identification

RFID security problems

business, politics, science, security, tech in changing society / /

Old British passport cover
Creative Commons License photo credit: sleepymyf

2005

From Brian Krebs’ “Leaving Las Vegas: So Long DefCon and Blackhat” (The Washington Post: 1 August 2005):

DefCon 13 also was notable for being the location where two new world records were set — both involved shooting certain electronic signals unprecedented distances. Los Angeles-based Flexilis set the world record for transmitting data to and from a “passive” radio frequency identification (RFID) card — covering a distance of more than 69 feet. (Active RFID — the kind being integrated into foreign passports, for example — differs from passive RFID in that it emits its own magnetic signal and can only be detected from a much shorter distance.)

…

The second record set this year at DefCon was pulled off by some teens from Cincinnati, who broke the world record they set last year by building a device capable of maintaining an unamplified, 11-megabit 802.11b wireless Internet connection over a distance of 125 miles (the network actually spanned from Utah into Nevada).

From Andrew Brandt’s “Black Hat, Lynn Settle with Cisco, ISS” (PC World: 29 July 2005):

Security researcher Kevin Mahaffey makes a final adjustment to a series of radio antennas; Mahaffey used the directional antennas in a demonstration during his presentation, “Long Range RFID and its Security Implications.” Mahaffey and two of his colleagues demonstrated how he could increase the “read range” of radio frequency identification (RF) tags from the typical four to six inches to approximately 50 feet. Mahaffey said the tags could be read at a longer distance, but he wanted to perform the demonstration in the room where he gave the presentation, and that was the greatest distance within the room that he could demonstrate. RFID tags such as the one Mahaffey tested will begin to appear in U.S. passports later this year or next year.

2006

From Joris Evers and Declan McCullagh’s “Researchers: E-passports pose security risk” (CNET: 5 August 2006):

At a pair of security conferences here, researchers demonstrated that passports equipped with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags can be cloned with a laptop equipped with a $200 RFID reader and a similarly inexpensive smart card writer. In addition, they suggested that RFID tags embedded in travel documents could identify U.S. passports from a distance, possibly letting terrorists use them as a trigger for explosives.

At the Black Hat conference, Lukas Grunwald, a researcher with DN-Systems in Hildesheim, Germany, demonstrated that he could copy data stored in an RFID tag from his passport and write the data to a smart card equipped with an RFID chip.

From Kim Zetter’s “Hackers Clone E-Passports” (Wired: 3 August 2006):

In a demonstration for Wired News, Grunwald placed his passport on top of an official passport-inspection RFID reader used for border control. He obtained the reader by ordering it from the maker — Walluf, Germany-based ACG Identification Technologies — but says someone could easily make their own for about $200 just by adding an antenna to a standard RFID reader.

He then launched a program that border patrol stations use to read the passports — called Golden Reader Tool and made by secunet Security Networks — and within four seconds, the data from the passport chip appeared on screen in the Golden Reader template.

Grunwald then prepared a sample blank passport page embedded with an RFID tag by placing it on the reader — which can also act as a writer — and burning in the ICAO layout, so that the basic structure of the chip matched that of an official passport.

As the final step, he used a program that he and a partner designed two years ago, called RFDump, to program the new chip with the copied information.

The result was a blank document that looks, to electronic passport readers, like the original passport.

Although he can clone the tag, Grunwald says it’s not possible, as far as he can tell, to change data on the chip, such as the name or birth date, without being detected. That’s because the passport uses cryptographic hashes to authenticate the data.

…

Grunwald’s technique requires a counterfeiter to have physical possession of the original passport for a time. A forger could not surreptitiously clone a passport in a traveler’s pocket or purse because of a built-in privacy feature called Basic Access Control that requires officials to unlock a passport’s RFID chip before reading it. The chip can only be unlocked with a unique key derived from the machine-readable data printed on the passport’s page.

To produce a clone, Grunwald has to program his copycat chip to answer to the key printed on the new passport. Alternatively, he can program the clone to dispense with Basic Access Control, which is an optional feature in the specification.

