Renew Your Passport Now, Even if it's not Expired, says Bruce Schneier

[w4rma]

The ID Chip You Don't Want in Your Passport
By Bruce Schneier
Saturday, September 16, 2006; Page A21

If you have a passport, now is the time to renew it -- even if it's not set to expire anytime soon. If you don't have a passport and think you might need one, now is the time to get it. In many countries, including the United States, passports will soon be equipped with RFID chips. And you don't want one of these chips in your passport.

RFID stands for "radio-frequency identification." Passports with RFID chips store an electronic copy of the passport information: your name, a digitized picture, etc. And in the future, the chip might store fingerprints or digital visas from various countries.

By itself, this is no problem. But RFID chips don't have to be plugged in to a reader to operate. Like the chips used for automatic toll collection on roads or automatic fare collection on subways, these chips operate via proximity. The risk to you is the possibility of surreptitious access: Your passport information might be read without your knowledge or consent by a government trying to track your movements, a criminal trying to steal your identity or someone just curious about your citizenship.
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http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/09/renew_your_pass.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/15/AR2006091500923.html

[peacebird]

1. Can you get a new passport if your old one isn't due to expire?

[kestrel91316]

2. Sure can.

[rodeodance]

10. you got the money honey, i got the time (to make you a new one)

[Kali]

3. Wouldn't that just be postponing the inevitable?

[lvx35]

4. yes, but for a long time.

I got my passport in the 90s, and I think its good till like 2011.

[Kali]

6. I think they are good for ten years.

So that buys you ten years if you get one now. My guess is it will take a year or two to work the predictable bugs out of the system and then the move will be on to make the chipless ones as inconveient and obsolete-seeming as possible so you will be almost forced to conform. Have you tried writing a check to anybody lately? Most folks have pretty well converted to plastic cards without issue. And how many get by without using their SS numbers for various forms of ID?

[Sapere aude]

5. Just wait until they want to implant a chip in your butt.

You'll be traced from the day you are born until you die then your chip will be buried with you or go up in smoke. Anyone without a chip in their butt will be considered a terrorist and be sent to concentration camp or exported to some planet out in space. The interstellar busses are being built as we speak.

[lvx35]

7. wait? I've probably aready got a chip in my butt...

along with everybody else whose been a political activist in the last few years, knowing the liberties Bush has taken with our constitutional rights.

[bemildred]

8. A bit on RFID hacking for the curious:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/rfid.html

[meldroc]

9. Too late for me. :(

I live in Colorado, and Colorado's passport making facility already is making RFID passports.

Well, there's always the microwave, or I could simply use a soldering iron to destroy the RFID chip in the passport if I decide to get one.

[indepat]

11. Why do the perpetrators want someone to be able to steal our identities?