I’ll be on Gorilla Radio tomorrow around 5:30pm (Pacific) talking to Chris Cook about Bill 85, Photo Card Act, and the New Transparency Project. You can listen at 102FM, 104.3 cable, or online.
Short Thought Concerning Enhanced Drivers Licenses
A colleague of mine asked that I write a short post that summarizes the issue and my concerns with the Enhanced Drivers Licenses that Ontario is proposing to implement in the near future. Per his request, I’ll writing this.
Beginning July 1, 2009, the American government will require Canadians and Americans who enter the United States through its land borders to carry either a passport or an ‘enhanced’ identity document. The Ontario government, in response, is preparing to pass Bill 85 – Photo Card Act, which will see the government offer these identity documents to the Ontario public. These identity documents are required to contain a radio frequency identification chip that emits a unique number whenever it is within range of a reader, raising deep concerns surrounding mass surveillance of North American populations. Researchers have consistently proven that the anemic protections suggested by the government, such as placing the identity document in a radio-blocking sleeve, to be relatively ineffective in blocking the interception of the radio’s unique identifier. Further, advocacy groups have noted that it is relatively inexpensive to purchase a reader, raising concerns that non-government bodies and individuals can capture this unique identifier.
Continue readingComment – Major ISPs To Deploy P4P Within Months
In the US, several ISPs (e.g. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast) have been testing the effectiveness of using Pando Networks’ own P2P client, which localizes transfered files, to increase the transfer speeds of files while reducing the flow of traffic between ISPs. These tests have demonstrated that Pando’s solution to P2P traffic ‘overwhelming’ network traffic has largely been successful; far less data is passing between ISPs, with a huge portion of the P2P traffic now being contained to the respective ISPs’ networks . DSLreports is concerned that, there may be hidden costs to the roll-out of these technologies. Perhaps individuals will need to pay a fee to enjoy the enhanced speeds. Perhaps this will correspond with a more invasive content analysis system. Maybe there will be blocks put on ‘non-authorized’ P2P clients.
Personally, I expect that P4P will be used to let ISPs compete in the media-content selling business. Imagine: you can get a movie from iTunes in 20 minutes, or in 2-4 from your ISP. Sure, the analysis and filtering that DSLreports notes could be coming, but I have a suspicion that P4p will be used to undermine the current content distributors first, and that other uses of P4P will follow only after that business model/technique is tested.
Continue readingArticle – Driving Your Liberties Away: Biometrics and ‘Enhanced’ Drivers Licenses
I’ve recently published an article on the issues surrounding biometric data that will be included in the new Ontario drivers licenses that will be available beginning in 2009. This is intended to complement my earlier piece where I discussed concerns that are raised by the radio identifier that will be inserted in the licenses.
Site Overhaul
An administrative note: I’ve overhauled the general structure of my web space. I’m starting to use wordpress as a semi-content management system, and I’m actually pretty pleased with what I’m seeing now. If you find that something is broken, or just want to comment on if you love/hate the look, let me know.
Abandoning Your Privacy, One Radio Wave, One Smile, at a Time
In a recent piece, “Tracking Your Every Move: ‘Enhancing’ Driver’s Licenses at the Cost of Privacy,” I noted that the proposed Ontario enhanced drivers license changes threaten to seriously diminish people’s privacy. These proposed licenses will include a small RFID chip that emits a unique identifier when brought into proximity of a reader – this number is not associated with any personally identifiable information that the provincial government holds, but does (per the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada) constitute personally identifiable information in its own right. The Commissioner’s office, in their whitepaper entitled “Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in the Workplace: Recommendations for Good Practices”:
An RFID tag containing a unique identifier has the potential to become a “proxy” for an individual when it becomes associated with that individual. In such circumstances, it will become personal information. This would be the case with an RFID-enabled identification badge or uniform. Location data gathered by scanning tags associated with individuals is also personal information (Source). Continue reading
Technology, Thoughts & Trinkets 