…

As planned, U.S. e-passports will contain a web of metal fiber embedded in the front cover of the documents to shield them from unauthorized readers. Though Basic Access Control would keep the chip from yielding useful information to attackers, it would still announce its presence to anyone with the right equipment. The government added the shielding after privacy activists expressed worries that a terrorist could simply point a reader at a crowd and identify foreign travelers.

In theory, with metal fibers in the front cover, nobody can sniff out the presence of an e-passport that’s closed. But [Kevin Mahaffey and John Hering of Flexilis] demonstrated in their video how even if a passport opens only half an inch — such as it might if placed in a purse or backpack — it can reveal itself to a reader at least two feet away.

…

In addition to cloning passport chips, Grunwald has been able to clone RFID ticket cards used by students at universities to buy cafeteria meals and add money to the balance on the cards.

He and his partners were also able to crash RFID-enabled alarm systems designed to sound when an intruder breaks a window or door to gain entry. Such systems require workers to pass an RFID card over a reader to turn the system on and off. Grunwald found that by manipulating data on the RFID chip he could crash the system, opening the way for a thief to break into the building through a window or door.

And they were able to clone and manipulate RFID tags used in hotel room key cards and corporate access cards and create a master key card to open every room in a hotel, office or other facility. He was able, for example, to clone Mifare, the most commonly used key-access system, designed by Philips Electronics. To create a master key he simply needed two or three key cards for different rooms to determine the structure of the cards. Of the 10 different types of RFID systems he examined that were being used in hotels, none used encryption.

Many of the card systems that did use encryption failed to change the default key that manufacturers program into the access card system before shipping, or they used sample keys that the manufacturer includes in instructions sent with the cards. Grunwald and his partners created a dictionary database of all the sample keys they found in such literature (much of which they found accidentally published on purchasers’ websites) to conduct what’s known as a dictionary attack. When attacking a new access card system, their RFDump program would search the list until it found the key that unlocked a card’s encryption.

“I was really surprised we were able to open about 75 percent of all the cards we collected,” he says.

2009

From Thomas Ricker’s “Video: Hacker war drives San Francisco cloning RFID passports” (Engadget: 2 February 2009):

Using a $250 Motorola RFID reader and antenna connected to his laptop, Chris recently drove around San Francisco reading RFID tags from passports, driver licenses, and other identity documents. In just 20 minutes, he found and cloned the passports of two very unaware US citizens.

RFID security problems Read More »

US government makes unsafe RFID-laden passports even less safe through business practices

business, history, law, politics, security, tech in changing society / /

From Bill Gertz’s “Outsourced passports netting govt. profits, risking national security” (The Washington Times: 26 March 2008):

The United States has outsourced the manufacturing of its electronic passports to overseas companies — including one in Thailand that was victimized by Chinese espionage — raising concerns that cost savings are being put ahead of national security, an investigation by The Washington Times has found.

The Government Printing Office’s decision to export the work has proved lucrative, allowing the agency to book more than $100 million in recent profits by charging the State Department more money for blank passports than it actually costs to make them, according to interviews with federal officials and documents obtained by The Times.

The profits have raised questions both inside the agency and in Congress because the law that created GPO as the federal government’s official printer explicitly requires the agency to break even by charging only enough to recover its costs.

Lawmakers said they were alarmed by The Times’ findings and plan to investigate why U.S. companies weren’t used to produce the state-of-the-art passports, one of the crown jewels of American border security.

…

Officials at GPO, the Homeland Security Department and the State Department played down such concerns, saying they are confident that regular audits and other protections already in place will keep terrorists and foreign spies from stealing or copying the sensitive components to make fake passports.

“Aside from the fact that we have fully vetted and qualified vendors, we also note that the materials are moved via a secure transportation means, including armored vehicles,” GPO spokesman Gary Somerset said.

But GPO Inspector General J. Anthony Ogden, the agency’s internal watchdog, doesn’t share that confidence. He warned in an internal Oct. 12 report that there are “significant deficiencies with the manufacturing of blank passports, security of components, and the internal controls for the process.”

