I have to clarifity something about the claim that there is RFID in the new US passports as this is a small pet peeve of mine.

It is not RFID in the passports. What it IS is actually is a ISO Contact-less Smart Card in it. Whats the difference? Well...RFID just sends out a signal upon request. An ISO Contactless chip however requires you to write to the chip first before you read meaning its a two way. And its actually pretty secure. Other countries are going to switch also contactless passports.

If you don't beleive me, look up ISO 14443 as thats what contactless passports have to comply to.

BTW, Samarui and even Shael for clarification, the US is only requiring passports or official guaranteed documentation for RE-ENTRY into the US.

Okay, enough of me ranting

Posted by Agent Skelly BTW, Samarui and even Shael for clarification, the US is only requiring passports or official guaranteed documentation for RE-ENTRY into the US. Okay, enough of me ranting

It's fucking Canada.
Do I look like Osama Bin Fucking Laden?

Posted by Samurai It's fucking Canada. Do I look like Osama Bin Fucking Laden?

Well, maybe a little

Posted by Samurai It's fucking Canada. Do I look like Osama Bin Fucking Laden?

It aapplies to Mexico and the Carribean, Samarui.

And yes, you do if you grew a beard and put on a turban.

Posted by Agent Skelly It aapplies to Mexico and the Carribean, Samarui. And yes, you do if you grew a beard and put on a turban.

stfu.
both of you.

I know Skelly.
I've been outside of the US before, to the Caribbean and Canada a few times...but the idea that they can tell where I'm going by having something on a card or document in my pocket kind of disturbs me.
Contactless documents, even if it's two way secure communication just means the government can look at where you are and keep records on where you are. All someone has to do is just initiate the contact, even if you're in the US.
What really bothers me about it is that it infringes on my right to privacy. Sure...I've been to Cuba, well, almost there anyway...and the idea that if the government wanted to, they could deny me reentry back into the US because they have a "record" of my passport being in Cuba or in some other restricted country just leaves me cold. Very cold actually. An American citizen can take a day tour from Montego Bay in Jamaica to Havana, Cuba for 90 dollars, without getting a passport stamp. The tour providers have a deal going with Cuban immigration, they pay them not to stamp your passport because if you have it stamped, you can't get back into the US without jumping through hoops, and I mean hoops just short of FBI interrogation. Right now, you need special State Department clearance to travel to Cuba and about 10 other countries. If you show up at a US immigration point at an airport with a restricted country's stamp on your passport, you better have a damn good reason and proof of clearance to have been there.
The problem is they can watch your passport, they can watch the data that's returned to them by the chip in them. If something comes back funny, they red flag it and haul you in for questioning.
It's not other people getting the information that bothers me, it's the US government getting the information that does.
Sure, I may be paranoid, but I'm not stupid and I don't trust the government to not do anything with data gathered from those chips that won't hurt me or others, even when we didn't really do anything but go sightseeing somewhere that's "restricted"...and God knows...that's what this site's all about, right?

Shael

I would also like to add the biometric passports only are "live" when you open then. There's a Farday Cage in the cover of it.

It's all rhetoric at the moment anyway.
Nobody's quite sure what they're going to do with the things anyhow. Once they realize those little chips aren't exactly cheap...it probably won't go that far anyway. Hopefully, it doesn't. I also don't trust some Faraday cage that's supposed to keep my document from communicating without my control. The only thing I do trust is a copper thread Faraday bag around the damn thing. I don't trust anything that I didn't check myself.
Although, I'm one of those people that sees the government forcing everybody to get a barcode tattooed to his/her arm or something. You know...Book of Revelation...no buying or selling without the "mark of the beast" and all that.
I don't trust anything that I can't control, as far as documents and records are concerned. I don't trust my employer, I don't trust the government, I don't trust my doctor's office...hell, I don't trust anybody, with a very few small exceptions.
The one thing my father left me with is a healthy dose of skepticism bordering on paranoia when it comes to that. I hear the words RFID and Biometrics and I start thinking of what it could become. The US population is beginning, well, I shouldn't say beginning, because it already began with the recent governmental decisions and bills passed in the past 5 or 6 years, the population is beginning to become like cattle. Too few people are standing up for their rights and themselves out of fear of retribution from authorities or the "establishment". We listen too much to people saying "It's for our own good" or "Someone outside could hurt us if we don't carry this card or get this form of identification". The problem is, we're afraid of each other, we're afraid of the whole world because the media and popular culture has embraced the idea that giving up our freedoms is the way to being "safe", when all we're doing by allowing our freedoms to be taken away is allowing someone sitting in Washington, DC. to make rules to keep us in line and keep us from asking questions by telling us "it's for our own good".
We need to start standing up and asking questions, start making people accountable for their actions and questioning why we need this stuff, when all it creates is another way for us to be controlled.
That's why I don't believe in this, I go along with it because I have to, because in order to do what I want, I have to play the system, but it doesn't mean I don't ask questions. Customer service at any government agency hates me, they really do.
[/rant]

