Di Pietro on YouTube

Antonio Di Pietro, the current Italian Minister of Infrastructures, has started a weekly vidcast on YouTube where he talks about the issues discussed in the Italian Parliament that week. Notable initiative.

One more reason why RFID passports are crap

Bruce Schneier points in his blog to this BBC article that describes how easy it is to clone RFID passports.

Bruce Schneier on RFID passports

An interesting podcast on the Digital Identity Blog about RFID passports. It’s an interview with Bruce Schneier where the security guru’s gives explains his disapproval of.

Executive summary: We need to update passports for the 21st century. We need to put more machine readable data on them and ideally also be able to write data on them to support things like digital visas. Of the available techinologies, RFID is certainly not the ideal one becase it enables someone to read the data on the passport at a distance and without the passport holder’s consent, for example in a crowded train. Passports last for 10 years, in which time radio technology will certainly get better and make RFID passports even less secure. Get a conventional passport while you can; don’t be a guinea pig.

Links:

• podcast
• Bruce Schneier’s Blog
• Digital Identity Forum (or Blog?)