The inspector general’s report said GPO claimed it could not improve its security because of “monetary constraints.” But the inspector general recently told congressional investigators he was unaware that the agency had booked tens of millions of dollars in profits through passport sales that could have been used to improve security, congressional aides told The Times.

…

GPO is an agency little-known to most Americans, created by Congress almost two centuries ago as a virtual monopoly to print nearly all of the government’s documents … Since 1926, it also has been charged with the job of printing the passports used by Americans to enter and leave the country.

…

Each new e-passport contains a small computer chip inside the back cover that contains the passport number along with the photo and other personal data of the holder. The data is secured and is transmitted through a tiny wire antenna when it is scanned electronically at border entry points and compared to the actual traveler carrying it.

According to interviews and documents, GPO managers rejected limiting the contracts to U.S.-made computer chip makers and instead sought suppliers from several countries, including Israel, Germany and the Netherlands.

…

After the computer chips are inserted into the back cover of the passports in Europe, the blank covers are shipped to a factory in Ayutthaya, Thailand, north of Bangkok, to be fitted with a wire Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, antenna. The blank passports eventually are transported to Washington for final binding, according to the documents and interviews.

The stop in Thailand raises its own security concerns. The Southeast Asian country has battled social instability and terror threats. Anti-government groups backed by Islamists, including al Qaeda, have carried out attacks in southern Thailand and the Thai military took over in a coup in September 2006.

The Netherlands-based company that assembles the U.S. e-passport covers in Thailand, Smartrac Technology Ltd., warned in its latest annual report that, in a worst-case scenario, social unrest in Thailand could lead to a halt in production.

Smartrac divulged in an October 2007 court filing in The Hague that China had stolen its patented technology for e-passport chips, raising additional questions about the security of America’s e-passports.

Transport concerns

A 2005 document obtained by The Times states that GPO was using unsecure FedEx courier services to send blank passports to State Department offices until security concerns were raised and forced GPO to use an armored car company. Even then, the agency proposed using a foreign armored car vendor before State Department diplomatic security officials objected.

…

Questionable profits

…

The State Department is now charging Americans $100 or more for new e-passports produced by the GPO, depending on how quickly they are needed. That’s up from a cost of around just $60 in 1998.

Internal agency documents obtained by The Times show each blank passport costs GPO an average of just $7.97 to manufacture and that GPO then charges the State Department about $14.80 for each, a margin of more than 85 percent, the documents show.

The accounting allowed GPO to make gross profits of more than $90 million from Oct. 1, 2006, through Sept. 30, 2007, on the production of e-passports. The four subsequent months produced an additional $54 million in gross profits.

The agency set aside more than $40 million of those profits to help build a secure backup passport production facility in the South, still leaving a net profit of about $100 million in the last 16 months.

…

GPO plans to produce 28 million blank passports this year up from about 9 million five years ago.

US government makes unsafe RFID-laden passports even less safe through business practices Read More »

Debt collection business opens up huge security holes

business, law, security, tech in changing society / /

From Mark Gibbs’ “Debt collectors mining your secrets” (Network World: 19 June 2008):

[Bud Hibbs, a consumer advocate] told me any debt collection company has access to an incredible amount of personal data from hundreds of possible sources and the motivation to mine it.

What intrigued me after talking with Hibbs was how the debt collection business works. It turns out pretty much anyone can set up a collections operation by buying a package of bad debts for around $40,000, hiring collectors who will work on commission, and applying for the appropriate city and state licenses. Once a company is set up it can buy access to Axciom and Experian and other databases and start hunting down defaulters.

So, here we have an entire industry dedicated to buying, selling and mining your personal data that has been derived from who knows where. Even better, because the large credit reporting companies use a lot of outsourcing for data entry, much of this data has probably been processed in India or Pakistan where, of course, the data security and integrity are guaranteed.

Hibbs points out that, with no prohibitions on sending data abroad and with the likes of, say, the Russian mafia being interested in the personal information, the probability of identity theft from these foreign data centers is enormous.

