Category Archives: Technology

Quote of the day–Clayton Cramer

Posted on by

If I could have one wish fulfilled right now, it would be for someone to get fusion electricity production operational. Cheap electricity would, in a decade or two, make oil irrelevant. The Arab nations would go back to being Bedouins–and we could turn that part of the world into a giant nature preserve, as a reminder of what happens when you get stuck in the twelfth century, and refuse to move forward.

Clayton Cramer
Middle Eastern Oil Dependence
February 01, 2006
[Not entirely true but probably close enough for Mideast politics.  Oil is used for lots of things besides energy.  Lubricants, solvents, and plastics are just the start of a very long list.–Joe]

Socialist weenies take on Microsoft

Posted on by

I haven’t been following the story very closely but my intial inclination, were I at Microsoft in charge of dealing with the socialists in Europe, would be to tell them “We are suspending sales of products to your country.  All future versions, including updates to existing products, will refuse to operate if the IP address of the computer is within your country.  Language support for the dominate languages in your country will be disabled if it doesn’t affect other countries who are friendly to us.  We can chose whether to do business in your country or not.  We chose NOT.”

Of course, short term, this would be harmful to the stockholders of Microsoft but it would get my (a very, very minor stockholder) approval.  Here’s the story that pushed me over the edge:

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s antitrust chief says Microsoft (MSFT) cannot charge licensing fees for software blueprints that it is offering to share with competitors unless it can prove the computer code is innovative.

Neelie Kroes also told European lawmakers on Tuesday that she has not yet received all information on Microsoft’s offer to share software code and comply with a 2004 EU antitrust ruling.

Microsoft has until Feb. 15 to meet European Commission demands from December that it provide complete and accurate information on code that would allow competitors’ products to communicate smoothly with servers running Microsoft operating systesms.

EU antitrust regulators have threatened Microsoft with daily fines of 2 million euros ($2.36 million), retroactive to mid-December, if it fails to comply by the deadline.

In December, Microsoft provided EU officials with thousands of documents but an independent monitor said they were “fundamentally flawed” and required a drastic overhaul to make them workable.

Last week, Microsoft offered to let competitors examine some server source code, calling it the “ultimate documentation” which might address regulators’ concerns. Kroes said the first she heard of that offer was via a Microsoft press release.

The EU has never asked Microsoft to supply source code. Backers of open source alternatives to Microsoft’s proprietary operating systems called last week’s offer a “poisoned apple,” as the terms of access to the code were unclear.

EU officials and an independent monitor held talks Monday at Microsoft’s U.S. headquarters to discuss improvements to the technical documentation that the software company has so far supplied.

Google in China

Posted on by

Interesting… using google.cn I get very similar results to google.com for the searches “Boomershoot”, “Joe Huffman”, “Freedom”, and “want some help building a bomb”.

I suppose the “Great Firewall of China” probably will block access for some of that but still it highlights the difficulty government types have in restricting information.

Also of interest is that by setting up a proxy on the outside of the firewall and encrypting the traffic between the browser on the inside of the firewall and the proxy on the outside it is trival to bypass the firewall and get access to all the internet.  The firewall would have to block all proxies or all forms of encryption and stegonography (very tough problem) to be effective.

As with illegal recreation drugs in the U.S., illegal handguns in the U.K., and all other goods if there is a market it will be supplied by someone making a profit.  Information in China will be the same.

Remote searching of your body

Posted on by

There is a new tool for remotely searching your body even while you are moving.  Haven’t these people heard of the 4th Amendment?

Wednesday, January 25, 2006  E-Mail this article to a friend Printer Friendly Version

New US security device spots weapons under clothes

By Christian Wiessner

At its first public demonstration on Monday in New York, the device was able to detect a mock gun and a bomb replica, which the company said, was similar to that used by Al Qaeda

A new surveillance device using radio waves to look under peoples’ clothing for concealed guns, bombs or other weapons may be coming soon to a security checkpoint near you.

But the modest need not worry about screeners sneaking a voyeuristic peek because the system only identifies non-human material tucked inside clothing and does not convey images of the naked form underneath, the maker of the device – Brijot Imaging Systems Inc. of Orlando, Florida – said on Monday.

