Comments on: Travelling with the Big Brother

By: Jason Strickland

Jason Strickland — Fri, 06 May 2005 11:46:35 +0000

Not all us Americans are in support of the big brother technology that, post-911, has either been approved for daily use or under developement for future data aquisition. Many of us find it deeply disturbing that “someone” thinks they have the right to spy just because the have the ability. Lawlessness reigns when personal accountability goes out the window.

By: J

Tue, 08 Mar 2005 09:54:51 +0000

As far as the remote reading and unencryption goes…

1. They plan to use RFID to implement this. RFID (currently) has a max range of 3 meters, and many implementations are about half that. Newer versions of RFID have good penetration (i.e. go through walls, metal etc), but the range is still limited.

2. RFID (currently) suffers from poor quality control. The chips are often defective and/or have a short lifespan. This has slowed their uptake in many areas, and there will be a real issue if the chip on you passport fails.

3. RFID is a two way process. A low frequency signal is emitted by the reader. The chip converts this signal into electrical power, and uses this power to return a higher frequency signal that contains your data. I see no reason why someone won’t create an detector for the power signal. This would alert you to any attempt to read (any) RFID chip that might be about your person. I daresay the gvt would like this about as much as police scanners and radar detectors, but there you go.

By: Zhang Liping

Zhang Liping — Mon, 07 Mar 2005 07:27:19 +0000

http://sevencastles.blogchina.com
A Shanghai blog featuring news and views of great interest

By: Carl Bennett

Carl Bennett — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 17:04:26 +0000

This was announced about a year ago – and anyone in the UK who doesn’t want to have to apply for a US Visa needs a new biometric passport.

It’s so crap – the only thing you can do is ask the jerk at the airport how many terorists they’ve caught. They always like this question. And they never seem to have any answer either.

I came out of Miami once when the good ol’boys of the NAtional Guard were running around the airport with water bottles on thier pistol bels and full camo outfits – they looked like Christmas came twice that year. There were two queues to have your bag checked on the way out of the US because the 911 terrorists were going out….oh hang on, that doesn’t work, does it? Anyway, being a True Brit I wanted the shortest queue so kept on switching to the shorter one so I could get through the carry-on bag check (now there’s a name for a film). After getting to the head fo a queue that had lasted over 90 minutes, NOT ONE STUPID SECURITY GUARD checked my bag because they could not decide which queue I was in.

By the way, given in the US intenral airline pilots are paid under $30k, guess how much they’re going to pay the IT data entry people and how much loyalty that’s going to buy?

It doesn’t matter – none of these measures are to stop terrorism or protect anyone at all. They are to make people afraid. Who said terrorism doesn’t work?

It’s just a question of who’s doing it – and we voted for them. Hmmm, think I need to start my own blog!