Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

Further jollity follows the Government and its attempt to catalogue and file the population of the UK. It’s been flying under the news radar the past few months, but preparations are continuing for the introduction of hugely expensive and largely unwanted biometric ID cards in the next couple of years.

The first step in this programme, allegedly intended to make identity theft harder, is the introduction of chipped passports. You will have one if you have renewed in the past two or three years and you will definitely have one next time you renew. They were introduced in the wake of 9/11 to help make it close to impossible for the bad guys to cross international borders.

Marvellous. Fantastic.

Now, whatever the reasoning behind the need for this technology in passports (and, to be frank, I have less of a problem with those than I do with ID cards simply because I can choose not to have a passport if I wish) it has always bothered me that a government that is supposed to serve the people rather than monitor every individual fart wants to spend vast amounts of our money on something that few people want or believe will make a difference. Anyway, I have grumbled about all this before; the point is, that the Government cheerfully tells us that it will work and that once we have ID cards, life will be a bowl of cherries, global warming will reverse, petrol will be free and Utopia will be achieved.

You recall seeing in the news that 3,000 blank passports had been stolen, but the Passport Agency told us not to worry, because they were worthless since no-one could forge them? Here’s a little reminder – note how suddenly they are worth £2.5 million on the black market, incidentally, well now The Times has published a report on how they have managed to clone the 'fakeproof' e-passport in minutes using over the counter software and a £40 card reader.

New microchipped passports designed to be foolproof against identity theft can be cloned and manipulated in minutes and accepted as genuine by the computer software recommended for use at international airports.

I don't feel lied to at all. The technology is necessary and fool proof. It will work and we will all eat rose petal salad and fart perfume. The Government says so.

It’s been a while since I ranted about ID cards, but a friend has emailed me a couple of links on his favourite bête noire, RFID. He is no fan of the ID card, either, but feels (rightly so) that RFID is especially intrusive.

For those of you who are unaware, RFID tags are increasingly being used for stock control and anti-shoplifting. They are short range radio chips which help locate the item they are incorporated in. You may have seen the adverts on TV in which IBM are pushing them as a business solution (the lost trucker in the US mid West being told by his dispatcher that he is lost; the cargo knows where it is, the trucker doesn’t).

The Government is, I believe putting them in passports and would like them to be included in their biometric ID cards, too so not only can they download your entire history from the card, they can track you. You may even have one already in your credit card. HM Government would have you believe that this is not a breach of privacy and/or civil liberties because the range is too limited to be of general use (pace the IBM ad already mentioned above). The propeller beanie and lead helmet brigade have been predicting portable extended range black market scanners for a while now, which would enable you to make transactions on a card without having access to any of the details. Unsurprisingly, this prediction has been somewhat controversial and there are those who would have you believe that this is all paranoia and hysterical antiestablishment blather.

Can’t be done, won’t be done.

Except.

Given the chance, what self-respecting propeller-head wouldn’t go out and make one if he’d been told it can’t be done? Just to ensure that the debate gets a proper airing, a couple of researchers will be doing a presentation and demonstration at the next USENIX conference: including making purchases from credit cards.

As my friend says, time to wrap your passport in silver foil.

If you don’t fancy paying over the odds for a black market scanner, details on how to build one for yourself are discussed on this security blog and direct access to the paper, complete with schematics is here.

The Government would like us to pay a great deal of money for something that we don't want, don't need, which will be ineffective and which will aid identity theft.

We have always been at war with Eastasia.