New US RFID passports manufactured offshore at a huge profit, transported by unsecured couriers
Each new e-passport contains a small computer chip inside the back cover that contains the passport number along with the photo and other personal data of the holder. The data is secured and is transmitted through a tiny wire antenna when it is scanned electronically at border entry points and compared to the actual traveler carrying it.Outsourced passports netting govt. profits, risking national security (via Beyond the Beyond)According to interviews and documents, GPO managers rejected limiting the contracts to U.S.-made computer chip makers and instead sought suppliers from several countries, including Israel, Germany and the Netherlands.
Mr. Somerset, the GPO spokesman, said foreign suppliers were picked because "no domestic company produced those parts" when the e-passport production began a few years ago.
After the computer chips are inserted into the back cover of the passports in Europe, the blank covers are shipped to a factory in Ayutthaya, Thailand, north of Bangkok, to be fitted with a wire Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, antenna. The blank passports eventually are transported to Washington for final binding, according to the documents and interviews.
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The real question is: are these passports region-free?
They tried to do the same thing here in France, any french citizen willing to visit the US had to get a RFID biometric passport, also manufactured abroad, but they had to give up after the threat of a massive strike by the national print workers.
As a result, almost no Frenchman visited the US last summer, due to fail to obtain new passports, but now the RFID passports are made in the country, with the maximum security available.
Ah, the advantages of an educated populace.
Here we take what ever shit gets thrown on our plate, and we like it.
And I remember when we used to joke about car license plates made by people in American prisons for pennies. . .
Is anything important actually made here anymore?
What a great way to mass-produce RFID passports that are actually wired to a second chip -- inserted in the antenna installation process -- that mimics the first but is not "secure" even in the vaguest of security-theater definitions.
The potential for sheer pranksterism boggles the mind. Nothing like 100 million passports that suddenly change everyone's stored identity to Elvis, Somchai Wongsawat (the recently deposed Thai Prime Minister), or Osama Bin Laden on April Fool's Day.
I can't find the article right now, and I'm off to work, but wasn't there a report about 4 months ago that a large number (I think 20,000 , but I could be wrong) American Passports went missing from a Thai factory? If this is true...there's already problems, and there NOT going to be fixed anytime soon.
I think maybe there should be a law that states that anything that is supposed to be a secure document is produced in a secure facility within the country. Oh...wait...that's the smart idea...
This is the thing that no-one seems to have mentioned in regard such things (here in the UK at least) as the National ID database, the if-you-have-nothing-to-hide-you-have-nothing-to-fear communications database, and indeed nuclear power stations, coming soon to a coastline near you: to quote astronaut Alan Shepherd (as quoted by John Glenn): 'I wasn’t scared, but I was up there looking around, and suddenly I realized I was sitting on top of a rocket built by the lowest bidder.'
We've got a lot of those rockets coming up.
Whenever you are moving this kind of chips from place to place, they must be secured by a cryptographic transport key, and I think this is the case.
There's a priceless statement in the original article about the profits the GPO is reaping from these. They said they've had "accelerated revenue recognition," and "not necessarily excess profits."
"in sometimes-unstable regions"
Since when are Germany, the Netherlands, or Israel "unstable regions"? Nevertheless, this passport practice is stupid.
Ah, that's what I get for not reading the whole article. They're then shipped to Thailand before coming back to the US. :-P
Will I need a passport if I plan to never come back?
Well, Israel must at leat count as 'troubled', surely?
This and most other measures pushed by the current administration have cost a lot of money while doing little to enhance real security. However, they ARE effective for tracking law-abiding citizens.
As John Hodgman just pointed out in another post, the Dutch are all gnomesex-loving perverts, and therefore deserving of suspicion.
And Germany is right across the border. Clearly a conspiracy is afoot.
"Since when are Germany, the Netherlands or Israel "unstable regions"?"
Cory should have instead written "regions unsympathetic to the current U.S. administration", which is pretty much every one.
I worked for 8 years for a very large US computer company, doing smart card work all that time. I spent a lot of time working with the GPO, and even got to see the entire non-RFID passport production process.
We put together a bid that would have brought all the production into a secure facility in the USA. The proposal was relatively expensive because of the security and the fact that this work was going to be done on US soil rather than outsourced. In fact we we proposed buying the technology from the company in Thailand (we already had good relations with them) in order to use their process in the US.
We lost on price.
Let me tell you a secret about a lot of security work. Nobody wants to pay for real security. They want some buzzword compliant veneer that gives the appearance of security.
Made in the USA... by robots
The germane issue is the massive security holes for forgery that this system currently provides. It's not end-to-end secure, and I imagine to people in the right positions, selling blank passports is commonplace.
This fits within Bruce Schneier's general thesis that the more security relies on credentials and identity documents, the greater the false sense of security as those credentials and documents will be forged by people truly determined to do "bad things".
more proof it's all theatre. Those that "matter" are well protected, who really cares if a few thousand more peons die? This is why the TSA CAN be such a joke, this is why ID documents for the truly rich and powerful may as well not even exist. It is useful at the moment to pretend Things Are Being Done to guide the herd, but you must never confuse it with actual security. Remember: Actual Security consists of the security of person and property of the Right People.
Information in the article seems legit,(i've seen it in other sources) but when linking to the Washington Times i think it should be mentioned that the paper is own by Rev. Moon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times
Capitalism its the American way.
If RFID-enabled passports should be entirely assembled in U.S. by trusted companies, from trusted components, etc... aren't those passports done for improving national security or something like that? ... well, I hope U.S. is not going to outsource production of MIM-104 Patriot to some not-really-friendly-but-cheap country....
Something "in flavour", as a warning:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/10/organized_crime_doctors_chip_and_pin_machines/
Blackbird @6, if 20,000 of these have already gone missing, the new passports are inherently insecure and can't be made secure.
A Random John @16:
True. It's why pre-9/11 airport baggage checkers were so inept. Airlines got charged for security, so they went to one of two companies that specialized in providing the minimum necessary employees at the lowest possible price. Some positions had 700% annual turnover.As Bruce Schneier has been preaching for years, real security requires human attention. Technology can help humans do their work, but it can't replace them.
#17 Now, I consider myself a raving liberal, generally. But I would think in a period where our economy is falling apart at the seems, our government (paid for and elected by us) would seek to use companies for important projects actually here in the United States.
It's like selling our toll roads and bridges to foreign companies. Or even letting our port security be handled by a Middle Eastern firm.