Privacy advocates are issuing warnings about a new radio chip plan that ultimately could provide electronic identification for every adult in the U.S. and allow agents to compile attendance lists at anti-government rallies simply by walking through the assembly.
The proposal, which has earned the support of Janet Napolitano, the newly chosen chief of the Department of Homeland Security, would embed radio chips in driver’s licenses, or “enhanced driver’s licenses.”
“Enhanced driver’s licenses give confidence that the person holding the card is the person who is supposed to be holding the card, and it’s less elaborate than REAL ID,” Napolitano said in a Washington Times report.
[…]
Radio talk show host and identity chip expert Katherine Albrecht said REAL ID earned the opposition of Christians because of its resemblance to the biblical “mark of the beast,” civil libertarians opposed it for its “big brother” connotations and others worried about identity theft issues with the proposed databases.“We got rid of the REAL ID program, but [this one] is way more insidious,” she said.
Enhanced driver’s licenses have built-in radio chips providing an identifying number or information that can be accessed by a remote reading unit while the license is inside a wallet or purse.
[…]
[Michigan State Rep. Paul Opsommer said,] “We are close to the point now that if you don’t want RFID in any of your documents that you can’t leave the country or get back into it.”
Time to make a faraday Cage Wallet…)
howto.wired.com/wiki/Make_a_Faraday_Cage_Wallet
Perhaps everyone has seen this already but it contains more than a grain of truth-
Ordering a pizza in 2010
http://aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf
#1 – Just fry the chip.
Military Joining The American Resistance To Protect The Constitution.
This guy is serious and very moving to watch.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zGHlvnqPdH0
What can you do?
http://warnthepeople.org/
The UK government put a lot of effort into spying on regular citizens but completely failed to spot the financial crisis.
3 – They’ll make that illegal. This way the chip isn’t disabled but no one will be able to access it. Of course then they’ll make faraday cage wallets illegal too. We’re all screwed.
#2 Interesting. However, the ACLU would have more cred if they actually defended the Bill of Rights on a consistent basis.
There is no right to anonymity in the Constitution/BoR. These passive devices are just that: passive. I much prefer that type of surveillance than armed check points or whatever other foolishness the government imposes from time to time.
If you don’t like this type of stuff, simply define the alternative you recommend and try to avoid the consequences of anarchy or more invasive techniques.
Its a fine line.
“Those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither”
You think identity theft is bad now, imagine how it will be with this. Encrypted? Please. I’ll bet it’s cracked within 6 hours of the first cards being sent out. It will be a requirement to call yourself a hacker/cracker that you’ve accessed the data on the cards.
World Net Daily? Really? Can’t you afford a copy of the Star, Uncle Dave?
#10: So, what the article says is all a lie? Right. Attack the source rather than deal with the content.
Here we go again with RFID paranoia.
Given: RFID isn’t appropriate for secure data. It’s perfect for many things, bit a bad choice for passports and licenses. They’ll never be secure.
Given: The morons in our governments aren’t smart enough to challenge the BS from the RFID industry and see the security reality.
If the tag is up against your skin it won’t work. If you put the tag up against a piece of metal foil, it’s effective xmit range is reduced to almost nothing. All you need is a thin metal ‘credit card’ up against the back of your license, and then the tag cannot be tickled by an RFID interrogator unless it is removed from the wallet. Cut up your credit cards, and replace two of them with foil cards. You’ll be wealthier and safe. 🙂
They can’t make destroying your RFID tag illegal, because ‘they’ can’t possibly know that you zapped it with a tesla coil. Nobody is going to do failure analysis…the card is simply bad, and that’s it.
If you’re really into this, RFID tags have a kill command that renders them dead and unresponsive. Again, this is RF….there’s no possible way anybody can ever prove who sent such a command. They might make laws, but they’ll be unenforceable…unless you run a business killing them.
Will they still be given to illegals?
A Faraday cage wallet or frying the chip protects from casual snooping but that’s only one problem. It’s the checkpoints you have to show it at that are the problem.
@#11 – Yes, a story from a site that calls Obama America’s first Muslim President is inherently suspect. The article itself presents no evidence beyond random crazy people saying, “Christians are against Real ID because it’s the number of the Beast.”
# 14 AlgoreIsWorseThanHitler said, “It’s the checkpoints you have to show it at that are the problem.”
If they are just doing a hash compare it isn’t.
Electronic validation is coming. In drivers licenses, packaging and even dollar bills.
The questions are not, if, but when and how will the world deal with it.
As #1 noted, read-protected wallets are coming too. So your fifty won’t be used to track you down the highway.