The BIS-WIDS Prime is the first and only surveillance camera that immediately detects and identifies the exact location of objects hidden beneath a person’s clothing while the person is in motion, the company said.

At its first public demonstration on Monday in New York, the device was able to detect a mock gun and a bomb replica the company said was similar to that used by Al Qaeda.

“The software in the machine itself actually looks at the person, looks at the objects, and actually tells you what it is and, most importantly, where it is on the body,” said Brijot Chief Executive Brian Andrew. “It doesn’t just go ‘bing’ like a metal detector. We can identify weapons’ shapes.”

The device uses computer panels that display images of the body to the security screener, with dark patches marking the location of hidden objects.

The invention was described by company officials as basically a small radio telescope that “sees” radio waves transmitted by the body. If a portion of the body is covered by something underneath clothing, no waves will transmit from that part of the body, raising a red flag to screeners.

“Our bodies radiate radio waves just like a cell phone does, and our camera sees that,” Andrew said.

Since when has the 4th Amendment been about voyeurs?  It’s about preventing a police state.  The use of this by the government or under the direction of government on the general public (in a prison situation, sure, that would be appropriate) fails my Jews In The Attic Test in a big way.

I helped design and build a device using similar technology that was intended to guiding a missle on it’s terminal descent to take out a tank when I worked at Boeing.  I made a simple change in the test unit such that it with the flip of a switch it would track humans instead of a tank.  It was rather creepy to have the seeker point at you as you walked across the room.

One way to defeat it is to create lots of false positives.  A sheet of aluminum foil will block these emissions from your body just as a firearm or other object will.  Sew them into your coat.  Cut them into shapes and make it appear as if you are carrying dozens of guns, drop them into the coat pockets of others, and put them into books and magazines in airport stores.

Hunting whitetail alternatives

Posted on by

Every once in a while people laugh at my method of getting a deer this year (something along the lines of “The Geek Goes Hunting”).  Well, here is someone else for you to laugh about:

THE WHITETAIL DEER HUNT WITH A MOUNTAIN HOWITZER

For those of you unfamiliar with cannon artillery talk, a 12 pound Mountain Howitzer cannon was a small cannon used during the Civil War. The early mt howitzer cannons were originally designed to be disassembled and packed into the mountains on horseback, hence the name, Mountain Howitzer. The later model Mountain Howitzers, like this one, were built on a carriage designed to be “pulled” by horses. The “pound” designation ( 12 pdr ) in the name ” 12 pound Mountain Howitzer ” refers to the weight of the projectile that the mt howitzer cannon shoots. Therefore, a 12 pound Mountain Howitzer ( 12 pdr ) shoots a 12 pound cannonball. All artillery cannons with smooth bore barrels were described in the “pound” weight of their projectiles and were called “Cannons.” ( like the 12 pound Mountain Howitzer Cannon ) Artillery cannons with rifled barrels were described in the “inch” of their bore diameters and called “Guns.” ( like a 3 inch Gun ) First, let me start by saying that I’m pretty sure that it may not be entirely legal to use a Mountain Howitzer Cannon for deer hunting, at least not here in Wisconsin. ( I didn’t actually ask the DNR about using a Mountain Howitzer, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t like it ) Be sure to check with your own State Hunting regulations, …… ( see the “Hunting with Artillery section )

He goes on in great detail on how to build the Mountain Howitzer cannon, the ammo to use, how to use it safely in a hunting environment, and finally a picture of a whitetail buck harvested with a Mountain Howitzer cannon.

National ID–I told you so

Posted on by

Real ID Act (National ID cards with a different name) are a
waste of time and money as well as being a source of high risk to
liberty.  A year ago I wrote about the flaws that would show up.  Now the AP has an ‘exclusive’ on the story of the problems the states are having:

AP Exclusive: National ID, State Nightmare

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN AP Technology Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

An anti-terrorism law creating a national standard for all driver’s
licenses by 2008 isn’t just upsetting civil libertarians and
immigration rights activists.

