"
Really, I don't think black US customs agents are going to be any more hard-ass than the white ones. The only immigration officials who have ever given me any trouble in any country were as lily white as I am.
So, you can take your bullshit racist tripe elsewhere. Maybe somewhere in the lower midwest where they'll appreciate it.
15th May 2008 at 1:54 am | permalink |