Prisoners of our passports
New rules are more bureaucratic headache than security measure
OPINION
By Charles Leocha
Travel columnist
Tripso.com
Updated: 8:29 a.m. PT Jan 26, 2007
This week, three out of four Americans became prisoners in their own country. As of Tuesday, January 23, U.S. citizens may no longer fly to Bermuda, Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America or the Caribbean — unless they have a passport. Nor can they fly home without a passport. Every U.S. citizen will have to present a passport when entering their own country by air — even infants and children.
Your birth certificate, driver's license, official government I.D., Social Security card, naturalization certificate, citizenship papers or letter from your senator or congressman won't do. You will all need a passport to leave your country or to enter it by air. Without it, the airlines, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Department of Homeland Security will not allow you to leave.
I have mixed feelings about this. I am a traveler. I understand the need for passports when crossing oceans and visiting strange lands. A passport is also very useful when I find myself in trouble abroad. But — and this is a big but — I have the uneasy feeling that if we continue down this road, my ability to drive along the Canadian border, to shop in Canada, to visit friends, to dine on semi-French cuisine will be soon be changed forever.
While tens of thounited snakesnds of illegal aliens are streaming across the Mexican border and our representatives in Washington refuse to do anything about it, this Band-Aid solution — which affects only law-abiding citizens — strikes me as ridiculous. It doesn't make me feel any freer. It doesn't make me feel any more protected. It only adds another level of hassle to my travels close to home.
Canada has strict immigration laws and border controls. Its requirements for travelers coming from overseas should be more than adequate to protect us; indeed, they have been for years. It makes no sense to set up new controls between historically peaceful neighbors, especially when they are the world's two largest trading partners.
Adding to the foolishness is the all-but-incomprehensible footnote that these border controls will apply only to citizens arriving and departing by air. All border crossings by automobile, bus, motor scooter, bicycle, wagon, ship, rubber raft, water wings or on foot are currently excluded from the new measures, and will not come under consideration until, it appears, June 2009.
How brainless is this? No offense to our dedicated civil servants, but take a look at these rules. Do they make any sense? Do they protect us in any way? Or is this just one more bureaucratic hassle?
Please. Someone — anyone — explain this to me and to the American people.
Hello! Senators and congressmen! When you get serious about border control for everyone, let us know. In the meantime, don't impose unnecessary measures on those of us who operate within the laws of our country.
Notes:
# The new requirement is part of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), which was developed jointly by the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security in compliance with the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which Congress passed after considering the recommendations made by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States ("the 9-11 Commission").
# It can take six to 10 weeks to get a passport.
# Passports cost $97 for citizens 16 and older, and $82 for those under 16; renewing a passport costs $67 and $82, respectively, for those age categories.
# Expediting a passport service adds $60 to the bill, but don't wait too long; "rush" services are being limited by some passport agencies, according to The New York Times.
# Passports can be renewed by mail under most circumstances.
# Passports for citizens 16 and older are valid for 10 years; children's passports are valid for five years.
# U.S. citizens traveling to or returning from a U.S. territory will not need a passport (because, technically, they will not have left the United States); U.S. territories include Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Swains Island and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
© 2007 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16825929/ (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16825929/)
http://news.com.com/Passports+to+get+RFID+chip+implants/2100-7348_3-5913644.html (http://news.com.com/Passports+to+get+RFID+chip+implants/2100-7348_3-5913644.html)
Passports to get RFID chip implants
The State Department says tiny tracking chips will be put in passports starting next year, despite concerns over privacy.
By Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: October 25, 2005, 12:12 PM PDT
Last modified: October 25, 2005, 1:45 PM PDT
- UPDATE: All U.S. passports will be implanted with remotely readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced. -
Sweeping new State Department regulations issued Tuesday say that passports issued after that time will have tiny radio frequency ID (RFID) chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitized data such as "fingerprints or iris scans."
Over the last year, opposition to the idea of implanting RFID chips in passports has grown amidst worries that identity thieves could snatch personal information out of the air simply by aiming a high-powered antenna at a person or a vehicle carrying a passport. Out of the 2,335 comments on the plan that were received by the State Department this year, 98.5 percent were negative. The objections mostly focused on security and privacy concerns.
But the Bush administration chose to go ahead with embedding 64KB chips in future passports, citing a desire to abide by "globally interoperable" standards devised by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency. Other nations, including the United Kingdom and Germany, have announced similar plans.
In regulations published Tuesday, the State Department claims it has addressed privacy concerns. The chipped passports "will not permit 'tracking' of individuals," the department said. "It will only permit governmental authorities to know that an individual has arrived at a port of entry--which governmental authorities already know from presentation of non-electronic passports--with greater assurance that the person who presents the passport is the legitimate holder of the passport."
To address Americans' concerns about ID theft, the Bush administration said the new passports will be outfitted with "antiskimming material" in the front cover to "mitigate" the threat of the information being surreptitiously scanned from afar. It's not clear, though, how well the technique will work against high-powered readers that have been demonstrated to read RFID chips from about 160 feet away.
"The shielding in the passport is a physical device that basically, when the passport cover is closed, it's very difficult to read the chip," a State Department official, who did not wish to be identified by name, said Tuesday. The official was unable to provide details about the material's composition. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, which has been working to evaluate the chip's vulnerability to skimming, was unable to provide further information on Tuesday.
Privacy advocates told CNET News.com that the anti-skimming device was a decent start. But if the cover of the passport happens to be open, all bets are off, said Bill Scannell, a privacy advocate who founded the site RFIDkills.com. "They've built little baby radio stations into peoples' passports and covered it with concrete," he said, "but when the little hatch is open, you can still hear the music."
"It's better than nothing," Scannell went on, "but why take this risk?"
In addition, the passports will use "Basic Access Control," a reference to storing a pair of secret cryptographic keys in the chip inside. The concept is simple: The RFID chip disgorges its contents only after a reader successfully authenticates itself as being authorized to receive that information.
Computer scientists, however, have criticized that encryption method as flawed. In a recent paper (PDF here), RSA Laboratories' Ari Juels, and University of California's David Molnar and David Wagner, warned that the design of the encryption keys is insufficiently secure. They said that the use of a "single fixed key" for the lifetime of the e-passport creates a vulnerability.
The Bush administration could face an eventual legal challenge. A letter to the State Department from privacy groups (PDF here) says there is "no statutory authority" for the RFID passport because Congress has not authorized it.
"Our point is, whatever Congress may have meant in giving the State Department authority to issue passports was probably to issue passports that were like the old passports," said Lee Tien, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which co-authored the comments. "But at some point you are doing something that is significantly different, which should probably require some sort of additional congressional authorization. The argument is how broadly does that authority go, and honestly, it's something no one knows."