Tests chip away at passport security
Found on The Inquirer on Tuesday, 05 August 2008
Microchipped passports designed to have watertight security can actually be cloned in a matter of minutes.
A computer researcher was able to clone the chips on two British passports. They then implanted digital images of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber. The tampered chips were then passed as real by passport reader software used by the United Nations agency that sets standards for the e-passports.
These tests flag up several interesting and somewhat alarming points: They undermine claims that 3,000 blank passports stolen last week are useless as they can't be cloned, they also raise questions on the £4 billion spent by the government on ID cards which use the same technology.
It's a cat and mouse game, and terrorists will always win. Simply because a terrorist only needs to find a single weakness in any given system, while governments have to cover every hole, known or unknown. In the end, this would end up with total control and monitoring of every citizen, taking away privacy. And even then, the system will be vulnerable.