-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204/";>leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBMTO: N48 04'14.8'' E11 36'41.2'' http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204 57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 08:57:54 -0500 From: David Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: IP: Risks of belief in identities: [risks] Risks Digest 21.74 >Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 11:54:17 PST >From: "Peter G. Neumann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: Risks of belief in identities > >For those of you who might believe that national ID cards might be a good >idea, check out the December 2001 *Commun.ACM* Inside Risks column by me >and Lauren Weinstein, previewed on my Web site > http://www.csl.sri.com/neumann/insiderisks.html >in anticipation of a U.S. House hearing next Friday on that subject. > >It is not just the cards themselves that would entail risks, but even moreso >all of the supporting infrastructures, widespread accessibility to >networking, monitoring, cross-linked databases, data mining, etc., and >particularly the risks of untrustworthy insiders issuing bogus >identification cards -- as happened a few years back on a large scale in the >Virginia state motor vehicle agency (RISKS-11.41). > >The latest item on the ease of getting phony or illegal or unchecked >identification papers is found an article by Michelle Malkin (Creators >Syndicate Inc.), which I saw in the *San Francisco Chronicle* on 10 Nov >2001: Abdulla Noman, employed by the U.S. Department of Commerce, issued >bogus visas in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in one case in 1998 charging >approximately $3,178. The article also notes a variety of sleazy schemes >for obtaining visas, in some cases without ever appearing in person and >without any background checks, and in other cases for ``investments'' of a >hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The article concludes with this >sentence: ``Until our embassy officials stop selling American visas blindly >to every foreign investor waving cash, homeland security is a pipe dream.'' >I'm not sure that conclusion is representative of the full nature of the >problem of bogus identification, but the problem is clearly significant. >A driver's license or a passport or a visa or a National ID card is not >really proof of identity or genuineness or anything else. For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