State motor vehicle officials nationwide who will have to carry out the
Real ID Act say its authors grossly underestimated its logistical,
technological and financial demands.

In a comprehensive survey obtained by The Associated Press and in
follow-up interviews, officials cast doubt on the states’ ability to
comply with the law on time and fretted that it will be a budget buster.

“It
is just flat out impossible and unrealistic to meet the prescriptive
provisions of this law by 2008,” Betty Serian, a deputy secretary of
the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, said in an interview.

…

In a comprehensive survey obtained by The Associated Press and in
follow-up interviews, officials cast doubt on the states’ ability to
comply with the law on time and fretted that it will be a budget buster.

“It is just flat out impossible and unrealistic to meet the
prescriptive provisions of this law by 2008,” Betty Serian, a deputy
secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, said in an
interview.

…

“If you take any one of these things individually, you see a
significant problem,” Steinhardt said. “There are literally hundreds of
these problems embedded in Real ID, and the statute doesn’t give you a
way out. It’s black and white. No exceptions, no reality check.

“In many respects it’s a statute that ignores reality.”

Like I said in my post from last year.  It’s as
if the congress critters had tried to legislate that PI equals
3.0.  They are out of touch with reality.

Puffers in airplane security

Posted on by

The latest technology to be employed in the unconstitutional search of people attempting to board an aircraft while exercising their right to travel is puffers:

‘Puffers’ add to airport security
1/12/2006 1:29 PM
By: Lisa Reyes, News 14 Carolina

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Travelers at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport
will soon see new security measures. High-tech machines to detect
explosives will be located at three checkpoints.

The Transportation Security Administration says the imminent danger to
aviation these days is explosives. TSA officials demonstrated devices
called “explosive-detection trace portals” or “puffers” at the airport
on Thursday.

The machines puff air on travelers to dislodge particles from their skin or clothing.

“It loosens particles that are attached to a person or his clothing,
and those particles are analyzed by the machine for the presence of
explosives,” said John Gartland of TSA.

The devices take about 20-25 seconds to check each passenger.

The TSA purchased the three machines through federal funding. They cost
a little over $100,000, and about a 100 of them will be implemented in
airports nationwide.

I agree that explosives is the biggest threat to safe airplane travel.  Other weapons such as guns and knives are of little use if someone wanted to bring the airplane down.  And if the user of such a weapon were intent on attacking people in the cabin they wouldn’t make all that much progress before they were stopped by someone else in the cabin.  But a pound of explosives, about the size and weight of a pint of milk, in a tightly closed area like the cabin of an aircraft can do a lot of damage.  There is a Myth Busters episode on this very topic if you have any doubts.

In any case keeping explosives off of passenger airplanes is a good idea.  They aren’t useful for self-defense in an air cabin environment, as the knives and handguns are, and they represent a significant hazard to the entire aircraft and people on the ground.  The problem is–How do you do it?  As I have explained before with the explosive sniffing wasps the problem is one of false positives if you try to detect improvised and/or “homemade” explosives.  And if you don’t address those type of explosives you have a loophole any terrorist can waltz right through.  And the current explosives detection technology fails even on people that inadvertently contaminate their luggage.  If a skilled adversary were to be intent on bringing explosives on board a plane nothing short of a full search of everyone will be effective. So what’s the solution?  Use our limited resources on other things such as better intelligence as to who is a threat and interviews of passengers.  That will guard against both the known threats using existing weapons and the type of threats we haven’t thought of yet.

RFID blocking wallet

Posted on by

Radio Frequency ID–the chips they put in pets for identifcation (and some people want to put them in people) are everywhere.  They used for inventory control, shoplifting detection, and ID cards.  Here is how to make your own wallet that will block the remote reading of the devices in your pocket.

Bomb-sniffing wasps

Posted on by

Via Bruce Schneier comes this article in USA Today:

Scientists at a Georgia laboratory have developed what could be a
low-tech, low-cost weapon in the war on terrorism: trained wasps.

The tiny, non-stinging wasps can check for hidden explosives at airports and monitor for toxins in subway tunnels.

