Homeland Insecurity

The Federal Government is trying to push technological advances on us when, sometimes, we're not ready for them. One of the places where we expose ourselves is in applying for a Passport. All sorts of private information is provided in those forms and it seems as if we have a right to expect the government to protect us from identity theft.

Here's a report from Boing Boing online which rejects the notion that Americans are ready for RFID tags in our passports - or driver's licenses - or any other form of ID which we must carry around with us.

Meet Chris Paget, a hacker who believes that people shouldn't be tagged with RFIDs. He spent a productive day driving around San Francisco, sniffing and cloning mountains of RFID-equipped US passports and driver's licenses. The equipment to accomplish this feat cost him $250. When we debate the risks associated with RFID-equipped IDs, we usually focus on what happens when the government can follow us around everywhere -- but the real risk may be that crooks, marketing creeps and various unaffiliated snoops will do this instead.