illusions.

[intertribal]

I have a hilariously auto-biographical story up at Postcards From... mine is the "futuristic horror fantasy", I think, lol.  I like how that manages to incorporate every genre of speculative fiction available.

I walked back from handing back my Nationalism paper ("Born Free: Failed Integration in the Post-Colonial Context", which sounds a lot better than the paper is) with the Hillary Chick in my class.  She was, of course, wearing a Hillary t-shirt.  Everyone knows who she is because she's often nearly late, has a sort of elephant-in-china-shop manner of going about the class, is very blonde and blue-eyed and Barbie-doll-ish, and is constantly wearing Hillary gear.  She works for a Hillary phone bank, and is always busy campaigning.  We were both wearing red coats today.  There was much awkwardness.  She has Hillary's voice.  I would believe that she is Hillary's younger form. 

The NYTimes has an article on the City Room blog called "Three baby hawks believed dead".  I thought, because it's the Washington blog, that it was some kind of very darkly cynical comment about war hawks in Congress who were not going to run for re-election for various reasons.  No, turns out it's actually about birds.

I have another reason I dislike Paolini: he named his "village hamlet" Carvahall.  Does that sound like a village hamlet name to anyone?  Well, I guess I don't know much about village hamlets, but what it really sounds like to me is the magical woods of Carterhaugh, and seriously, just don't steal from Tam Lin.  I mean, come on, yo.

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

also, it costs like $100 more for Americans to get visas into China than for anybody else. I forget if that's because of the olympics or what.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

And the new passports ARE TOTAL BULLSHIT. sorry, i was like what the hell did they do to the American passports? Why are there eagles and farmers and liberty bells?! why, god, why...

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

oh really? where are these eagles and farmers and liberty bells?

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

on every page, in the background. first, now they're made of icky cardboard crap, which tara says is for the chip they have in them, and then...like every page has images in the background:

boston tea party
american flag
eagle w/ american flag and WHEAT
cactuses
rocky mountains
liberty bell w/ declaration of independence w/...liberty hall?
some old ship + lighthouse + seagull
eagle + bison + rockies + shadow of a bird
mt. rushmore
steamboat on the mississippi + more birds
farm + farmer w/ team of oxen tilling land + more WHEAT (= giganto-wheat)
cowboys w/ longhorns, cattle, windmill, more mountains
a freaking TRAIN
more rockies + bear w/ fish + TOTEM POLE
statue of libery w/ close-up of the tablet she's holding
a palm tree
a satellite, the moon, & earth

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

erm... I don't... see these things... mine has state logos...

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

i just got mine in march. my old one had like NOTHING. pretty blue pages. nice, flexible blue cover. it was so nice.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

oh yeah, that sounds like mine! sorry about yours, man.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

A biometric passport is a combined paper and electronic identity document that uses biometrics to authenticate the citizenship of travelers. The passport's critical information is stored on a tiny RFID computer chip, much like information stored on smartcards. Like some smartcards, the passport book design calls for an embedded contactless chip that is able to hold digital signature data to ensure the integrity of the passport and the biometric data.

The currently standardized biometrics used for this type of identification system are facial recognition, fingerprint recognition, and iris recognition. These were adopted after assessment of several different kinds of biometrics including retinal scan. The International Civil Aviation Organisation defines the biometric file formats and communication protocols to be used in passports. Only the digital image (usually in JPEG or JPEG2000 format) of each biometric feature is actually stored in the chip. The comparison of biometric features is performed outside the passport chip by electronic border control systems (e-borders). To store biometric data on the contactless chip, it includes a minimum of 32 kilobytes of EEPROM storage memory, and runs on an interface in accordance with the ISO/IEC 14443 international standard, amongst others. These standards ensure interoperability between different countries and different manufacturers of passport books.