Debt collection business opens up huge security holes Read More »

Serial-numbered confetti

business, security, tech in changing society / /

From Bruce Schneier’s “News” (Crypto-Gram: 15 September 2007):

Taser — yep, that’s the company’s name as well as the product’s name — is now selling a personal-use version of their product. It’s called the Taser C2, and it has an interesting embedded identification technology. Whenever the weapon is fired, it also sprays some serial-number bar-coded confetti, so a firing can be traced to a weapon and — presumably — the owner.
http://www.taser.com/products/consumers/Pages/C2.aspx

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Trusted insiders and how to protect against them

security, tech in changing society / /

From Bruce Schneier’s “Basketball Referees and Single Points of Failure” (Crypto-Gram: 15 September 2007):

What sorts of systems — IT, financial, NBA games, or whatever — are most at risk of being manipulated? The ones where the smallest change can have the greatest impact, and the ones where trusted insiders can make that change.

…

It’s not just that basketball referees are single points of failure, it’s that they’re both trusted insiders and single points of catastrophic failure.

…

All systems have trusted insiders. All systems have catastrophic points of failure. The key is recognizing them, and building monitoring and audit systems to secure them.

Trusted insiders and how to protect against them Read More »

Surveillance cameras don’t reduce crime

security, tech in changing society, technology / /

From BBC News’ “CCTV boom ‘failing to cut crime’” (6 May 2008):

Huge investment in closed-circuit TV technology has failed to cut UK crime, a senior police officer has warned.

Det Ch Insp Mick Neville said the system was an “utter fiasco” – with only 3% of London’s street robberies being solved using security cameras.

Although Britain had more cameras than any other European country, he said “no thought” had gone into how to use them.

…

Speaking at the Security Document World Conference in London, Det Ch Insp Neville, the head of the Met’s Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido), said one of the problems was that criminals were not afraid of cameras.

He also said more training was needed for officers who often avoided trawling through CCTV images “because it’s hard work”.

…

One study suggests there may be more than 4.2 million CCTV cameras in the UK – the majority on private property – but until Viido was set up in September 2006 there had been no dedicated police unit to deal with the collection and dissemination of CCTV evidence.

From Owen Bowcott’s “CCTV boom has failed to slash crime, say police” (The Guardian: 6 May 2008):

Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.

Surveillance cameras don’t reduce crime Read More »

Notes on getting into well-guarded events using social engineering

security, writing ideas / /

From Bruce Schneier’s “How to Crash the Oscars” (7 March 2006):

If you want to crash the glitziest party of all, the Oscars, here’s a tip from a professional: Show up at the theater, dressed as a chef carrying a live lobster, looking really concerned. …

“The most important technique is confidence,” he said. “Part of it is being dressed the part, looking the part, and acting the part and then lying to get in the door.”

The biggest hole in the elaborate Oscars security plan, Mamlet said, is that while everyone from stagehands to reporters have to wear official credentials, the celebrities and movie executives attending the event do not.

“If you really act like a celebrity, the security guards will worry that they will get into trouble for not recognizing you,” Mamlet said.

From Bruce Schneier’s “Social Engineering Notes” (15 May 2007):

This is a fantastic story of a major prank pulled off at the Super Bowl this year. Basically, five people smuggled more than a quarter of a ton of material into Dolphin Stadium in order to display their secret message on TV.

Given all the security, it’s amazing how easy it was for them to become part of the security perimeter with all that random stuff. But to those of us who follow this thing, it shouldn’t be. His observations are spot on:

1. Wear a suit.
2. Wear a Bluetooth headset.
3. Pretend to be talking loudly to someone on the other line.
4. Carry a clipboard.
5. Be white.

