[IP] more on New Website: John Gilmore vs. 'Papers, Please'

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: mis@seiden.com
Date: August 16, 2004 8:01:25 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: Re: [IP] more on New Website: John Gilmore vs. 'Papers, Please'

for IP if you wish:

re
> From: Hiawatha Bray <watha@monitortan.com>
> Date: August 16, 2004 2:10:27 PM EDT
> To: dave@farber.net, Ip <ip@v2.listbox.com>
> Subject: RE: [IP] New Website: John Gilmore vs. 'Papers, Please'
>
> ...
> stabs at
> keeping us safe.  Among other things, they expect to know the
> identities of
> those who fly.  My only complaint is that it's still too easy to defeat
> such
> security systems.

oh, yeah, they're trying real hard.

by now every major domestic airline is allowing people to print their
own boarding passes on their own printers, that are checked only for
consistency against some identity document

-- which allows anyone with any of a few hundred legitimate-looking
govt issue photo ids and a bootleg of photoshop and a printer to
go to any gate at any time!


[ actually PIT now checks again ID at the gate at least they did one 
day djf]

since there's no second identity check at the gate, for domestic
flights (at all the airports i've traveled through this year) you can
once again travel on someone else's ticket, and that's who will be
profiled by CAPPS II (no matter what it's called tomorrow).

so much for the no-fly or the "hassle me every time" lists.

the 9/11 terrorists all had authentic ids, which are for the next n 
years
only slightly better than authentic LOOKING ids.

which leads me and others to conclude that the ID check and all of the
profiling and lists provide only the appearance, but not the actuality
of security, at the same time as they provide affordances for control
over all of us good guys, while allowing even slightly ambitious bad
guys to get through.

(the computer scientists should easily spot the multiple bugs: reliance 
on unvalidated
data, not authenticating the boarding pass, and the 
time-of-check/time-of-use window
which allows substitution).

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