The U.S. version of the biometric passport (sometimes referred to as an electronic passport) has descriptive data and a digitized passport photo on its contactless chips, and does not have fingerprint information placed onto the contactless chip. However, the chip is large enough (64 kilobytes) for inclusion of biometric identifiers. The U.S. Department of State now issues biometric passports only. Passports without chips remain valid for the entirety of their respective periods of validity.[7]

Although a system able to perform a facial-recognition match between the bearer and his or her image stored on the contactless chip is desired, it is unclear when such a system will be deployed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security at its ports of entry.[8]

A high level of security became a priority for the United States after the attacks of September 11, 2001. High security required cracking down on counterfeit passports. In October 2004, the production stages of this high-tech passport commenced as the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) issued awards to the top bidders of the program. The awards totaled to roughly $1,000,000 for startup, development, and testing. The driving force of the initiative is the U.S. Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 (also known as the "Border Security Act"), which states that such smartcard IDs will be able to replace visas. As for foreigners traveling to the U.S., if they wish to enter U.S. visa-free under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), they are now required to possess machine-readable passports that comply with international standards. Additionally, for travelers holding a valid passport issued on or after October 26, 2006, such a passport must be a biometric passport if used to enter the U.S. visa-free under the VWP.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Privacy activists in many countries question and protest the lack of information about exactly what the passports' chip will contain, and whether they impact civil liberties. The main problem they point out is that data on the passports can be transferred with wireless RFID technology, which can become a major vulnerability. Although this could allow ID-check computers to obtain your information without a physical connection, it may also allow anyone with the necessary equipment to perform the same task. If the personal information and passport numbers on the chip aren't encrypted, the information might wind up in the wrong hands.

To protect against such unauthorized reading, or "skimming", in addition to employing encryption the U.S. has also undertaken the additional step of integrating a very thin metal mesh into the passport's cover to act as a shield to make it more difficult to read the passport's chip when the passport is closed.[9] A U.S. company, Identity Stronghold, is now manufacturing an RFID-blocking sleeve to prevent any skimming while the passport is inside the sleeve. Research students from Vrije University in the Netherlands speaking at the August 2006 Black Hat conference in Las Vegas showed that RFID passports can be cloned relatively easily, and can be remotely spied upon despite the radio-blocking shields included in US designs. They found they could read the passports from 60 centimetres (23.6 inches) away if they are opened by just 1 cm (0.39 inches), using a device which can be used to hijack radio signals that manufacturers have touted as unreadable by anything other than proprietary scanners.[10][11][12]

At the same conference, Lukas Grunwald demonstrated that it is trivial to copy the biometric certificate from an open e-passport into a standard ISO 14443 smartcard using a standard contact-less card interface and a simple file transfer tool. This is hardly surprising, given that the certificate is simply stored as a file, and had been obvious to those involved in the design of the ICAO e-passport standard throughout its development. In particular, Grunewald did not change the data held on the copied chip, which binds biometric data (e.g., photo) to identity data (e.g., name and date of birth), without invalidating its cryptographic signature, which means at present the use of this technique does not allow reprogramming of fake biometric data to match a different user. Grunewald also did not clone the Active Authentication functionality, an optional feature of the ICAO e-passport standard that some countries implement such that the embedded microprocessor is not only a floppy-disk-like data carrier for a biometric certificate, but also a tamper-resistant authentication token that can participate in a public-key cryptography based challenge-response protocol. Nevertheless, Grunewald created international media headlines with his claim that such copying of the biometric certificate constitutes the creation of a "false passport" using equipment costing around USD$200.[13]

On December 15, 2006, the BBC published an article on the British ePassport, citing the above stories and adding that:

"Nearly every country issuing this passport has a few security experts who are yelling at the top of their lungs and trying to shout out: 'This is not secure. This is not a good idea to use this technology'", citing a specialist who states "It is much too complicated. It is in places done the wrong way round - reading data first, parsing data, interpreting data, then verifying whether it is right. There are lots of technical flaws in it and there are things that have just been forgotten, so it is basically not doing what it is supposed to do. It is supposed to get a higher security level. It is not."

and adding that the Future of Identity in the Information Society (FIDIS) network's research team (a body of IT security experts funded by the European Union) has "also come out against the ePassport scheme... [stating that] European governments have forced a document on its citizens that dramatically decreases security and increases the risk of identity theft."

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Recent biometric passports are equipped with electronic protections to avoid attacks. These protections are :

* Basic Access Control (BAC): the chip has to be unlocked using the Machine Readable Zone printed into the passport (prevents skimming). This protection also brings a medium level of encryption to the communication channel between the chip and the reader.
* Random identification number (along with BAC): the passport number provided by the chip is random until the BAC is unlocked.
* Active Authentication: the chip contains a private key that cannot be read or copied, but its existence can easily be proven (prevents cloning).
* Extended Access Control (EAC): the chip reader must authenticate using a strong encryption certificate to access sensitive biometric information (fingerprints, iris...). This protection also brings strong encryption to the communication channel. This protection level is the most secure, but is still rare today.