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The real solution to identity theft: bank liability

business, law, security, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Bruce Schneier’s “Mitigating Identity Theft” (Crypto-Gram: 15 April 2005):

The very term “identity theft” is an oxymoron. Identity is not a possession that can be acquired or lost; it’s not a thing at all. …

The real crime here is fraud; more specifically, impersonation leading to fraud. Impersonation is an ancient crime, but the rise of information-based credentials gives it a modern spin. A criminal impersonates a victim online and steals money from his account. He impersonates a victim in order to deceive financial institutions into granting credit to the criminal in the victim’s name. …

The crime involves two very separate issues. The first is the privacy of personal data. Personal privacy is important for many reasons, one of which is impersonation and fraud. As more information about us is collected, correlated, and sold, it becomes easier for criminals to get their hands on the data they need to commit fraud. …

The second issue is the ease with which a criminal can use personal data to commit fraud. …

Proposed fixes tend to concentrate on the first issue — making personal data harder to steal — whereas the real problem is the second. If we’re ever going to manage the risks and effects of electronic impersonation, we must concentrate on preventing and detecting fraudulent transactions.

… That leaves only one reasonable answer: financial institutions need to be liable for fraudulent transactions. They need to be liable for sending erroneous information to credit bureaus based on fraudulent transactions.

… The bank must be made responsible, regardless of what the user does.

If you think this won’t work, look at credit cards. Credit card companies are liable for all but the first $50 of fraudulent transactions. They’re not hurting for business; and they’re not drowning in fraud, either. They’ve developed and fielded an array of security technologies designed to detect and prevent fraudulent transactions.

The real solution to identity theft: bank liability Read More »

Two-factor authentication: the good & the bad

security / /

From Bruce Schneier’s “More on Two-Factor Authentication” (Crypto-Gram: 15 April 2005):

Passwords just don’t work anymore. As computers have gotten faster, password guessing has gotten easier. Ever-more-complicated passwords are required to evade password-guessing software. At the same time, there’s an upper limit to how complex a password users can be expected to remember. About five years ago, these two lines crossed: It is no longer reasonable to expect users to have passwords that can’t be guessed. For anything that requires reasonable security, the era of passwords is over.

Two-factor authentication solves this problem. It works against passive attacks: eavesdropping and password guessing. It protects against users choosing weak passwords, telling their passwords to their colleagues or writing their passwords on pieces of paper taped to their monitors. For an organization trying to improve access control for its employees, two-factor authentication is a great idea. Microsoft is integrating two-factor authentication into its operating system, another great idea.

What two-factor authentication won’t do is prevent identity theft and fraud. It’ll prevent certain tactics of identity theft and fraud, but criminals simply will switch tactics. We’re already seeing fraud tactics that completely ignore two-factor authentication. As banks roll out two-factor authentication, criminals simply will switch to these new tactics.

One way to think about this is that two-factor authentication solves security problems involving authentication. The current wave of attacks against financial systems are not exploiting vulnerabilities in the authentication system, so two-factor authentication doesn’t help.

Two-factor authentication: the good & the bad Read More »

Checking papers does no good if the papers are forged

security, tech in changing society / /

From Bruce Schneier’s “News” (Crypto-Gram Newsletter: 15 April 2006):

Undercover investigators were able to smuggle radioactive materials into the U.S. It set off alarms at border checkpoints, but the smugglers had forged import licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, based on an image of the real document they found on the Internet. Unfortunately, the border agents had no way to confirm the validity of import licenses. I’ve written about this problem before, and it’s one I think will get worse in the future. Verification systems are often the weakest link of authentication. Improving authentication tokens won’t improve security unless the verification systems improve as well.

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Remote fingerprinting of devices connected to the Net

security, tech in changing society, technology / /

Anonymous Internet access is now a thing of the past. A doctoral student at the University of California has conclusively fingerprinted computer hardware remotely, allowing it to be tracked wherever it is on the Internet.

In a paper on his research, primary author and Ph.D. student Tadayoshi Kohno said: “There are now a number of powerful techniques for remote operating system fingerprinting, that is, remotely determining the operating systems of devices on the Internet. We push this idea further and introduce the notion of remote physical device fingerprinting … without the fingerprinted device’s known cooperation.”

The potential applications for Kohno’s technique are impressive. For example, “tracking, with some probability, a physical device as it connects to the Internet from different access points, counting the number of devices behind a NAT even when the devices use constant or random IP identifications, remotely probing a block of addresses to determine if the addresses correspond to virtual hosts (for example, as part of a virtual honeynet), and unanonymising anonymised network traces.” …

Another application for Kohno’s technique is to “obtain information about whether two devices on the Internet, possibly shifted in time or IP addresses, are actually the same physical device.”

