Big brother in real?
24. September 2007
Feel free to skip this if you are not interested in political blogs…
The German government is planing to release new ID-Cards in 2009 for all citizens. To add some additional values to that cards they will contain some electronic signature to be able to prove your identity on the internet. That of course is really a good idea and they even try to protect your privacy by introducing a PIN code if someone wants to read from your card and the possibility to allow to read a subset of the data (e.g. your birth date).
The problem is that the good things end here. Because together with the chip that should be readable in any chipcard reader it is physical attached to the card should contain an RFID chip. Other than reading from the chip which nobody can do unless you give him the card, the RFID chip can be read without noticing. Big brother will now everywhere you go and even more dangerous everywhere you have been.
To make it even worse, in addition to the photo which is rather public on the card anyway, the RFID will contain two fingerprints. They do not only know where you have been, the also know what you touched (and they can easily break your cool new biometric authentication…). And it’s getting even better because they also create a central register of the photos and the also want (but there is even some resistance inside the government) a central register of the fingerprints.
You may say now, that you have nothing to hide. Do you? What if you have been at the wrong place at the wrong time? Demonstrated against the government and they put an RFID reader along the street?
Remember big brother is watching YOU!
24. September 2007 at 17:54
If you use fingerprints for authenticating something important to you, remember you just gave the bartender your password, just as well as the lady that cleans the toilets. Iris/face scans can be fooled just as well by photographs.
How about letting the government bear the cost of failing on this worthless type of authentication.
Oh, and RFID? It’s invasive, but make sure you turn off your cellphone before worrying about that.
24. September 2007 at 20:14
Aluminium foil is your friend 🙂
24. September 2007 at 23:38
We’re all criminals in this age of big brother. I can’t wait until the day arrives when it will all go wrong and a moronic dictator kills everyone he doesn’t like.
Will it be Bush? Or his friend Bin Laden? Or perhaps Ahmadinejad? What about Putin? Or even Balkenende. Who knows.
*puts on his tinfoil hat
26. September 2007 at 11:53
This is a nice article countering the “I’ve got nothing to hide” argument:
‘I’ve Got Nothing to Hide’ and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy
DANIEL J. SOLOVE
George Washington University Law School
Abstract:
In this short essay, written for a symposium in the San Diego Law Review, Professor Daniel Solove examines the nothing to hide argument. When asked about government surveillance and data mining, many people respond by declaring: I’ve got nothing to hide. According to the nothing to hide argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. The nothing to hide argument and its variants are quite prevalent, and thus are worth addressing. In this essay, Solove critiques the nothing to hide argument and exposes its faulty underpinnings.
Download here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565#PaperDownload