IT companies will probably use data mining techniques to find out people’s life patterns and the government will eventually change restrictions on data and just sell it on to third parties.

There are of course concerns over adding data fields to these chips.
Imagine the use that somebody like Hitler, Himmler or Heydrich would have made of this technology. And we are asked to just trust them with it — like the DVLC info.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/30/dutch_biometric_passport_crack/

So, potentially a one-stop-shop for identity theft, and you might not even have to have possession of the card in the first place!

Well done HMG!

- aren’t there already RFID readers in tube barriers?
- don’t they already undertake useful data analysis based on the movements of individual tube travelers?
- Who says you have to be discrete about surveilling crowds? Police forward intelligence units are pretty blatant aren’t they?
- Encryption? Who said the data was encrypted?
- It was my understanding (from Spy blog) that the range was typically 30 meters.

SJG

To say;
2) Generally, the area of the transmitter needs to be at least the square of the distance from which it’s read.

Is absolute rubbish, the author of that comment has adequately demonstrated that ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing’ The author is misapplying the Inverse Square law, there are some excellent examples and explanations of this on the web.
Commonly used RFID tags can be read from several metres away, Things like the Dart Tag or other such subscription Toll systems are a perfect example.

It would be trivial to mount RFID readers at strategic points around city centres and monitor a person’s movements.
It would also be trivial to build a portable reader which could be concealed about a person’s clothing, harvesting data as said person walked around (providing the, hopefully, strong encryption could be broken)

Even that range on RFID readers is only limited by radio-frequency emissions legislation; if you’re prepared to ignore that, you can get much larger range. I’d not heard anything about the area of th transmitter before, do you have any good sources?

“Schneier on Security” http://www.schneier.com/blog/ is a good read for news on RFID and other aspects of security and privacy.

While I do think that making ID card data readable via RFID is a *bad* idea, I wouldn’t mind a *wee* bit less of the hysteria, lest it taint what is a valid argument.

Anyway:
1) RFID is (generally) a passive device, not a transmitter. You need a specific reader in close proximity.

2) Generally, the area of the transmitter needs to be at least the square of the distance from which it’s read. So general scanning of crowds without being bleedin’ obvious is unlikely. Not that it’d be impossible to build a reader into (say) tube barriers. The data analysis requirements for making any useful sense out of the travel habits of the tube-travelling public does strike me as putting it into the range of prohibitively difficult.

Didn’t the US govt propose this for their passports, and then suggest that the passports would then have a metallic lining to prevent skimming? Because if you think about it, 3rd party readable RFID-enabled ID Cards are *heaven* for identity thieves…