The technique works by “exploiting small, microscopic deviations in device hardware: clock skews.” In practice, Kohno’s paper says, his techniques “exploit the fact that most modern TCP stacks implement the TCP timestamps option from RFC 1323 whereby, for performance purposes, each party in a TCP flow includes information about its perception of time in each outgoing packet. A fingerprinter can use the information contained within the TCP headers to estimate a device’s clock skew and thereby fingerprint a physical device.”

Kohno goes on to say: ” Our techniques report consistent measurements when the measurer is thousands of miles, multiple hops, and tens of milliseconds away from the fingerprinted device, and when the fingerprinted device is connected to the Internet from different locations and via different access technologies. Further, one can apply our passive and semi-passive techniques when the fingerprinted device is behind a NAT or firewall.”

And the paper stresses that “For all our methods, we stress that the fingerprinter does not require any modification to or cooperation from the fingerprintee.” Kohno and his team tested their techniques on many operating systems, including Windows XP and 2000, Mac OS X Panther, Red Hat and Debian Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and even Windows for Pocket PCs 2002.

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Windows directory services

business, security, tech help, tech in changing society, technology / /

From David HM Spector’s Unfinished Business Part 2: Closing the Circle (LinuxDevCenter: 7 July 2003):

… an integrated enterprise directory service does give network managers a much greater ability to manage large-scale networks and resources from almost every perspective.

Unlike most UNIX systems, Windows environments are homogeneous. There are three modes of operation in terms of user and resource management in the Windows universe:

1. Stand-alone.
2. Domain membership through a domain controller.
3. Organizational-unit membership in an LDAP-based directory such as Active Directory (or via a third-party directory such as NDS, but those are declining as more organizations switch to AD). …

Three major pieces of software make up the bulk of what Active Directory does:

* LDAP, the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol.
* Kerberos, the authorization system originally developed as part of MIT Athena (later, the basis for the security components in OSF’s DME).
* A SQL database.

These components interact with the Windows APIs to deliver a one-stop repository for any attribute that can be used to describe a system, a service, a device, users, groups, a relationship, a policy, an authorization, or another relationship in a computing environment. …

LDAP in AD is used to manage:

* DNS addresses
* Workstation and server descriptions
* Printers
* Print queues
* Volume mappings
* Certificates
* Licenses
* Policies (such as ACLs, security policies, etc.)
* Groups
* Users
* Contacts

All of these data are stored in one unified system, which can be broken down relatively easily (with some major caveats) by physical location (site), division, organization unit, or department and workgroup, and managed in a distributed fashion. These data can be replicated for redundancy and performance purposes. All Windows APIs must operate within this system if they are to participate in the network and have access to its resources. Repository data is wrapped up by and authenticated through the use of Kerberos Tickets, which makes the system (again, general Windows caveats applied) secure. …

The most interesting part of this story is that 95% of the hard work has already been done! Microsoft didn’t invent totally new LDAP schemas to make Active Directory as comprehensive as it is — as usual, they embraced and extended the work of others. LDAP schemas already exist, and are publicly available to cover:

* Contact management: The InetOrgPerson schema
* IP Addresses, Users, Server/Workstation Info: The NIS schema
* Kerberos tickets: IETF Kerberos KDC schema

Of course, Microsoft’s own schemas are available for perusal on any Active Directory server (or, if you happen to have a Macintosh OS X box, look in /etc/openldap, for all of Microsoft’s schemas are there). …

Windows directory services Read More »

Identity theft method: file false unemployment claims

business, law, security, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Michael Alter’s States fiddle while defrauders steal (CNET News.com: 21 June 2005):

More than 9 million American consumers fall victim to identity theft each year. But the most underpublicized identity theft crime is one in which thieves defraud state governments of payroll taxes by filing fraudulent unemployment claims.

It can be a fairly lucrative scheme, too. File a false unemployment claim and you can receive $400 per week for 26 weeks. Do it for 100 Social Security numbers and you’ve made a quick $1.04 million. It’s tough to make crime pay much better than that.

