RFID Driver's licenses for VA
So the cops and RFID h4x0rZ can know your true name from a distance. and since RFID tags, are what, $0.05 each, the terrorists and ID counterfitters will be able to make fake ones too... Whee! http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,65243,00.html RFID Driver's Licenses Debated By Mark Baard Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,65243,00.html 09:50 AM Oct. 06, 2004 PT Some federal and state government officials want to make state driver's licenses harder to counterfeit or steal, by adding computer chips that emit a radio signal bearing a license holder's unique, personal information. In Virginia, where several of the 9/11 hijackers obtained driver's licenses, state legislators Wednesday will hear testimony about how radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags may prevent identity fraud and help thwart terrorists using falsified documents to move about the country. Privacy advocates will argue that the radio tags will also make it easy for the government to spy on its citizens and exacerbate identity theft, one of the problems the technology is meant to relieve. <SNIP> Because information on RFID tags can be picked up from many feet away, <SNIP> ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. /|\ \|/ :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\ <--*-->:and our people, and neither do we." -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ /|\ : \|/ + v + : War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. -------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Thu, 7 Oct 2004, Sunder wrote:
So the cops and RFID h4x0rZ can know your true name from a distance. and since RFID tags, are what, $0.05 each, the terrorists and ID counterfitters will be able to make fake ones too... Whee!
Given the power requirements for doing anything more than dumb sequence repeat, I'd worry about the potential for replay attack and licence cloning. Make a proof-of-concept device early after they start rolling the scheme out, publish on Slashdot, and see them retracting it as fast as they were deploying it. A defense is a metal board in a wallet, close to the RFID chip's antenna. It is readable when the licence is taken out of the wallet. When inside, the antenna is quite effectively shielded. As a bonus, for many people this method can be seamlessly integrated to their mode of the document usage (leaving the privacy implications of the "legitimate" readers aside for now, talking about the unauthorized remote readers only here).
So the cops and RFID h4x0rZ can know your true name from a distance. and since RFID tags, are what, $0.05 each, the terrorists and ID counterfitters will be able to make fake ones too... Whee! At 04:35 PM 10/7/2004, Thomas Shaddack wrote: A defense is a metal board in a wallet, close to the RFID chip's antenna. It is readable when the licence is taken out of the wallet. When inside,
On Thu, 7 Oct 2004, Sunder wrote: the antenna is quite effectively shielded.
Tinfoil Wallets, anybody? :-) Actually, does anybody know if metallized mylar would do a good job of blocking RFID readers, or if that carbon-fiber insulating cloth that's useful for RF-shielded rooms would work well enough? Also sounds like a good reason to carry a Rivest RFID blocker in your wallet. ---- Bill Stewart bill.stewart@pobox.com
participants (4)
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Bill Stewart -
Riad S. Wahby -
Sunder -
Thomas Shaddack