Big Brother Will Rub His Hands in Glee Over New Passports

ph. On October 4th Bruce Schneier, a security technologist, published an article, 'Passport radio chips send too many signals', in the International Herald Tribune. According to him the Bush administration's Department of Homeland Security wants machine-readable passports, worldwide. Embedded in these passports will be a computer chip (radio frequency identity chips) containing information about the bearer which can be read from a distance.

"Unfortunately, RFID chips can be read by any reader, not just the ones at passport control. The upshot of this is that travelers carrying around RFID passports are broadcasting their identity . . . their name, nationality, age, address and whatever else is on the RFID chip. . .It means that pickpockets, kidnappers and terrorists can easily - and surreptitiously - pick Americans or nationals of other participating countries out of a crowd."

It has been claimed that these chips cannot be read from any significant distance, that a distance of a few centimetres is the limit. Schneier considers this claim "spectacularly naïve" because "all wireless protocols can work at much longer ranges than specified. In tests, RFID chips have been read by receivers 20 meters away. Improvements in technology are inevitable." Indeed, what would be the point, the benefit, of having chips that can only be read from a few centimetres. As Schneier rightly asks, if a customs officer is going to take someone's passport and bring it near a reader, "why can't he go those extra few centimeters that a contact chip - one the reader must actually touch - would require?"

What's it all about then? Why choose a less secure technology which allows surreptitious access to information about any citizen of any country, allows one to identify individuals in a crowd?

Schneier's final comment is food for serious thought: "Normally I am very careful before I ascribe such sinister motives to a government agency. Incompetence is the norm, and malevolence is much rarer. But this seems like a clear case of the Bush administration putting its own interests above the security and privacy of its citizens, and then lying about it."