The victims in this crime–the state work force agencies that tirelessly oversee our unemployment insurance programs and the U.S. Department of Labor–are reluctant to discuss this topic for obvious reasons. …

The slow response of state and federal agencies is quickly threatening the integrity of the unemployment insurance system. It turns out that crime is a very efficient market and word spreads quickly. Got a stolen Social Security number? You can more easily turn it into money by defrauding the government than by defrauding the credit card companies.

The net result of this fraud is that unemployment taxes are going up, and that makes it that much harder for small businesses and big businesses to do business. Even more, higher payroll taxes slow down economic growth because they make it more expensive to hire new employees.

Identity theft method: file false unemployment claims Read More »

CCTV in the UK deters crime

law, security, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Technology Review‘s “Big Brother Logs On“:

In many ways, the drama of pervasive surveillance is being played out first in Orwell’s native land, the United Kingdom, which operates more closed-circuit cameras per capita than any other country in the world. This very public surveillance began in 1986 on an industrial estate near the town of King’s Lynn, approximately 100 kilometers north of London. Prior to the installation of three video cameras, a total of 58 crimes had been reported on the estate. None was reported over the next two years. In 1995, buoyed by that success, the government made matching grants available to other cities and towns that wanted to install public surveillance cameras – and things took off from there. …

And not many argue about surveillance’s ability to deter crime. Recent British government reports cite closed-circuit TV as a major reason for declining crime rates. After these systems were put in place, the town of Berwick reported that burglaries fell by 69 percent; in Northampton overall crime decreased by 57 percent; and in Glasgow, Scotland, crime slumped by 68 percent. Public reaction in England has been mixed, but many embrace the technology. …

CCTV in the UK deters crime Read More »

OmniPerception = facial recognition + smart card

security, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Technology Review‘s’ “Face Forward“:

To get around these problems, OmniPerception, a spinoff from the University of Surrey in England, has combined its facial-recognition technology with a smart-card system. This could make face recognition more robust and better suited to applications such as passport authentication and building access control, which, if they use biometrics at all, rely mainly on fingerprint verification, says David McIntosh, the company’s CEO. With OmniPerception’s technology, an image of a person’s face is verified against a “facial PIN” carried on the card, eliminating the need to search a central database and making the system less intimidating to privacy-conscious users. …

OmniPerception’s technology creates a PIN about 2,500 digits long from its analysis of the most distinctive features of a person’s face. The number is embedded in a smart card-such as those, say, that grant access to a building-and used to verify that the card belongs to the person presenting it. A user would place his or her card in or near a reader and face a camera, which would take a photo and feed it to the card. The card would then compare the PIN it carried to information it derived from the new photo and either accept or reject the person as the rightful owner of the card. The technology could also be used to ensure passport or driver’s license authenticity and to secure ATM or Internet banking transactions, says McIntosh.

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Intel: anyone can challenge anyone

business, technology / /

From FORTUNE’s “Lessons in Leadership: The Education of Andy Grove“:

[Intel CEO Andy] Grove had never been one to rely on others’ interpretations of reality. … At Intel he fostered a culture in which “knowledge power” would trump “position power.” Anyone could challenge anyone else’s idea, so long as it was about the idea and not the person–and so long as you were ready for the demand “Prove it.” That required data. Without data, an idea was only a story–a representation of reality and thus subject to distortion.

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Intel’s ups and downs

business, technology / /

From FORTUNE’s “Lessons in Leadership: The Education of Andy Grove“:

By 1983, when Grove distilled much of his thinking in his book High Output Management (still a worthwhile read), he was president of a fast-growing $1.1-billion-a-year corporation, a leading maker of memory chips, whose CEO was Gordon Moore. … What Moore’s Law did not and could not predict was that Japanese firms, too, might master this process and turn memory chips into a commodity. …

Intel kept denying the cliff ahead until its profits went over the edge, plummeting from $198 million in 1984 to less than $2 million in 1985. It was in the middle of this crisis, when many managers would have obsessed about specifics, that Grove stepped outside himself. He and Moore had been agonizing over their dilemma for weeks, he recounts in Only the Paranoid Survive, when something happened: “I looked out the window at the Ferris wheel of the Great America amusement park revolving in the distance when I turned back to Gordon, and I asked, ‘If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?’ Gordon answered without hesitation, ‘He would get us out of memories.’ I stared at him, numb, then said, ‘Why shouldn’t you and I walk out the door, come back, and do it ourselves?'”