“You can rear them by the thousands, and you can
train them within a matter of minutes,” says Joe Lewis, a U.S.
Agriculture Department entomologist. “This is just the very tip of the
iceberg of a very new resource.”

…

The wasps are trained with sugar water by using
the classical conditioning techniques made famous by Pavlov’s dogs.
Rains says the wasps are sensitive to a host of chemical odors,
including 2,4-DNT, a volatile compound used in dynamite.

To do their work, five wasps — each a half-inch
long — are placed in a plastic cylinder that is 15 inches tall. This
“Wasp Hound,” which costs roughly $100 per unit, has a vent in one end
and a camera that connects to a laptop computer.

When the wasps pick up an odor they’ve been
trained to detect they gather by the vent — a response that can be
measured by the computer or actually seen by observers.

Lewis says the wasps, when exposed to some
chemicals, “can detect as low as four parts per billion, which is an
incredibly small amount.”

I admire the innovation in the research laboratory but I am
skeptical of success in the real world. The wasps apparently have to be
trained for each specific volatile chemical. The 2,4-DNT mentioned in
the article as being present in dynamite doesn’t exist in other
explosives such as ammonium-nitrate/fuel-oil mixtures. Ammonium nitrate
by itself doesn’t really have any volatile byproducts other than, in
some cases, ammonia which would result in the obvious problem with
false positives. Fuel oil sensing would also have similar problems with
false positives as well as being easily replaced with almost any
hydrocarbon including such things as diesel, alcohol, and powdered sugar.

The ATF as well as foreign regulatory agencies require plastic
explosives to be manufactured with a small percentage of volatile
chemicals such as Ethylene glycol dinitrate,
2,3-Dimethyl-2,3-dinitrobutane, para-mononitrotoluene, or
ortho-mononitrotoluene. This is to make it feasible to easily detect
the presence of the explosives.

It would be overly optimistic to assume terrorists would conform to
these requirement in the manufacture of their own explosives.

Quote of the day–Ry Jones

Posted on by

He’s clearly nuts.

Ry Jones
December 27, 2005
[Referring to this guy thinking government regulation could prevent abuse of a mandatory Universal Biometric ID and such a system was inevitable.  See also some of the on-line clashes I have had with him.  He is also my number one suspect as to the person that gave PNNL the ‘tip’ to look at my blog and websites and if true is probably a conspirator in this felony.  See about half way down on this page for more details.–Joe]

Beagle wreckage and rifle shooting on the moon

Posted on by

It was given up for lost almost two years ago but it was a mystery what happened to it.  Now they believe they have found the wreckage:

SCIENTISTS believe they have finally found the wreckage of the stricken Beagle 2 Mars probe, almost two years after it crashed on landing.

A sophisticated analysis of grainy images from a Nasa spacecraft has convinced the Beagle 2 team that the lander met its end in a small crater, into which it touched down in the early hours of Christmas Day 2003 with little chance of survival.

The pictures from Mars Global Surveyor, which have been pored over by an expert who once interpreted spy satellite images for the RAF, show an impact point in the crater and several objects that appear to be Beagle 2’s protective gas bags and, perhaps, the lander itself.

They suggest that the probe was lost because of cruel luck as it touched down in one of the worst possible places for a soft and successful landing. Rather than dropping to the surface on a flat plain, it appears to have first struck the downslope of a small crater about 18.5m (60ft) in diameter, before crashing into its opposite wall, bouncing several times around the rim and eventually coming to rest at the bottom. Even if the gas bags that were meant to cushion its impact were fully inflated, and there is some evidence that they were not, their design would not have allowed them to protect the probe properly under these unlikely circumstances.

Bummer.

I’m a big proponent of space exploration.  Long term getting off this planet is one of the necessary conditions for the survival of our species.  And in the medium term it represents one of the higher likelihood events to restore our freedoms.  Mars represents a good target for colonization and every time we go there it helps us to understand the problems of the journey and the habitation a little bit better. 

