If you’re thinking of travelling overseas any time soon, go and get your passport, scan it and insert a digital copy onto your iPad. It might just save you if you happen to lose the real thing, as a Canadian man discovered over Christmas. More »
A portable DNA scanner no larger than a laser printer with the ability to give results in under an hour? Surely you jest. But, given US Homeland Security and their ever growing budget, ultra-fast DNA testing kits may soon find their way to airports in the coming months. More »
If you have an RFID-lojacked passport but don’t keep it in a faraday cage wallet, this video of Chris Paget’s war-driving exploits—plucking information off them from afar—should make you think real hard about it.
The implied indignation in Mike Elgan’s post about the UK’s audacity to require a passport to buy even a prepaid mobile phone shows that he’s never tried to buy one as a foreigner in Japan. It was among the most annoying things I did when I lived there—you don’t just need a passport (that would’ve been immensely easier), you also need your gaijin card—officially the gaikokujin torokusho—that takes at least a month to get (after you’ve gotten your visa settled), or at least the receipt showing you’ve applied for it, just to get a crappy prepaid phone.
newVideoPlayer("/elvispassport_giz.flv", 506, 423,""); Hackers have discovered techniques to make backups of RFID passports as well as bypass ePassport RFID authentication at airport passport scanners. Their method, which is publicly available, includes software to design custom identities and convinces scanners to accept fully fabricated RFID chips—neither of which trigger any sort of alarm with “security.” And in this clip, Elvis comes back from the dead to scan his passport at an airport to prove it.
3M’s new Mobile ID Reader scans MRZ and RF chip data from passports and visas and immediately checks them against local or international watch lists by using wifi or GSM/GPRS EDGE networks. It seems like a great tool to further make you feel like you’re living in some scary dystopian sci-fi novel, especially when you hear that dastardly monopolist Bill Gates got his little-loved Windows Mobile 6 OS onto the device.
New York is joining Washington State and North Carolina by offering motorists the option to purchase an Enhanced Driver’s Licence (EDL) with an embedded RFID chip. The licence will enable travellers to pass in and out of Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean without having to use a traditional passport. The DMV also notes that no personal information is stored on the chip, just an identification number—so paranoid travelers should rest easy…unless they are lying (remember, the government watches every move you make). All-in-all, spending an extra $US30 for the enhanced licence seems like a pretty sweet deal when you consider that a passport runs about $US150 these days. [DMV via CNET via Jalopnik]