… once IBM chose Intel’s microprocessor to be the chip at the heart of its PCs, demand began to explode. Even so, the shift from memory chips was brutally hard–in 1986, Intel fired some 8,000 people and lost more than $180 million on $1.3 billion in sales–the only loss the company has ever posted since its early days as a startup.

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Water that uniquely identifies its owner

science, security, writing ideas / /

From SmartWater Technology:

SmartWater Security Systems are forensic coding systems which can be applied in several ways:

SmartWater Tracer

An aqueous based solution with a unique forensic code.

SmartWater Tracer uniquely codes your property, whilst being virtually invisible to the naked eye, glows under UV light and is practically impossible to remove entirely. Tracer is used in commercial businesses, schools, hospitals and other organisations. Tracer is also used in our Home Coding System so that you can use it safely on jewellery and other sentimental items.

SmartWater Instant

Forensic Coding combined with microdot technology.

SmartWater has been designed to protect household property and motor vehicles. Each bottle of SmartWater solution contains a unique forensic code, which is assigned to a household or vehicle.

An additional feature of SmartWater Instant is the inclusion of tiny micro-dot particles which enable Police to quickly identify the true owner of the property.

SmartWater SuperLabel

Forensic Coding is embedded into the adhesive of tamper resistant labels – combines effective asset management with the protection of Tracer.

The SuperLabel is designed to be tamper resistant making it extremely difficult to remove. Should the label be removed, ownership of the asset can be established from the smallest speck of adhesive, as it contains the forensic code. As with the other SmartWater products this is also designed to glow under Ultra Violet light. Your company logo can also be incorporated into the adhesive, providing quick identification of the true owner of the property.

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The new American community: affinity vs. proximity

social software, tech in changing society / /

From “Study: Want Community? Go Online” [emphasis added]:

Nearly 40 percent of Americans say they participate in online communities, with sites around hobbies, shared personal interests, and health-related issues among the most popular. That’s according to a survey conducted by ACNielsen and commissioned by eBay.

The survey was conducted in late September. Of 1,007 respondents, 87 percent say they are part of a community. Of those, 66 percent say they participate in shared personal interest sites. Next comes hobby sites (62 percent), health community sites (55 percent), public issues sites (49 percents), and commerce sites (47 percent). Others participate in social or business networking sites (42 percent), sports sites (42 percent), alumni sites (39 percent), or dating sites (23 percent).

“We are finding that affinity is quickly replacing proximity as the key driver in forming communities,” said Bruce Paul, vice president of ACNielsen. …

“I think that a lot of people initially connect [on online communities] because they share information, which for a site like eBay is beneficial because they learn and grow from each other,” said Rachel Makool, director of community relations for eBay. “Then, of course, relationships form, and they grow from there.”

Researchers note that among offline communities, only membership in religious congregations (59 percent), social groups (54 percent), and neighborhood groups (52 percent) are more common than participation in online communities (39 percent). Professional groups (37 percent), activity groups (32 percent), school volunteer groups (30 percent), and health/country clubs (31 percent) came in behind online communities.

The study also shows that though 30 percent of online community members interact on a daily basis, only 7 percent of offline community members interacted that often. It also reveals that 47 percent of offline communities have an online component, such as e-mailing or chatting online.

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Shoehorning drivers licenses

security / /

From Bruce Schneier’s “REAL ID” in Crypto-Gram (15 May 2005):

REAL ID also prohibits states from issuing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. This makes no sense, and will only result in these illegal aliens driving without licenses — which isn’t going to help anyone’s security. (This is an interesting insecurity, and is a direct result of trying to take a document that is a specific permission to drive an automobile, and turning it into a general identification device.)

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