Another motivation for getting into space is I would like to be the first person to shoot 1000 yard groups on the moon.  With no wind and 1/5 gravity the group sizes will be awesome!  And you wondered why I had shooting conditions for the moon built into Modern Ballistics.  And no, despite a certain science fiction story you can’t put bullets into orbit from the surface of the moon.  Shooting tangential to the surface I estimate you need to be about 550 970 miles above the surface to achieve a circular orbit with a .220 Swift. 

I sent in my application to NASA to be an astronaut 15 days before Challenger blew up which stymied that career path but I figure if my friend gets his immortality project working I still have a chance.  In addition to immortality he wants to carve his initials in the moon big enough to be seen from earth with the naked eye.  Since explosives are one of the best ways of carving rock he asked if I would do it for him.  If he figures out how to get us safely to the moon and back I’ll figure out a way to carve the 70 mile wide LINES of his initials.  With all the other gear going up I figure there would be room for my rifle and a thousand rounds of ammo (especially if he uses the Orion concept).

Update: I rethought my back of the envelope (literally) calculations this morning and realize I had made an error.  I did some more number crunching and came up with some different numbers.  And since orbital mechanics is not my specialty I’m not guaranteeing any of these numbers.  Useful web pages to figure it out for yourself are here and here.  I’m assuming a muzzle velocity of 4000 fps out of the .220 Swift which has one of the highest muzzle velocities in a commerical load.

Blog advertising

Posted on by

In case you hadn’t noticed the identical ads on so many different blogs, including the second one from the top here on the right.  Here is the story:

The MSNBC cable network plans to flood the Internet this week with its largest concentrated online pitch, running advertising on hundreds of Web sites and blogs. The cost of the campaign, to promote three prime-time programs, is estimated at just under $1 million.

There’s more to the story but basically they are trying to see if they can drive traffic from the internet to their cable channel.  They are advertising on 800 different blogs.  I wish I was getting 1/800 of $1,000,000 but I’m not.  I’m far, far cheaper than that.  So far they have had 24 clicks from 313 page views.  That, 7.67%, is a rather outstanding click through rate.  My boomershoot ad only gets 1.73% and the t-shirt ad currently on top gets 2.94%.

Best bullet for hunting

Posted on by

This guy is even more obsesive and geeky than I am.  He shot about 2350 rounds to get this data.

Sex profits

Posted on by

Innovation as well as expanding their market share of existing products brought greater profits to Durex recently:

The launch of sex toys and new types of condoms has lifted sales growth at Durex to a record 10 per cent. And SSL, which owns the Durex brand, promised further growth yesterday as it launched a new range of sex aids for men that will be available in Tesco and Boots.

A range of vibrators and lubricants sold under the Durex Play brand accounted for half of the sales growth reported yesterday. Durex revenues were £77.1m in the six months to 30 September.

The decision by Boots to stock a new £5.99 vibrating ring for men represents a significant U-turn for the high street chain. At the start of this year it backed out of talks to launch the Durex Play range of vibrators, for fear of a conservative backlash. The range was eventually launched by Superdrug.

…

Tesco insisted yesterday the disposable rings – which last 20 minutes and have a small vibrating pad to enhance the pleasure of women during sex – were not sex toys but part of the health and family planning range.

SSL claimed that Durex’s global market share had risen to 30 per cent after strong growth in the US and Eastern Europe, and thanks to the launch of innovative condoms, such as Pleasuremax, which is ribbed, and Tingle, which is coated with a lubricant that gives a tingling sensation.

SSL, which owns the Scholl footwear and footcare brands, reported interim profits of £17.3m, up from £10.5m in the half-year to 30 September 2004.

ID cards in UK take some heat

Posted on by

Bruce Schneier brought this to my attention.

Ex-MI5 chief says ID cards in the UK would be “useless” for fighting terrorism and “a waste of money”.  Which is what I have been saying for years.  She, of course, has a much more influential position than most.  And she does a good job of hammering the half-baked idea for fighting terrorists:

ID cards have possibly some purpose. 

But I don’t think that anybody in the intelligence services, particularly in my former service, would be pressing for ID cards.

