ACM TechNews

Electronic Passports Raise Privacy Issues

Washington Post (01/01/08) P. A6; Nakashima, Ellen

U.S. citizens that travel frequently between the U.S. and Canada or the Caribbean will soon be offered RFID-embedded passports that can be read from 20 feet away. The cards are intended to be more convenient for travelers but create security and privacy concerns due to the possibility of data being intercepted. The RFID passport card costs $45 and cannot be used for air travel, and citizens have the option of a $97 card that is more secure and can only be read at a distance of three inches. "The government is fundamentally weakening border security and privacy for passport holders in order to get people through the lines faster," says Center for Democracy and Technology deputy director Ari Schwartz. Schwartz says the problem with using RFID for identification is that the technology was not designed to be secure or to track people, it was designed to track goods during shipping. The government says the chip will contain a unique identifying number linked to information in a secure government database but not to names, Social Security numbers, or any other personal information. The card will also come with a protective sleeve to prevent hackers from scanning data wirelessly. Schwartz says a reader with a strong battery could detect the chip's signal from as far as 40 feet away, and that the chip could easily be reproduced to fool a border agent. Last year, the Government Accountability Office reviewed technology similar to that being used in the passport cards and reported that the technology should only be used to track goods, not to identify people. The State Departments wants to being issuing the passport cards this spring.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2007/12/31/AR200712310 1922.html?nav=hcmodule

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