TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Wired News: American Passports to Get Chipped

Re: Wired News: American Passports to Get Chipped

Steve Sobol (sjsobol@JustThe.net)
Mon, 15 Nov 2004 13:50:59 -0800

Marcus Didius Falco wrote:

> "The reason we are doing this is that it simply makes passports more
> secure," Shannon said. "It's yet another layer beyond the security
> features we currently use to ensure the bearer is the person who was
> issued the passport originally."

Moron. Let's store personal information digitally, and not encrypt it!
That'll make it MORE secure!

> While there are no laws in the United States prohibiting anyone from
> snooping on someone's passport data, Roy Want, an RFID expert who
> works as a principal engineer for Intel Research, thinks that the
> possibility of identity theft is overblown.

> "It is actually quite hard to read RFID at a distance," said Want.

Sure it is. Didn't a couple major retail chains have trouble with
people reading RFID tags this past year?

Why should we believe someone who works for Intel, a company that could
potentially profit big from a large deployment of RFID?

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Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net
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