But that chip in your ass that was implanted at birth. It will see all, tell all.
#12 Good summary of the card side of the system. RFID can be cloaked without frying the chip.
The back end of the system is even less of a threat. The history of large government computer systems, especially those that track people, is one of abject failure. Several states have tried and failed to simply update their DMV systems, often at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Add in the cost of the IDs themselves, plus the terminals designed to read them. Huge costs and complexity. It would take years to implement, and I doubt if it would work well or completely most of the time.
Keep in mind that a cop can run your ID relatively easily. From a big brother point of view the high costs( both money and political) outweigh the benefits.
If people have a problem with this you should instead write your representative about automated car license plate scanners, which are now commodity items. They invade your privacy much more effectively.
“REAL ID earned the opposition of Christians because of its resemblance to the biblical “mark of the beast,”
…..good grief. Never underestimate the utter stupidity of superstition. Even most Christians would distance themselves from this absurd interpretation of Revelations.
If, for example, the chip was only an encrypted password, the “information” being accessible only to licensed government agencies… then I don’t see a problem with it. MasterCard has a load of financial info on cardholders, and yet the charge card is a convenient efficient and relatively safe method for commerce. With over 6 billion people on the planet, the small town Shangri-La where everyone knows everyone in a cosy family like euphoria, has long gone. Unless we become more efficient in the transaction of essential information, society will become bogged down in lineups and excessive delays doing repetitive, redundant paperwork and exasperating verbal intercourse.
The illustration in post#2, although funny, has no basis in reality. Such offhand abuse, if unimaginably, it were even ever allowed, would result in the demise of any business.
I can see it now..
CC card with chip..ALREADY HERE..
ID with chip, coming soon to a wallet near you.
BANK card chip..
this chip
that chip..
ALL RUBBING AROUND your wallet..
Any one for a spark arrestor??
Lightning rod ANYONE??
ECA…it’s easier than that. Put those chips near the antenna of a big UHF ham rig and key it. Blammmo.
Olo Baggins… easier than that. Just get yourself tasered.
I’ve already got an anti-RFID wallet and passport holder from thinkgeek. Built-in faraday cages, and attractive, too. Not expensive, either.
24,
thats great..
NOW all those card RFID signals bounce off each other..CAN you say 4 people ALL on the same channel CB, trying to talk at the same time??
Probably make ALL of them NON-readable..
Ok. Think about it. Why do you NEED to carry a driver’s license? In fact, you don’t. If you obey the speed limits, etc, you will not get pulled over. What else do you need to carry it for? Traveling by plane, getting into a Federal building, picking up a package at the US Post Office. Ok, use it then, At those times, who cares if somebody knows you are there? The rest of the time, leave it in a safe at your house, next to your Glock. Unless, of course, like me, you carry your Glock everywhere.
ECA…You should probably read this:
http://howstuffworks.com/rfid.htm
All the talk of the faraday wallet ignores the fact that you have to take the license out of the wallet when you buy your smokes or a million other things. If you are within about 100 feet of a any reader that is powerful enough, it is going to be read. For anyone who understands anything about the differences between passive and active RFID, the fact that it is passive means diddly. All the means is that it uses the energy of a reader to broadcast, rather than an internal battery of its own. It still automatically gets read by any reader that queries it.
pete…that’s not true. It takes a very special reader, a hacked one with a lot of power, to grab data at 100 feet. Lots of issues in this situation, reading a tag at that distance is a big hassle in the real world unless conditions are perfect.
Second, you can easily program tags to stay silent unless they hear the right code.
The diff between active and passive is huge. Passive tags transmit much farther…they actually broadcast rather than simply reflecting, which is what passive does. It’s easy to wreck the range of a passive with a tiny piece of aluminum foil taped on the backside of the tag.
only reason why janet voted down REAL ID was because it was fed mandated w/out funds to the state…and it was projected to cost $11 billion per state (so probably $15-22billion in reality)
whatever the outcome, you can bet your *private data* will be compromised and on the black market within a year of implementation of any electronic ID system, government or otherwise. -and used against you in rather creative ways..
computers are great for alot of things, but privacy is not one of them..esp when a corruptible human is in the loop.
imo, anything they implement would have to be open source (the back end) -no doubt back doors will be installed in either case, but something about a false sense of security makes me all warm and fuzzy inside..
-can’t wait till next year.
(or later this year) -when they release the 15minute, $1000 genome sequencer. that’ll
raise alot of hairs..
#8 Paddy-O:
“Those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither”
-only relevant post in here.
-s