Shael

I've already looked into the privacy implentatations of the biometric passports.
They pretty much solved my main question with the Farday cage in the cover. Plus, if you really are concerned, you can put it in a foil pouch like you said. Pretty much, it only has all the OCR text thats on the front page of your passport anyways which isn't much plus I beleive your entry/exit details.

Posted by Shael It's all rhetoric at the moment anyway. Nobody's quite sure what they're going to do with the things anyhow. Once they realize those little chips aren't exactly cheap...it probably won't go that far anyway. Hopefully, it doesn't. I also don't trust some Faraday cage that's supposed to keep my document from communicating without my control. The only thing I do trust is a copper thread Faraday bag around the damn thing. I don't trust anything that I didn't check myself. Although, I'm one of those people that sees the government forcing everybody to get a barcode tattooed to his/her arm or something. You know...Book of Revelation...no buying or selling without the "mark of the beast" and all that. I don't trust anything that I can't control, as far as documents and records are concerned. I don't trust my employer, I don't trust the government, I don't trust my doctor's office...hell, I don't trust anybody, with a very few small exceptions. The one thing my father left me with is a healthy dose of skepticism bordering on paranoia when it comes to that. I hear the words RFID and Biometrics and I start thinking of what it could become. The US population is beginning, well, I shouldn't say beginning, because it already began with the recent governmental decisions and bills passed in the past 5 or 6 years, the population is beginning to become like cattle. Too few people are standing up for their rights and themselves out of fear of retribution from authorities or the "establishment". We listen too much to people saying "It's for our own good" or "Someone outside could hurt us if we don't carry this card or get this form of identification". The problem is, we're afraid of each other, we're afraid of the whole world because the media and popular culture has embraced the idea that giving up our freedoms is the way to being "safe", when all we're doing by allowing our freedoms to be taken away is allowing someone sitting in Washington, DC. to make rules to keep us in line and keep us from asking questions by telling us "it's for our own good". We need to start standing up and asking questions, start making people accountable for their actions and questioning why we need this stuff, when all it creates is another way for us to be controlled. That's why I don't believe in this, I go along with it because I have to, because in order to do what I want, I have to play the system, but it doesn't mean I don't ask questions. Customer service at any government agency hates me, they really do. [/rant] Shael

i.
love.
this.
woman...

OPEN THE BORDERS!!

God, I was in Berlin a few months ago and overheard these Berliners talking shit about the "Amerikans" gawking up the Orderly German Kustoms Line like a bunch of huckleberries, when low and behold, they all whip out CANADIAN passports. I'm not jumping on the "fake-being-Canadian-so-foreigners-won't-spit-in-our-food" bandwagon anytime soon.


_{But if asked I will say I'm an expatriate.}

Posted by earthworm God, I was in Berlin a few months ago and overheard these Berliners talking shit about the "Amerikans" gawking up the Orderly German Kustoms Line like a bunch of huckleberries, when low and behold, they all whip out CANADIAN passports. I'm not jumping on the "fake-being-Canadian-so-foreigners-won't-spit-in-our-food" bandwagon anytime soon. But if asked I will say I'm an expatriate.

Don't worry...they were probably from Quebec

Posted by Agent Skelly Don't worry...they were probably from Quebec

It wasn't the only time Canadians were mistaken for Americans I've seen. Nothing personal, but most Canadians remind me of Huell Howser (local PBS superstar). Buncha dorks.