absolutgcs.org

came across an interesting read on boingboing that sent me to ed felten’s blog. he’s a cs prof over at princeton that has been doing some interesting work in the area of privacy, security and reverse engineering.

This blog entry is an interesting read and speaks to the blind acceptance of technology that seems to be commonplace in american society. felten’s point about the choice of RFID being “indefensible” unless the government had some unspoken need to remotely monitor individuals’ passports puts the government decision to utilize RFID in focus. either they have some covert motive for utilizing this technology given that there really is no absolute NEED for it, or there are idiots making this determination because RFID is a hot technology at the moment.

i find it hard to back the former, given that this motive would only add to the information overload that intelligence agencies have yet to deal with efficiently and effectively. may be there is some corporate interest that is pushing the adoption of RFID for passports. after all, if they become that commonplace, all of a sudden there is a well established implementation of the technology that eases adoption for those currently hesitant.

my main concern is the traceability of passports if RFID is integrated into the document. as an individual with some level of security clearance, i do not want to be travelling internationally as a remotely profilable character to foreign governments/intelligencia. if they want to know who i am, they should at least have to have some physical interaction with me. the one glaring error in the government’s logic is that they must adopt existing technologies or utilize an existing standard. is it really hard to believe that ruggedizing a smart card will be a very difficult or expensive project (if such a product doesn’t already exist)? we already roll so much of our own stuff (think counterfiet mechanisms, watermark mechanisms for vital documents, etc) that investing in a sound solution for who can enter and leave our country seems prudent. the congress probably wastes more money being in session on paperwork determining border policy than it would take to develop such a solution…