My angle on ID cards is that they may be of some use but only if they can be made unforgeable – and all our other documentation is quite easy to forge.

If we have ID cards at vast expense and people can go into a back room and forge them they are going to be absolutely useless.

ID cards may be helpful in all kinds of things but I don’t think they are necessarily going to make us any safer.

And if it doesn’t help when fighting terrorists then it’s not going to be any good for fighting criminals.

Solving the worlds problems

Posted on by

I was talking with a new friend the other night–“Solving the worlds problems”.  And his solution was two fold; 1) Sterilize everyone at birth, 2) Put a chip, with a GPS and radio transmitter, in everyone’s skull at birth.

His thinking on item 1) was that after people really wanted kids then they would be able to get the sterilization reversed (we are talking utopia here, not the reality that many sterilizations can’t be reversed).  With only wanted kids the quality of the childhood environment would go up drastically and crime, child abuse, gangs, drug use, etc. would drastically reduce and our looming exhaustion of natural resources would be relieved.  On item 2) it was his belief that this would almost completely solve all crime where the criminal planned/hoped to escape.  His biggest concern was how to deal with all the police, prosecutors, judges, lawyers, and prison personal that would be put out of work by his grand plan.

I think I bruised my jaw from it hitting the floor so hard.  Apart from all the unsurmountable technical problems, with both 1) and 2), his ideas fail my Jews in the Attic Test in the most spectacle fashion I have ever seen.  I outlined the test and said his ideas would usher in a police state and result in the deaths of millions.  His response was that he would get rid of religion too so there wouldn’t be any need to hide “Jews in the Attic”.

Yup.  There really are people like that out there.  I tell you…just don’t get weirded out when someone starts talking and they will tell you the most “interesting” things.

He’s a nice guy and I like him.  He’s very entertaining–but I don’t want him voting.

Tagged by the music meme

Posted on by

Almost two months ago Ben tagged me with this post and said:

5) I’m passing this meme on to:

Kirk at Limpidity, as he hasn’t posted or emailed in awhile;

AnalogKid at RandomNuclearStrikes, as he is one of my favorites nowadays;

and Joe Huffman. I just can’t see him having a big Styx collection that he rocks out to on Saturday nights.

No Styx at all.  But at this minute on this Saturday night I’m listening to Ten Years After, A Space in Time.  A few minutes ago it was Uncle Bonsai, The Inessential Uncle Bonsai.

I didn’t really mean to wait this long before responding.  I had to think about it some.  Since we had our first kid, 21 years and nearly five months ago we pretty much stopped listening to music.  When the kid(s) were awake music would have just added to the din.  When they were quiet (asleep) we were so grateful for the quiet we just enjoyed the silence.  When driving alone I usually have some talk radio station on.  Music?  Hmmm… maybe when I’m cleaning house or something.

I’m in my new digs in the Seattle area now and feeling a little sad and alone.  I bought some decent speakers for my computer for the first time and after listening to some Boomershoot sounds put on some music to test them out.  It sounds good.  It helps bring the mood up a bit.  On the drive over I played music in the most geeky way I could think: I played Elvis, The Ventures, and Uncle Bonsai on the laptop computer running off the inverter, the laptop sound output went into a small FM transmitter which I either played into the FM receiver in my new cell-phone and headphones or through the car radio.  The laptop also had Microsoft Streets and Trips with the GPS unit running to track my speed, altitude, and of the course exact position.  Then there was the walkie-talkie on my arm to communicate chat with Barb and her sister in the Jeep.  They came over to catch a cheap flight to the D.C. area to visit Jason.

So… anyway on to the music meme (and Van Halen on the computer):

1) How much music do I have?

Probably 100 albums total.  About an even split between CD’s, cassette tapes (I used to see lots of eight tracks but never had one myself), and vinyl albums.  I haven’t listened to vinyl since Kim (or was it Xenia?) broke the needle on the turntable when she was just a toddler.  James broke it too and we replaced it only to have it destroyed again by one of his sisters.

2) What was the last CD I bought?

Probably the complete collection of Uncle Bonsai a few months ago.  I’m not sure.  I had a couple of their albums on a pirated cassette and really wanted it legit and in good quality.

