Government Mandated RFID Documents Vulnerable to Identity Theft say Privacy Watchdogs

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This past June 1st, the Federal government’s new mandatory passport rules went into effect for all Americans traveling to or from Mexico, Canada, Bermuda, and the Caribbean¹. Thanks in large part to heavy lobbying by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the new passports and several state drivers licenses now include an embedded RFID chip incessantly broadcasting a unique identification number.²

Unfortunately and unbeknownst to many holders of the “state-of-the-art” mandatory government  documents, the unique identifier can be intercepted almost effortlessly by any third party without the holder’s knowledge or consent. The practice, known as skimming, raises the specter not only of identity theft, but also provides the skimmer with the ability to track individuals in real time, whether on the street, in their home, or at their workplace.

Privacy advocates including those in the embedded chip industry continue to sound the alarm over the relative ease in which the chip’s integrity may become compromised. Moreover, groups such as the ACLU point out that RFID originally gained commercial viability after its implementation for use in tracking cattle. They and other privacy advocates express concern over possible similar implications for individuals in the near future as the technology continues to miniaturize and tracking satellites become more sophisticated.³

However, the DHS is quick to counter complaints against the ubiquitous RFID system stating that:

“It [RFID] is not to identify people, but to verify that the identification document holds valid information about you.”⁴

Mary Ellen Callahan
Chief Privacy Officer
Department of Homeland Security

Nevertheless, the agency’s own draft report⁵ from 2006 indicates that RFID chips:

In fact to demonstrate the ease of which RFID chips are vulnerable to clandestine interception, white hat hacker, Scott Padget filmed himself this past February and posted his results onto YouTube. Using his laptop and for less than $250.00 in additional equipment, Mr. Padget captured the unique RFID broadcasts from several unwitting pedestrians on the streets of San Francisco all within about an hour.

Currently the states of Texas, Arizona, Vermont, New York, Washington, and Michigan already include RFID chips within newly issued drivers licenses, with DHS also continuing to lobby for further expansion of the chipped identification cards in to non-border states. At the forefront of this further expansion, sits SENATE BILL 1261 “Providing for Additional Security in States’ Identification Act of 2009″ (S.1261 PASS ID Act 09).

The Senate bill sponsored by Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI) seeks to have the federal government reinsert many of the standards for drivers licenses which after public outcry, were removed from the REAL ID Act. Included among the Orwellian provisions, a digital facial recognition compatible photograph for use with both domestic and international databases such as the AAMVA and the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization⁶ (IACO). S.1261 currently resides in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chaired by Senator Lieberman and which Senator Akaka is also a member.

Critics of S.1261 such as Mr. Mark Lerner of the “Stop REAL ID Coalition” fear that the ability to immediately surveil individuals and match their face to a name via a centralized database may be used to squash political dissent on a variety of issues from torture, the FEDERAL RESERVE, and/or our nation’s continuing interventionist foreign policy.

Source(s): ¹U.S. Department of State “Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative” • ² Department of Homeland Security “Enhanced Drivers Licenses: What Are They?” • ³ ACLU “Don’t Chip Our Rights Away” • ⁴ Associated Press “
Chips in official IDs raise privacy fears” by Todd Lewan, published July 12th, 2009 • ⁵ DHS “”The Use of RFID for Human Identification” (2006) • ⁶United Nations News Center