Wireless World: Smart-cards vs. RFID tags

United Press International ^ | April 1, 2005 | Gene Koprowski

[kerrywearsbotox]

CHICAGO, April 1 (UPI) -- Very soon, international travelers will be able to breeze through customs checkpoints using passports outfitted with contactless smart-cards, experts told UPI's Wireless World. With the new technology, travelers will present their passports to customs agents, who simply will swipe them across a card reader, just as checkout clerks run bags of potato chips over a laser scanner at a grocery store. Likewise, as part of a directive signed by President George W. Bush, the Department of Homeland Security is planning to issue smart-card identification badges that will include digital images of fingerprints. The smart-cards, which contain wireless chips, will be inserted by the U.S. State Department into all new American passports starting later this year. They will contain up to 64 bits of memory, storing each traveler's name, date of birth, city of origin and other identifying information -- including a digital image. Because of its growth potential, major manufacturers such as Philips Semiconductors, Symbol Technologies, On Track Innovations Ltd. and others have entered the smart-card field. Though they are similar in function to radio frequency identification devices, or RFIDs, smart-card advocates are quick to point out their differences."These are passive tags," said Dave Engberg, chief technology officer at CoreStreet, a technology developer in Cambridge, Mass. "That means they don't have a power source in them. All the power comes from the induction of the magnetic field generated by the device that reads the chips."

[kerrywearsbotox]

A story about how the government is trying to violate our civil rights.

[joesnuffy]

The AntiChrist thanks you and wants you to know he's available for parties and will be here all millenium..

[bahblahbah]

Nah, IIRC Yeshua will kick him out after 7 years.

[sionnsar]

They will contain up to 64 bits of memory, storing each traveler's name, date of birth, city of origin and other identifying information -- including a digital image.

That's an awful lot of data for just 64 bits...

[brivette]

Wrong. 666 years.

[discostu]

There's no civil rights violation here. It's just making passports handier, more useful and harder to forge. Less than 10% of the country even has passports.

[SC_Republican]

They will contain up to 64 bits of memory, storing each traveler's name, date of birth, city of origin and other identifying information -- including a digital image. That's an awful lot of data for just 64 bits...

i was gonna say the same thing....64 bits aint alot of storage.....

[Altamira]

This is insane. The FedGov is keeping track of all of US, and meanwhile thousands of illegals (criminals) stream across our borders, and our "representatives" in Congress propose this: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1375781/posts

[SC_Republican]

but 2 ^ 64 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616

[AFreeBird]

Maybe the idiot UPI reporters meant to say 64 kilobits, but then 64 kilobytes would be more reasonable.

[discostu]

64 bits is all you need to key it to a database that can hold as much data as you want.

[old-ager]

> 64 bits of memory, storing each traveler's name, date of birth, city of origin and other identifying information -- including a digital image

I think they left out a little "mega".

[texaspirate]

"There's no civil rights violation here. It's just making passports handier, more useful and harder to forge."

I have to agree with you here. It is one of the choices we have to make to travel internationally and older passports are too easy to forge. Some folks need to see what it takes to get visas to enter some other countries. If someone does not want to give up the personal information, then they have a choice not to apply for a passport.

[AFreeBird]

Yes, 64 bits would be enough to hold a primary key to a database record, but I believe the idea is to have certain data self contained and readable on the spot without access to a DB. In this way, even foreign customs agents could read the data on the chip to verify what is printed on the paper. I don't see State giving access to our passport DB's to foreign governments freely. That and distance and infrastructure would make direct DB access problematic. (at least for the foreseeable future)

64K would be enough for a reasonably sized .JPG photo, name, address, DOB etc. Also, fingerprints are coded, not an acutal .JPG of the print; MB's are not required especially for a smartcard.

[RaceBannon]

no, 7 years

[sionnsar]

As a numerical identifier, index to a database with all that information, that's fine. But you couldn't even fit my birthplace (name of city only) in 64 bits unless you could encode all 26 letters, each in only 4 bits.

[discostu]

Since you have to have a computerized system in the first place to even read the cards why not run it through a DB lookup? Your readers are going to have to connect to a central DB eventually anyway since part of passports is recording international travel data, might as well read as well as write.

They don't have to give access to the full DB, State could give them a miniaturized version with just enough data for ID confirmation.

Could be done either way, the problem with storing data on the card is that increases forgability, anybody who can figure out how the data is stored and encrypted can fake it. Database primary keys can be a bit tougher to you gotta know where data you like is and hope it doesn't change.