3) What am I listening to right now?

You Really Got Me, Van Halen.

4) Five songs I listen to that mean a lot to me?

N/A is probably the best answer.  Music doesn’t doesn’t really have “meaning” for me.  It’s a pleasant distraction from boredom.  If pressed for something more than that I would say That’s What You Get for Loving Me, by Gordon Lightfoot.  I don’t listen to it very often, maybe once every couple of years.  But over 30 years ago Barb and I were listening to Gordon Lightfoot in the car while parked overlooking Orofino and the Clearwater valley.  I decided I would kiss her for the first time when the next song came on.  That was the song.  Then there was Having My Baby (You’re) that played on the radio immediately after another milestone in our relationship.  I can’t remember the last time I listened to that.

5) I’m passing this meme on to:

Whoever wants it.

Reloading your own ammo

Posted on by

I have my own reloading press and have reload 9mm, .40 S&W, .223, 30.06, and 300 Win Mag.  These days it’s mostly .40 S&W and I probably average few hundred rounds a month.  My guess is I’m on the low to mid range in terms of home reloaders.  Ry points out someone on the high end.

Passports to get RFID chip implants

Posted on by

Here is some disturbing news:

All U.S. passports will be implanted with remotely readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced.

Sweeping new State Department regulations issued Tuesday say that passports issued after that time will have tiny radio frequency ID (RFID) chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitized data such as “fingerprints or iris scans.”

Over the last year, opposition to the idea of implanting RFID chips in passports has grown amidst worries that identity thieves could snatch personal information out of the air simply by aiming a high-powered antenna at a person or a vehicle carrying a passport. Out of the 2,335 comments on the plan that were received by the State Department this year, 98.5 percent were negative. The objections mostly focused on security and privacy concerns.

…

In regulations published Tuesday, the State Department claims it has addressed privacy concerns. The chipped passports “will not permit ‘tracking’ of individuals,” the department said. “It will only permit governmental authorities to know that an individual has arrived at a port of entry–which governmental authorities already know from presentation of non-electronic passports–with greater assurance that the person who presents the passport is the legitimate holder of the passport.”

To address Americans’ concerns about ID theft, the Bush administration said the new passports will be outfitted with “antiskimming material” in the front cover to “mitigate” the threat of the information being surreptitiously scanned from afar. It’s not clear, though, how well the technique will work against high-powered readers that have been demonstrated to read RFID chips from about 160 feet away.

Sure, shielding the passports is a good idea.  If they weren’t made with that built-in the private market would have supplied them. 

The article goes on to discuss some concerns about the security of the encryption and some legal issues but misses one of my big concerns.  The government tries to reassure us that everything is going to be okay because they are making efforts to make sure only they will be able to read the information.  And that they will only read the information at ports of entry.  It’s government that is the biggest threat to the individual person.  It’s government abuse that I’m worried about.  This technology makes it practical for automated reading, recording, and tracking of the passports.  When the passports were nothing but paper it took a human time to retrieve the information and verify it’s validity.  It simply wasn’t practical to put a human at the entrance to every government building, every boarding gate for planes and trains, and monitor every banking transaction.  This technology changes that.  And it is likely to creep into more and more of our lives.  Then there will be little reason to not require the same technology on whatever government mandated ID U.S. citizens will have.  The temptation will be just too great.

And of course mandated ID and/or tracking of people violates my Jews in the Attic Test.

Hint to criminals using computers

Posted on by

Hint to criminals using computers–don’t.  The following is just the tip of the iceburg.  From Bruce Schneier:

Many color laser printers embed secret information in every page they print, basically to identify you by. Here, the EFF has cracked the code of the Xerox DocuColor series of printers.

Update: For those of you who didn’t really get what I was hinting on the first pass here it is spelled out for you:

Schoen said that the existence of the encoded information could be a threat to people who live in repressive governments or those who have a legitimate need for privacy. It reminds him, he said, of a program the Soviet Union once had in place to record sample typewriter printouts in hopes of tracking the origins of underground, self-published literature.